Dangerous Laser Printers

Okay, I know this isn't about writing but other than electronic documents the most common format to show off your work is the printed page. Now it happens that if you print things using a laser printer you may be breathing in particulates from the printer that you really don't want to be.

Here's the troubling story.

First-Time Author Gets Six-Figure Deal

And she probably deserves it.

The pitch intrigued the publishing world: "Forrest Gump wins Powerball."
And with that, Patricia Wood's new novel, Lottery, was launched into a bidding war that nabbed the first-time writer a six-figure deal.

And for more inspiration there's this:

She had written three earlier novels and has "a stack of rejection letters" to show for them. Lottery came to her quickly last year. She spent eight hours a day, seven days a week for three months writing it, she says. "I was consumed."

She sent e-queries to agents, hoping to attract interest.

"Most of the time I'm so busy, I don't read the e-mail queries," says Dorian Karchmar, a literary agent with William Morris in New York. But on a slow day last summer, she read Wood's and was hooked by the Gump line and five manuscript pages Wood included.

Full Article Here.

Self-Publishing Online For Free

David Wellington has done well for himself. He's written several popular novels that have been published in real life yet he still publishes them for free, in their entirety online.

They're worth checking out.

It's something I'm thinking of doing with my next "throw-away" nanowrimo novel using something like the Creative Commons Licensing deal. What I'm toying with doing is publishing each day's writing to a blog not only so others can read it while it's still warm from my fingers, but so I can keep track of myself and my word count and hopefully keep myself encouraged and motivated throughout.

We'll see.