#CACrits

Calling All Critiques: Entry #8

Thank you to everyone who has shared their work for us to critique! We hope that our feedback is useful.

Also, please note that we still have spots open. Submit your first 500 words to Critiques@Saboviec.com for inclusion in this week’s blog posts. We need it by tonight at 8 p.m. if you want to be included tomorrow and spots are still open.

For critiquers (and if you’re an entrant and you critique, you’re a critiquer), feel free to enter our Rafflecopter giveaway. One lucky person will win a $10 Amazon gift card, an eCopy of It Ain’t Easy Being Jazzy by Quanie Miller, and an eCopy of Guarding Angel by S. L. Saboviec.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/6928ae2/

Entry #8

*Author: Kim Johnson*
*Website:* http://kimcjohnson.wordpress.com/
*Title: Her Only Escape*
*Genre: YA Suspense*

The last place a senior wants to be cooped up is the career counseling office. But I like the quiet. I like the college posters filled with smiling faces. The stacks of possibilities filed in the cabinets. Even the obsolete typewriter. But most of all, hearing the tick, tick, tick, of the clock. A sound to drift to if I can stay undetected in the far corner.

Hunched over, my long hair drapes my face on my desk and I let my glasses dangle at the tip of my fingers.

*My legs flutter above ground, whipping high in the sky. I land. Move my feet sharply like scissors to complete an arabesque, dangerously close to the edge of the stage. With my feet perfectly on pointe, I arch my back, keeping the length of my arms straight. I’€™m dancing like my life is on the line – reckless chances. Maybe it’s because I know he’s watching me from the back corner. I dance faster so he doesn’t disappear, but my body is tiring. I stumble glancing in the shadows. He is gone. *

The bell rings and I jolt my head up. It takes a second to place myself. I wipe the drool from my mouth, and throw my bag over my shoulder. Adrenaline charges up my body, raising my energy beyond containment. I refuse to let anything stop me from dancing again. I swallow the pain choking up to my neck thinking about Michael. About his warnings. About him being gone.

I practically skip to the doors adjacent to the indoor weight facility at Eugene Highland high school. We use it as our makeshift studio. The first time I found out it, I stalked the dance practice through the window for weeks before I brought the subject up at home.

“Maybe you shouldn’€™t,”€ Mom said after I mentioned wanting to take up dance again. I did a double take, to make sure I heard her right. She repeated once more. Hearing it a second time, it stung like she slapped my face. Dad left the room to refrain from yelling at the top of his lungs.

I wanted him to.  Just once lose it, in front of me. But he didn’€™t.

Mom continued, “I only mean, you should try something new, Samantha.”€
My mouth still hung open a bit. What she won’t say is, *do something else*. *Anything else.* As long as it doesn’€™t remind her of Michael.

Mom is all about forgetting.

Shoving it down.

Burying it.

Dad usually gives in to Mom, but this was one thing he wouldn’€™t let be taken away from me. I found him upstairs, unpacking my dance boxes.

“€œFor when you’€™re ready,” he said, before kissing my forehead goodnight.

And dance began burning in my heart again. Calling me to the floor. Gripping me until I couldn’€™t breathe. Till the only thing left for me to do was dance.

There’s more to critique!

After leaving your comments, you can head over to one or more of these blogs to see some more great entries:

Thank you to the entrants and the participants!

Calling All Critiques: Deadline Extension

The deadline for Calling All Critiques has been extended to today, Monday, May 26 at 8 p.m. EDT. Be sure to submit yours ASAP – we look forward to reading, posting, and commenting on your book excerpts!

How to Enter

Submit your entry to Critiques@Saboviec.com. Cut and paste the following template into your email and fill it in.

Your name/pseudonym:
Your website (optional):
Title:

Genre (include audience, such as YA/Adult, and category):
Entry:

Your first 500 words may run slightly over in order to finish at the end of a sentence.

Please allow our moderator the time to get back to you and confirm your place in the critique queue.

More Details

Questions? Check out some of the earlier blog posts or leave a comment below:

After You Submit…

After you submit, check out all the participating blogs and bloggers:

Thanks for being part of Calling All Critiques!

Calling All Critiques: Submit Your First 500 Words Now

Starting now, Calling All Critiques is accepting entries for your first 500 words.

How to Enter

Submit your entry to Critiques@Saboviec.com. Cut and paste the following template into your email and fill it in.

