Miss Snark's Victim, and other Matters

Got shredded by Miss
Snark, once

I'm the lucky recipient of a very nice Liebster blog award courtesy of the redoubtable Elizabeth Varden, and I thank the lady very kindly. My mission is to pass this award on to five more blogs, and two of the passes are going to bloggers who are hosting aspects of Miss Snark's First Victim Baker's Dozen Auction. 

So I want to say a word about this exciting annual event, running currently (if you've missed it, MSFV also runs multiple "secret agent" contests during the year, so don't despair). I'm not entering myself, because I already have my ms. queried out to my favorite agents. But I did go through a round of logline critiques during the process to sharpen my logline writing skills.

So what is MSFV's Baker's Dozen?

10 Not-So-Random Facts About Me

Right, we know these facts are not random, right? If I were really picking random facts about myself I'd be telling you I spend inordinate hours worrying about my dog's bowel movements (hey, she's really old, okay?).

Blogger campaign buddy Jessica has started a fun get-to-know-each-other game, which I found out about from Joanna (don't ya just think the universe is one big divine web of connectedness? Don't ya?). Rules: Post 10 facts about yourself, link back to Jessica's blog, and leave a link to your own blog in the comments section of this post.

So here goes:

Beginning, Middle, and End Blogfest

Meadows's fix for saggy middles: Blow it up!

Fellow writer-blogger Kate Larkindale is running a Beginning, Middle, and End blogfest. A pretty great idea, since beginnings get a lot of attention among writers in the blogosphere; endings a bit less -- and middles? Least of all. And we do know that middle-of-the-novel sag tends to be a major problem for some writers (not naming any names). See Jodi Meadows's middle-fix tricks here.

I'm not sure how much you can tell from single lines, but it would be cool if one's first, exact middle (check your page count, divide in half, put finger on midpoint), and last line could tell the whole story of a novel. Here's the trio from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: