A few announcements...

I don't care if blogs are passe. The sense of community I enjoy in blogland, particularly writers blogland, is a unique pleasure. Here are some of the treasures that I can only find in this realm:

1) CLARITY OF NIGHT - "Elemental" Contest
Jason Evans has been running the Clarity of Night blog (and writing contests) for years now. It's an amazing writing contest and the open, supportive, productive community of writers it fosters is remarkable. Many alums of the CoN contests are now published (or at least agented) authors. MANY. And the width, breadth, variety, and vision of the entries every round are astounding. The current contest opened yesterday and will accept entries for a limited time. I've submitted my entry and can't wait to see the rest.
Go see the contest rules.
Go see the outstanding entries.
Go submit your own.
Go play.

2) HELLO ELLO - Book giveaway: Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris
Ah...book giveaways. Free books...one of the great joys in life. And it includes zombies! Who can resist zombies? PS--I also happen to love Ello's "writerly advice" guest spots. They're all well worth reading.

In other news, my current wip is up to 23K. For me, that's miraculous. I'm afraid my productivity will suffer a bit though because the chunks of unstructured time I had over the past couple of weeks are now gone. I will find the time, and I will be obsessed with details when I can't get my hands on a keyboard, but I'm trying to be realistic with a goal of a 60K rough draft by mid-August. I've never done NaNoWriMo, but I just might try on some metaphorical NaNoWriMo blinders.