The Competition:
The author would love to see your impression of what a Miuan looks like. The competition is open to everyone, however, you will have to have read Cat’s Eyes in order to enter.

Conditions:
By submitting an entry, the artist is giving permission for the author to upload the image to her website and to Facebook, and use it indefinitely. However, copyright will remain with the creator.

How to Enter:
Entries will be accepted until 30 June 2011. Email your sketch, drawing, painting, etc, in jpeg format to karenleefield AT gmail DOT com. The winning entry will be chosen by the author.

The Prize:
The winner will receive a free paperback copy of book 2, Cat’s Paw, when it is published.

Note: If you haven’t read Cat’s Eyes it is available from the following places:
Amazon UK – ebook and paperback
Amazon US – ebook and paperback
Barnes & Noble – ebook and paperback
The Book Depository – paperback
Smashwords – ebook
Kayelle Press, Australia – paperback

There was an excellent response to the competition and I was pleased to see heaps of voters too. All those people who took the time to vote were entered into a separate prize pool. Their names were put in a hat (or in this instance a large kitchen bowl) and one name was pulled out. That person won the voters prize – an ebook version of the Speculative Realms anthology.

The person who won that prize is:

Tina Garrard

Congratulations and well done. Your prize has been emailed to you this morning.

In fact, all prizes have now been distributed. Thank you to everyone who participated – writers and voters. And to those who received a copy of the ebook, the anthology authors hope you enjoy their words.

It is with great pleasure that I announce the winner of the Let’s Celebrate competition. Please put your hands together and give a warm applause for the winning entry:

One Enchanting Evening by Rebecca Emin

Congratulations, Rebecca! You have won a $25 Amazon Gift Voucher and an ebook version of “Speculative Realms: Where there’s a will, there’s a way”. (Your prizes will be emailed to you as soon as I’ve organised the gift voucher.)

I think it is only fair to mention the second and third place winners as well. Both entries did extremely well and were well received by voters. Please give another round of applause for:

Second Place Winner: A Little Killing by Alan Baxter

Third Place Winner: Happens All the Time by Paul Liadis

Congratulations to you both. Although I didn’t mention this at the beginning of the competition, it has been decided that the runners up deserve a prize too, so they will also receive an ebook version of the Speculative Realms anthology. (Guys, your prize will be emailed to you soon.)

Thank you to everyone who entered the competition. The entries were superb and it was fun for me to give little hints throughout the voting period. I must have a tormenting streak in me! Anyway, I hope I wasn’t the only one to enjoy myself, I hope all visitors to the website enjoyed reading the entries (and voting) and were amused by the hints too.

Now, I haven’t forgotten that there’s still one winner to announce – a random voter will get a prize as well. I need some time to organise the draw, so this winner will be announced in a couple of days.

For those of you who wish to re-read the entries or haven’t read them yet, here are links to the stories:

Entry 1: A Little Killing
Entry 2: The Black Window
Entry 3: An Angel Unawares
Entry 4: Happens All the Time
Entry 5: The Release of Thorim Hammerfist
Entry 6: One Enchanting Evening
Entry 7: What’s Theirs

Just a quick post to inform you that voting for the competition is over and the winners will be announced in the next day or two. Sorry, time is an issue and I will have to leave it at that for now. More later.

With only a week of voting to go, it’s important to get your vote in. Don’t put it off until tomorrow because there is always something else to be done and you’ll end up not voting at all.

The authors of the entries should remind their own followers that voting is almost over. We have one entry that is strides in front of the others, so every vote counts.

Vote now! (Please.)

It’s been a bit quiet around here, but that isn’t because I haven’t anything to say, it’s because Christmas is fast approaching and things have suddenly become hectic. As I’m sure everyone is discovering.

I’m still travelling and working. That seems to take most of my days at the moment and will continue to do so well into the future, I foresee. This time of year is extremely busy, so there’s no time for slacking off at work and surfing the net. It’s not all bad though as I’ve been diligently working on planning my trilogy during my travelling time, which is no longer a trilogy, but more on that in a moment. At present, my travel time consists of writing in the morning and reading in the afternoon. I carry a mini-laptop for one and an iPod Touch for the other. I feel quite “up with the time” and it’s brilliant.

