And the winners are...

Hey all! I'm busy painting my guesthouse, so I'm only dropping in to let you know who won copies of The Vanished Knight. 

Without further ado, the winners are:

Brandon Ax 

and 

Laura Clipson

Congrats!

If you've missed out on this round, never fear. There's always Amazon. ;-)

Since the death of her parents, Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land...

When Callan is forced through the doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince.

But when the Black Knight fails to return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess.

Now with Darrion growing ever more antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms afire.

Announcing the Title, the Winner, and My Progress

As some of you might know, my upcoming book's title has changed. I ran a small competition where everyone had to guess a letter until the name was revealed. Which was done quite quick, I might add. :-)

So without further ado, my soon-to-be released title is: 

The War of Six Crowns: The Vanished Knight

And the winner, picked by random.org is: 

S.P. Bowers!

Congrats! And thank you to all who played along.

Okay. So... Today is Update Day for the Big Dreams Bloghop, which means I get to regale all who are interested with stories of my progress. 

Here's what I did in August: 

1. Finished the rough draft to book three in The War of Six Crowns series. 
2. Saw a graphic designer who'll be helping me create a brand and image for said series. 
3. Finished the content and structural edits to The Vanished Knight. We are officially in copy edits, people. 
4. Wrote half of Birds vs Bastards. 

I'm still waiting on the ITIN, which is putting a serious wrinkle in my plans. The reason for this is that without that number, I can't publish. So I'm really sitting on needles in the mean time. Without the ITIN, I don't have a fixed publishing date. And without a fixed publishing date, I can't arrange for blog tours and the like. Sigh. 

Because the ITIN puts things out of my control at the moment, I won't be setting any fixed goals with regards to The Vanished Knight. Besides, the edits will be done when the edits are done. In the mean time, I'm eagerly awaiting the production of my first ever book cover. 

The main goal I have for September is to finish the Birds vs Bastards rewrite. As soon as that's done, I'll have to clear my head and get back into draft mode. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish one more rough draft by mid-October. But I'll probably end up drafting right through November as well... 

Depending, of course, on whether or not I'm publishing during that time. Hm. 

But yep, that's pretty much where I am at the moment. 

How are you doing on your big goals? If you haven't signed up, please do. No dreams are too insane, too big or too small. 

Finally! I announce the winners!

Hi all!

Today is the day for me to announce the winners to the Paying Forward Awards and January's Word Master Challenge.

Before I get to it, though, some admin. I know that my absence this month made things a bit difficult, so I want to use this opportunity to ask for February's prize sponsors to please step forward. The arrangement is the same as before. You can volunteer anything you feel comfortable with volunteering. In return, you'll be linked to on my blog and I can and will help with promoting your blog/book etc. If you're interested, please contact me at mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com to volunteer and if you have any questions. Please put "Paying Forward" as your topic. Thank you in advance!

And now, to the winners. After a long time wondering about how I'd divide the Paying Forward Awards, I thought I'd do it as follows:

I'm going to announce the first and second place winners for each category. They need to contact me ASAP at mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com to claim prizes. Topic line: "I came first/second." The way I will distribute the prizes are as follows: First prizes, First comers. So if by this time next week, the first prize winners didn't claim, I will be giving away the prizes on a first come-first serve basis. The winners are:

Most Encouraging Blogger: 

1) Alex J. Cavanaugh

2) Julie Luek

Best Reviewer: 

1) David Powers King

2) Amy Cockram

Best Writing/Inspirational Blogger: 

1) Annalisa Crawford

2) Elizabeth Spann Craig

Beginner/Small Blogger with Most Potential:

1) Livia Peterson

2) Al Diaz

Congratulations!

Before I go, I want to announce the best of the worst for Word Master Challenge January. For those of you who missed it, I mean that I'm announcing three Word Masters.

Sharing Second place are: Roland and Carter with two really hilariously bad entries.
In First Place (winning a ten chapter crit) by a small margin is August. His entry was insanely bad and funny, but is only for adult readers, so be warned.

Before I go, I want to say that the overall level of the entries were really good. So much so that I couldn't do a top five as planned because fourth place was tied between five people. Thank you very much to all who entered.

If you want to kick yourself for not entering, hold off for a minute. February's topic is announced, so check it out. If you don't enter this time, though, feel free to kick away. ;-)

There you have it, folks! Who's in for WMC Feb? Who's volunteering for the Paying Forward awards? (Don't forget to mail me too. I have to be able to contact you later.) Any suggestions for Paying Forward Award Categories?