Write On For Literacy

Today I have a guest. I was going to ask her some questions, but something came up that is more important. Perhaps she can come back another time. But right now, we need your help.

Dallas Woodburn is young, only 22. She is the author of two collections of short stories and a forthcoming novel. Plus she has written more than 80 articles for national publications including Family Circle, Writer’s Digest, CO-ED, Justine, and The Los Angeles Times, and she writes a regular column for Listen magazine. Dallas is the founder of the nonprofit organization “Write On! For Literacy” that has donated nearly 11,000 new books to disadvantaged children.

Now she is one of the seven national semi-finalist in Glamour Magazine/Sally Hansen Contest. The Prize is a $5,000 grant!

The prize would help her organization create more Holiday Book Drive Chapters, award more scholarships, and get more kids excited about reading and writing!

But she needs your votes.

Please visit

http://www.glamalert.com/sally/

and VOTE.

More about Write On! For Literacy

Mission Statement: Write On! For Literacy is dedicated to encouraging kids to discover joy, confidence, and a means of self-expression and connection to others through reading and writing endeavors.

Founded: 2001
Website: www.writeonbooks.org
Chapters: Ventura, California; Los Angeles, California; Secane, Pennsylvania; Toronto, Canada


Projects & Outreach Programs:


• Holiday Book Drive: 10,241 new books have been collected, sorted and distributed to disadvantaged youth the past seven years; donation sites include Boys and Girls Clubs, Project Understanding, Casa Pacifica, the Ventura County Migrant Education Services.

• Summer Writing Camp: held the first two weekends in August in Ventura, California for young writers ages 8-18; students have FUN while also learning how to improve central components of their writing, including dialogue, characterization, plot and setting, through various creativity-inducing writing exercises.

• Writing Contests: in the categories of short story, essay, and poetry for young writers ages 8-13 and 14-18; award gift certificates to bookstores and publication as prizes.

• Visits to Schools: Dallas Woodburn regularly visits elementary, middle, and high schools to speak about her career as a writer and the importance of reading and writing; she also teaches fun creative writing activities with the students.

• Scholarship Fund: annually award scholarships for young writers in middle school and high school to attend the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Young Writers Program.

You can contact Dallas Woodburn at her website www.writeonbooks.org or blog http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com

Update

Because of health problems, the Book Tour Class which was scheduled to begin February 1st, has been canceled. Since I have carpal tunnel surgery scheduled for the end of March, the next class will start May 1st.

Holiday Greetings

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

New Book Tour Class

I graduated from the Blog Book Tour class in May 2009. Wanting to keep what I learned fresh in my mind as I worked toward my own Book Tour, I agreed to teach a class on Virtual Book Tours to fellow authors of Wings ePress. I had such a good time teaching the class, I decided to continue on teaching.

Next session will begin February 1, 2010. A minimum of 20 students required. The 8 week class includes what is a Blog or Virtual Book Tour, how to manage your time and plan a tour, find tour stops, care and feeding of hosts, preparation of tour materials, the actual tour, evaluating and collecting statistics, cyber schmoozing and the importance of social networking, including Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, and book clubs. This is a cooperative class, working together to learn from each other and help promote all members. This class is free (although donations gladly accepted).

Sign up now for your space.

Special Guest Elysabeth Elderings

1. Elysabeth, your book is a story for middle grade kids. Tell us a bit about it.


Actually, I'm doing a series for grades 4 through 6. Each book will be one state and is written kind of like a handheld game giving the kids clues (facts and trivia type information) from whih they have to guess the state. The characters' interactions are based on each clue; some will have more interation and some less. I have been relating it to a Jeopardy! type game except they don't have to formulate their guess in the form of a question. The books are fun and educational and I've had requests for more.