My first ebook experience is proving to be quite satisfying. Using the iPod Touch as an e-reader has been a good experience. It’s easy and light to carry. The screen is clear to read. I haven’t experienced any adverse side affects from reading a screen rather than a book. And, of course, the book I’m reading is entertaining which always helps.

The mini-laptop is great for writing. I have loaded all my files onto a flash drive so that I can go between computers without the fear of not being up-to-date (I found I was in a state of confusion prior to adopting this method). It took a while to get used to the smaller keyboard, but I’m finding that I can type with minimal errors now.

And what about that non-existent trilogy, you ask? Well, that’s an easy question to answer.

My idea was to write a trilogy. I had three stories vaguely mapped out in my mind with a thread or two that linked them all together. However, the idea for book 3 wasn’t coming together well. In fact, it fell in a heap and refused to be sorted out, no matter how hard I tried. The plot itself was quite good, but in reality I couldn’t find a way for my character to make it all pan out the way I wanted it to. This put a huge stumbling block in my path that I was finding impossible to find a way around. Then, one morning, I woke up early and lay staring at the ceiling for ages thinking about it and realised that the story wasn’t possible and it had to be dropped. That quickly allowed me to store the second story as a possible future stand alone with other characters in another setting, which meant the trilogy was reduced to a single stand alone book.

Since making that decision, the planning is forging forward nicely. My characters have shifted in their personalities, the plot is changing continuously to fit a stand alone and I’m pleased with what I have so far.

When the days are long and roads are chosen, I’m glad everything is panning out just right for me.

In other news, the number of votes for the competition is steadily rising. There will be no more hints until later next week.

I’ve been away for a few days. Unfortunately, it rained most of the time we were away but that didn’t stop us making the most of the change of scenery. We enjoyed ourselves. Yes, we walked in the rain (how romantic; pity we got the sniffles) and our puppy fell in the river (he disappeared completely under the water and when he surfaced he looked terrified; my partner was preparing to jump in to save him, but his dog instincts brought him to the bank). Other than that, we really did enjoy ourselves.

Whilst we’ve been away, the voting for the competition continued and today I’m giving an official update on how it’s going.

One entry has pulled slightly ahead of the three that are coming equal second. And…at the other end of the scale, one entry hasn’t received a vote as yet. That can, of course, change in a heartbeat. Please take the time to read all the entries and vote. It will only take half an hour of your time and you could win a prize!

Another update will follow later in the month.

Sticky post. Normal posts can be found below.

There’s only a little of 24 hours left to get your vote in.

The competition is closed to submissions, but voting is about to begin. First, let’s recap what the competition guidelines for the authors were:

All you have to do is write a story in no more than 500 words using three of the following ten words:

murder, mystery, fire, gates, cat
warlord, gold, dwarf, planet, ship

The story can be any genre. All entries will be posted on this website and a poll will be set up to find a winner. Visitors to this website will be able to read all the entries and vote on the one they like the best. The entry with the most votes at the end of the allotted time will win. Should there be more than one entry with the same number of votes, a tie breaker poll will be held (which could get exciting).

The winner will receive a $AU25 gift voucher to spend at Amazon and an ebook version of Speculative Realms: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

So that’s how the entries came about and now we must decide which entry is the winner. All visitors to this website are eligible to vote. All voters will be in the running to win an ebook version of “Speculative Realms: Where there’s a will, there’s a way”. All you have to do is follow the links below to the entries, read all of them and then, once you’ve decided which is your favourite, follow the link in the sidebar (or below) to cast your vote. It’s that simple, but here are the official rules:

1. A real name and valid email address must be provided at the time your vote is cast.
2. Only one vote per person permitted.
3. At the end of the voting period, all names of the people who have voted will be placed in a hat and one drawn out. This will be the winner.
4. The winner will receive their prize via email and the win will be announced on this website.
5. My decision is final.

Voting will close automatically at 11.59pm eastern Australian time (which is GMT +11) on 30 November 2009. All winners will be notified by email and on this website.

Let the voting begin!

The Entries:

Entry 1: A Little Killing
Entry 2: The Black Window
Entry 3: An Angel Unawares
Entry 4: Happens All the Time
Entry 5: The Release of Thorim Hammerfist
Entry 6: One Enchanting Evening
Entry 7: What’s Theirs