Your name/pseudonym:
Your website (optional):
Title:

Genre (include audience, such as YA/Adult, and category):
Entry:

Your first 500 words may run slightly over in order to finish at the end of a sentence.

Acceptance of entries closes on Sunday, May 25, at 5 p.m. EDT. Please allow our moderator the time to get back to you and confirm your place in the critique queue.

More Details

Questions? Check out some of the earlier blog posts or leave a comment below:

After You Submit…

After you submit, check out all the participating blogs and bloggers:

Thanks for being part of Calling All Critiques!

Calling All Critiques: Submit Your First 500 Words Tomorrow

Quick reminder: Tomorrow (Saturday, May 24) starting at 6 a.m. EDT, we’re accepting entries to the Calling All Critiques event. Next week, we’re doing critiques of your first 500 words.

How to Enter

Submit your entry to Critiques@Saboviec.com. Cut and paste the following template into your email and fill it in.

Your name/pseudonym:
Your website (optional):
Title:

Genre (include audience, such as YA/Adult, and category):
Entry:

Your first 500 words may run slightly over in order to finish at the end of a sentence.

Acceptance of entries closes on Sunday, May 25, at 5 p.m. EDT.

More Details

Questions? Check out some of the earlier blog posts or leave a comment below:

Less than 24 hours before we begin accepting critiques!

While you wait, check out all the participating blogs and bloggers:

We look forward to seeing you back here soon!

Calling All Critiques: Introducing Your Hosts

As I posted on Monday, Proof Positive is part of the upcoming Calling All Critiques cross-blog event. Today’s post is to introduce the bloggers who will be participating, critiquing, and calling everyone they know to help support those brave souls who have shared their work. You can read more about the event here: Calling All Critiques: A Cross-Blog Event.

Meet Our Hosts

We have seven fabulous bloggers who will be participating in Calling All Critiques.

Brian Basham

Brian BashamBrian grew up and still lives in Va Beach, VA where he spends his time playing with his black lab, Saie, a.k.a. Inspector Puppy. In his spare time he plays softball, poker, and the occasional video game. Oh, and he writes too. You can read some of his stories for free at his Wattpad page. The first novel in his Virtual Wars series is going through edits and rewrites with no current release date announced. He blogs about writing, publishing, movies, and whatever else he feels like talking about at http://www.brian-basham.com/.

MM Jaye

MM JayeMM Jaye is the pen name of Maria Messini, a bilingual Greek native who lives in Athens with her husband and daughter. She is a certified translator and also teaches the art of translation to young adults. Writing was Maria’s idea of therapy when, back in 2009, her spirits had temporarily nosedived, but she didn’t take it seriously until her first manuscript was completed last year. Since November, she’s been building her author platform aiming at publishing Fate Accomplis, her first contemporary romance, in the fall, along with Fate Captured, a prequel novelette. She blogs at mmjayewrites.com and myfriendsexcerpts.wordpress.com. You can also find her on Twitter @MMJaye or Facebook.com/MMJayeauthor.

Quanie Miller

QUANIE MILLER - PHOTOQuanie Miller grew up in New Iberia, Louisiana. She fell in love with reading at an early age and spent most of her time at the Iberia Parish Library discovering authors like R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike (she was often found walking back home from the library with a stack of books that went up to her chin). She holds degrees from Louisiana State University and San Jose State University. She has been the recipient of the James Phelan Literary Award, the Louis King Thore Scholarship, the BEA Student Scriptwriting Award, and the Vicki Hudson Emerging Writing Prize. Her debut novel, It Ain’t Easy Being Jazzy, is a romantic comedy loosely based on her experiences living and working in Silicon Valley. Her first paranormal novel is called The New Mrs. Collins and is slated for a September 2014 release. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her husband and is currently, as always, working on another novel. To find out more about Quanie and her works in progress follow her on Twitter @quaniemiller or visit quaniemiller.com and quanietalkswriting.com.

S. L. Saboviec

SL Saboviec - Head Shot - SmallSamantha grew up in a small town in Iowa but now lives in the suburbs of Toronto with her Canadian husband and expatriate cat. In her spare time, she reads, writes, and thinks about reading and writing—along with playing the occasional video game or eight. She’s expecting her first child in September, but pregnancy has only slowed her down a little; her debut release, Guarding Angel, will be available May 19th. She blogs speculative fiction book reviews at the Magic & Mayhem Book Review Blog and tweets about life and writing from @Saboviec.

