Gatsby's Girl is "People's Choice" nominee

Caroline Preston's novel, Gatsby's Girl, along with Donna Lucey's Archie and Amelie, has been nominated for a Library of Virginia "People's Choice Award."

"People's choice" means we can all cast a vote. Click on the ballot image to make it bigger, so you can see the other nominees and categories. Then click this link and VOTE .

It worked for Jenny Gardiner! Never underestimate the power of the mouse. (Or the power of a well-written manuscript.)

Support Authors' Rights

The Authors Guild sent out an email to members yesterday, which begins:

When collectors donate manuscripts, letters, and diaries of an author to libraries or universities, they are entitled to deduct the fair market value of those literary papers from their income for tax purposes. When authors donate their manuscripts and other papers to libraries or universities, they're permitted to deduct only the cost of the physical materials used to produce those documents (the cost of paper, ink, toner).

The difference, of course, is immense, and immensely inequitable to authors who choose to donate their papers for scholarly research.

We now have a good chance to right this wrong, and we'd like your help.

Read the rest: Literary Papers Tax Bill Needs Your Support

A good week for Jennifers

Jennifer Elvgren's picture book, Josias, Hold the Book, has been chosen as one of the best books of 2007 by the Children's Book Committee of Bank Street College.

Jenny Gardiner Snags Publishing Contract!

Faboo news from Jenny:

"Finally, I can let you know the results of the national fiction contest (American Title III) I kept bugging you all about for so long. (I've not been able to announce it until the official announcement this weekend in Houston.)

I won!!! Thanks to your support, my book, SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER, will be published by Dorchester Publishing with a release date of January 28, 2008.

I want to thank you all so very much for your help--your amazing collaborative effort has helped to launch a writing career. I've also landed an agent and she is working on sending some of my other books to editors now as well.

It's incredibly hard breaking into the publishing world, and I know this seemed like a crazy way to do it, but it's been a great thing and I just want you all to know how very much I appreciate your help in getting me to this point.

If you're interested in getting on my newsletter list, you can contact me at my website, www.jennygardiner.net, and I'll be sure to put you on. I also have a listserve at Yahoo that I haven't done anything with yet but will do so soon. You can get updates from there as well by sending an email to: SLEEPINGWITHWARDCLEAVER-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
and I'll add you to the list.

If you did forward on the voting email to others during the contest, I'd greatly appreciate your forwarding on my thanks to them!

Thank you all again, so very much for your help!"

With Best Wishes,

Jenny
American Title III winner, Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, (Dorchester/Winter 2008)
www.jennygardiner.net

Calling All Blog Virgins!

So, you want to post a comment, but you're not sure how to go about it?

Gather 'round: You can do this. (If I can do it, anybody can!)

It will be easier if you open another browser window, and go to the LLL blog. That way, you can read these instructions in one window, and click on stuff in the other window.

Choose a blog entry (such as "Poet Perseveres" or "You Don't Hear About the Rejections"). At the bottom of the post, you'll notice a line of small print. You'll see "0 comments" (or maybe "127 comments," if people have responded). Click on the word "comments".

If this is your first time posting on this "blogspot" site, you'll need to create a Google account. (If you have a gmail account, you can use that username and password.)

Find where it says "No Google Account? Sign up here." And click that link.

You'll enter your email address, and choose a password (at least 6 characters long). Type in your name as you want it to appear with your comment.

You'll see a graphic with 5 or 6 letters, and it's distorted. You'll be asked to type those letters into a box. (Why? This is a way of deterring spammers from using programs to make mass-postings on blogs. It takes a human eye to discern what those letters are.)

Check the box to accept the terms of service, and continue to the next window.

Type your comment in the box, and, once again, discern what the distorted letters are and type those in. Then click on "publish your comment" and that's it!

This "blogspot" site must have a bajillion blogs on it. Now that you have a blogspot account set up, you'll be able to post on any of the blogs hosted here.