2. What are you doing to market the series?

So far, I've had virtual blog tours, real book signings, and school visits. I've also hooked up with some folks at the Welcome Center in my state during Travel and Tourism week and have done some promotional things there. Since I'm all about the states, I do interactive promotions where I have games or puzzles and lots of giveaways (USA map puzzles, activity booklets for each state which include coloring pages that are state specific and games and puzzles that can go with any state, state related pins, pencils, and other stuff that has been sent to me, USA flag pins I made, - all USA related or red, white and blue things). It's very difficult to market one or two books in a 50-book series. You need to have quite a few books out before marketing really pays off. I am in the process of writing a letter to the Jeopardy! people to see if they will sponsor the series by putting copies in every elementary and middle school across the United States (I'll let you know how that turns out in the future).


3. What unique challenges do you face in trying to market it? And what unique opportunities?


Right now, I don't think there are any unique challenges as every author is facing the same sort of things and children's authors are facing a few extra. The economy, the CPSIA has been a big damper for anyone who deals with children's products on any level. Because of this stupid law, the cost of printing a book has gone up and therefore, the cost of purchasing a book is higher and people don't have much money to spend on books right now.

Unique opportunities have been getting in with book festivals that are specific to children's books (just did the Savannah Children's Book Festival and had a blast. Got to meet a few other children's authors but was super busy so I didn't meet as many as I would have liked to.)



4. Everyone has their own idea of success "Best Seller List", what is yours?


This would be to have my books available to every elementary and middle school in the nation, at least one copy in the shool library or a classrom. Then I know I am reaching the audiencce I intended to reach all along.


5. What else would you like to share with the readers?


The series is progressing and hopefully things will look up and we can get back on track of getting four states out a year. The next few months will be the ones to look out for since the series will be moving rather quickly, at least so I've been told. If you like the books and feel they would be something your friends would enjoy, then nothing helps like word of mouth. Without the readers telling other readers, the authors wouldn't be anywhere. We don't have a job without readers who enjoy our books. So keep reading and letting everyone know about what you are reading so that they may possibly enjoy the same books you do.

Books are available for order through the publisher at www.4rvpublishingllc.com or through the author's website http://junior-geography-detective-squad.weebly.com/ or special orders through email via Vivan (president@4rvpublishingllc.com) with a notation of special order in the subject line or the author, Elysabeth Eldering (eeldering@gmail.com). Special orders would be schools wanting more than one classroom or library copy to receive a 10% discount if ordering at least 6 copies per title and to order the accompanying study guides per title. If an order is for at least 10 copies of a title (still recceives the 10% discount), the study guide is free.

Thanks for having me on your blog today, Linda.

VBT Author Exchange

I belong to VBT, Writers on the Move. This is a group of authors and writers helping one another to promote our works and achieve our dreams through the use of virtual book tours, interviews, blogs, reviews and many other beneficial tools and strategies.

Every month, we visit each other to promote our books. So tomorrow on Journey to the Best Seller List, I will have my first guest author, Elysabeth Eldering. Elysabeth is working on a series of books about the 50 states for children, incorporating the idea of a video game to teach kids interesting facts about the state. Children have to follow the clues to figure out what state each book is. She currently has two books in the series and third one is about to be published. I asked her questions about the unique challenges of marketing a children's series.

And I will be visiting another VBT author, Dallas Woodburn at http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com/
I will be talking about writing handicapped.


Check out http://tinyurl.com/yh9vry6 for list a participating sites and more details. Join famous and new authors of a unique book tour. Mystery site, prizes.

Please stop by tomorrow to visit with Elysabeth.

Productivity Can Be Learned?

I am a handicapped writer. I'm sure that lots of writers like me have some handicap, mine are arthritis, diabetes, depression. The worst handicap comes from the medication I must take to function, which block my creativity and my ability to write.

But today I was given hope. Karen Wiesner was one of the first writers I met online back in 2000. I found her words encouraging then. Today I read her free article, http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/kswiesner/productivityarticle.pdf
and was given hope again.

Like she states in her article, I felt like giving up writing. I have lost the ability to create new stories, to brainstorm, and though I have WIP, I don't seem to be able to accomplish anything.

I am going to try her plan of goal setting and writing in stages. Perhaps knowing exactly what I am expected to accomplish and being able to check off complete goals, will help me stay focused and actually accomplish something.

So the first step is to work out my plan.

Thank you, Karen Wiesner http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/kswiesner/index.html