A B N A Vets Forum Introductions, please

Alex, I've been to NC... does that count?  Actually, I've been there twice and both times for a wedding. 

Michael - You have moth-ridden dresses on your computer?  :)

Hello.

My name is Elise and I'm glad to finally be able to join in the forum. Everytime I tried on Amazon I was told I couldn't because I've never purchased anything there.

I write primarily science fiction. My ABNA entry is called "Phase Shift" and it's about archaeologists who find an artifact and realize it's connected to an alternate universe which they persue. I've been writing on and off all my life. The fiction is relatively new. I'm a high school teacher in the Greater Toronto Area (Ontario, Canada) and I had to teach Writers' Craft one year, so I did lots of research and suddenly, I started liking what I was writing. "Phase Shift" is actually my second novel with the archaeologists. I couldn't get the first one published, but I'm re-working it now and hopefully I can salvage it somewhat from the garbage heap. I have quite a few ideas and short stories involving the same 4 or 5 characters I write about.

I live in the Greater Toronto Area (north of Toronto, actually) and have 3 wonderful children who, though too young to have actually read anything I've written, are my biggest fans. I also meet with a writers' group once a month. I'm not to thrilled about online groups, though. I tried Zoetrope.com for a while, but found I had to read and write a lot just to post a single story, and I almost never got the same effort from the reviewers of my work as I put into my reviews of others' works.

I, too, am holding my breath until the 15th. I started off thinking I had a good chance to at least place in the first 1,000, but now I don't know. Based on what the reviewers have posted and that it takes about 6,000 or 7,000 words for my story to get started, I don't think I have much of a chance. I missed the list. Did anyone think to save a copy?

Hi,

My ABNA entry is "The Bizarre and Violent World of Stamp Collecting". A thing so hard to classify, I had to choose General Fiction. It has elements of Fantasy/Crime/Adventure/Experimental Fiction. Basically it's a bunch of adventures the 1st person protagonist finds himself in when trying to procure stamps.

I'm in Sydney, Australia.

Hello, everyone.  My name is Melissa, but here and at the Amazon forum I go by SupernaturalKiss.  I entered a paranormal romance, Red Night, to the contest, but I also enjoy writing horror and thriller.  I am currently trying my hand at another genre, but am not having much luck with that.  I'm glad I finally got the time to check this site out, I already enjoy it more than the last writer's group I joined.

Good luck to everyone!  We're all winners, no matter what!

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality. -Stephen King

Nikki Bennett here, same name as in the ABNA forum.

This is my first time in any kind of writer's group, and I am excited about it, if somewhat nervous.  Hardly anybody has read my writing since I was a kid (mainly because I never finish anything!) and the thought of posting stuff for review is a bit daunting, although I figure I've done it now for the contest, so what the hell!

I also submitted a fantasy for the contest.  Originally it was just a stand-alone, but I got so excited about actually FINISHING it that I started on a sequel.  I'm thinking of SEVEN novels (the other famous number in fantasy, a la C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling)  Might as well dream big.  I have no clue as to the stories behind them, but I have the second one pretty well mapped out.

Anyway, those are my big plans.  In the meantime I'm going to try and scrounge up some of my older unfinished work just to get something up that folks can review.  Hopefully soon!!

Hi, I submitted in the General Fiction category but it's no page turner (yet) so I'll call it Literary Fiction.  :)  When I wrote most of it, I was lucky enough to be a writer's group that was very disciplined:  they had their own "tutor" and you read aloud to unilateral streams of good criticism and patience.  It had a mix of poets and novelists so, being new to writing as a hobby, I could observe their very different trains of thought and priorities -- and I now suffer from no delusion that I can write poetry!  Still feeding the prose one though - hope to for a long while.   Thanks for setting up this site!

Howdy Everyone,

Hopefully I'm posting my intro in the right place.  My name is Vicki King but if you've seen any of my very few posts on the ABNA forums you'll know me by Paige Bryan.  It's been a while since I have been involved in an online writing group.  The last one I was in was writing.com and I just kinda slowly slipped away from that one.  But I have missed talking with other writers. 

My entry in the ABNA was in the genre with the smallest amount of entries I think.  I entered a western romance called "Texas Lily".  I started writing about 6 yrs ago while I was pregnate with my fourth child.  It took me three months to write my first book "Texas Skye" and about 3 yrs to edit and finally get it published.  I am currently working on a third book "Texas Belle".  And yes all three books are related.  Since I have four boys my books are about four brothers and each of their stories.  All fiction of course! 

I don't know if I'll make the 1,000 cut for the ABNA so I've been rewriting/editing Texas Lily just in case.  My goal was to have it done by the 15th and start sending it out again to agents.  I have been trying to get an agent for it for a while now and all the agents, at least say, that they like my writing style but the book was a little slow in the begining.  I haven't made my goal in finishing it on the 15th but I'm still chugging along on it.

Well, I think that's about it.  At least until I hit the post reply button and remember what else I wanted to include in my intro.

Good luck to all of you in the ABNA!

Well, good day, mates!  No, I'm not from Australia, but thought that would wake everyone up!  I am Traveler64, and if you looked quickly enough in my profile on amazon, at some point I changed to my real name.  Anyhoo, it's Adriana. I live in California. and as in that aria in La Boheme where the writer introduces himself and sings: What do I do? I write. What do I write? Novels (he says poetry) How do I live? I live...

So, here I am. Shai will recognize me as the Wraith connoisseur (spelling, for heaven's sake?!)

So, nice to be here.

Adriana

Welcome to all the new people.

Adriana, if you want to sound like an Aussie it's "G'day Mate!" That's how a dinky di Aussie speaks.

It is going to be a slow night. I worked out the clock would stop at midnight Tuesday 15th, my time, and I had intended to stay up and watch it stop but someone stole the clock! I guess I'll just have to go to bed and wait 'til morning.

I know I've already said it but Good luck Everyone.

Gayna

Sound like an Aussie? With MY accent?  Ooooooooh... A Hungarian in any language is still a Hungarian. Good thing that the written word doesn't have accent.  Hehehe.  I guess what I failed to say in my introduction is that my ABNA entry is  Wolves of Pavlava, a novel about the politics of tyrany, revolution and personal strife. (I wish I had said it this way in my synopsis...). The place and time of the novel is Eastern Europe, starting with a fateful day in 1964 in a monastery hidden in the Carpathians and ending with the fall, in 1991 of an Orwellian regime. 

Yay, Billy!

Post your url on the thread I just started.

Although I followed the discussions on the ABNA site, I don't have an amazon.com account so I couldn't join in.

I wonder . . .  Could that be why they haven't sent me a rejection email yet?

I don't think there's any way to even guess why their organization does anything.  It's a pretty complex operation, this contest, and it's the first time they've tried it.  On the official forum we even imagined the whole site crashing as entrants frantically searched for info.

I know it's hard to wait for final word, and I was very very lucky in many ways.  I think I was the first to discover my email notification.

The list is holding steady at 836 -- someone saw one duplicate, so it's really 835.  Pretty certainly, if your entry's not on it, you didn't get in.

What category is your entry in?  What's the title?  Some of us could help you look for it, if you haven't tried that already.