M.G. Silverstein

M.G. SilversteinM.G. Silverstein is a YA fantasy novelist and fantasy genre blogger. She is currently completing her second Bachelor’s degree in English (her first is in Hospitality Management/Culinary Arts). Her debut YA fantasy novel Elemental will be available in 2015.

Although she considers the Washington, D.C. metro area her favorite place on Earth—she isn’t ‘from’ anywhere. Having lived in 7 states, 14 cities, and 2 different countries, the only place she feels at home is when reading or writing fantasy. You can visit her at www.mgsilverstein.com to hear her musings on both the fantasy genre and writing a fantasy novel.

Christie Stratos

Christie StratosChristie Stratos is an editor and award-winning author who lives in the New York area and holds a degree in English Literature. An avid reader of all genres and world literature, Christie reads everything from bestsellers to classics and is always on top of current publishing trends and technology. In her spare time, you can find her playing French Horn for musicals, small ensembles, orchestras, and a 10-year-old community band for which she was a founding member. Christie can be reached through her editing business, Proof Positive, her author website and blog, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and Goodreads.

Only one week left until we begin accepting critiques!

While you wait, check out all the participating blogs and bloggers:

We look forward to seeing you back here in a couple weeks.

Any questions? Leave them in the comments!

Calling All Critiques: A Cross-Blog Event

We can all use a little help once in a while, can’t we? I’m excited to announce that my blog will be part of an upcoming event, Calling All Critiques, a cross-blog critique event open to self-published, traditionally published, and unpublished authors (that would be everyone!). The event will start the weekend of May 24 and run until June 13, adding up to three weeks of critiques of different aspects of novel writing and marketing.

Three weeks of critiques

The schedule for the weekly critiques is as follows:

  • Week of May 26: First 500 word critique
  • Week of June 2: Cover art critique
  • Week of June 9: Book blurb or query letter critique

Entries will be accepted the weekend before the week’s critiques, with a cutoff of 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday. We have a total of 35 slots, 5 on each of the 7 participating blogs, and the entries will be accepted in the order they were received. The posts will go up throughout the week, 7 each Monday through Friday, one on each blog each day, for a total of 5 per blog. All blogs will link to each other so that critters can easily find the other entries.

There will be prizes

What’s an event without prizes? We have two categories of prizes: One lucky winner each week from the entrants and one lucky winner from a Rafflecopter giveaway, chosen by random draw. Each winning entrant will have his or her choice of the following prizes:

Each Rafflecopter winner will win this package:

  • An electronic copy of Guarding Angel by S. L. Saboviec
  • An electronic copy of It Ain’t Easy Being Jazzy by Quanie Miller
  • $10 gift certificate from Amazon

Interested in having your work critiqued?

Each week, entrants will have two days to submit their work for critique. When the submission window opens, you (that’s right, you) may submit to an email address that will be provided. You will need to provide the following information: Your name/pseudonym: Title: Genre (include audience, such as YA/Adult, and category): Entry: Your email will be kept confidential. What you submit is what will be posted, so double- and triple-check your spelling and grammar. (We may correct crazy formatting errors as a result of email quirks, but still, make sure it’s clean before you press send.) You may resubmit an entry, but it goes to the end of the queue: if you submit it past the 35 entry cutoff, you’ll have lost your spot. If you’re nervous about participating because you aren’t sure what comments you’re going to get, rest assured that we bloggers are committed to making this a positive event for everyone. Mean-spirited or trolling comments will be deleted. We’ve participated in these events in the past, and for the most part, everyone is helpful and kind. That being said, if you don’t want feedback on your entry, don’t submit. Critiques are provided to help you improve your writing. Along with “this worked great for me,” you will get “this didn’t work so great for me” comments. If you don’t want that kind of feedback, please don’t participate.

Interested in critiquing?

Yay! Critters are the lifeblood of this event. As the posts go live, one each weekday over the three weeks of the event, please feel free to critique as many or as few as you want. You may want to follow all the participating blogs to get up-to-the-minute information, or we will be tweeting under the hashtag #CACrits. The only rule we have is to be constructive. You can say you dislike something, but give reasons why. In fact, you can say you like something, but give reasons why for that, too. Although it’s ultimately up to the author to determine whether to take feedback or not, we grow the most when we understand why something does or doesn’t work. Posts will go up in the morning at each of our blogs. We’d love it if you could visit all of us throughout the week:

Thanks for stopping by!

We look forward to seeing you back here in a couple weeks. Any questions? Leave them in the comments!

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