#ZombieLuv -- Incoming Contest!

It all started with an interview at The Penny Dreadful twitter chat, when yours truly ranted about how zombies are dull with all the brain eating and such.

Making short a long wine-filled story, Jim Bronyaur and Jodi MacArthur not only scared the heck out of me with their zombies -- not so dull, no sir -- but they convinced me to give it a try.

So I did, and guess what? My story, Zombie Walk, was published at the cool horror webzine Flashes in the Dark!

When Donald Conrad came up with the idea of a new sub-genre, zombie romance, something clicked in my mind, and #ZombieLuv was born, and so the idea of a contest!

But then the unforgiving Susan H. Gottfried killed me.

(If you like Rock'n Roll you ought to visit her site and read her stuff. She rocks! Oh, wait, I hate her. She's the bad woman who killed me!)

I love writing so much that I came back from the dead -- well, sort of --to keep amusing you. Or annoying. Whatever.

*holds falling finger and attaches it back with sticky tape*

Err, sorry.

So, here's the deal: I lose more fingers and you get published at Flashes in the Dark!

Plus, you win the bestseller Pride Prejudice and Zombies!

Am I, or am I not a cool undead? heh

Well, if not cool at least I'm cold. No heating being produced in this body; thank you Susan.

*finger falls*

oH,,, skorrssy. mOrrre lter?

UPDATE: The Zombie Luv Flash Fic Contest is up! Click here to see the guidelines.

Psst! Follow the #ZombieLuv hashtag on twitter for more tidbits before the official launch of the contest. ;)

Note: The funny-yummy picture up there I found in this chaotic myspace profile, and the rock'n roll #ZombieLuv I found here (which, man, I love already!) but it's shared on photobucked, the place I actually took from.

Can I Hate a Color?

See that little fella up there? Well, I have a huge problem with it.

Every time I want to click on its blue twin brother I'm unconsciously drawn to the orange drag.

More than once I've scared my dear readers, amused or plainly irritated them. You see, I'm as tired as you of all this.

So, now my new motto is this:

"I hate orange and I love blue. Death to orange!"

Yeah, bluuueeeee! heh

Ok, now back to my normal self. (Not so normal though. Just saying, heh.)

Sorry for the mess, folks. I'll watch my stupid little finger more closely from now on. Please feel free to kick me in the butt if I do this again. Ugh!

Ok, now back to explaining things and organizing contests.

Zombie Walk Published in Flashes in the Dark!

I've been a bad friend indeed, with the teasing and all. Sorry? *looks up innocently*

But now the time has finally come and my #FridayFlash debut, Zombie Walk, is published in the cool webzine

Flashes in the Dark.

Wheeee!

Follow the link and enjoy! :D

Psst, stay tuned because Randomities' zombiness is not over just yet, heh. ;)

Welcome to Randomities' New Home!

Hello there!

Please feel most welcome in Randomities' new home! :D

As you see, nothing changed. Randomities continues being autumn themed, everything looks the same, except for the little changes I keep doing, heh, and the content will keep being random and the posting erratic.

The only thing is that now we have a new web address:

http://marisrandomities.blogspot.com

If you're popping in for the first time, please be most welcome! Feel free to browse in. All Rantomities' content was transferred here, for yours and our lovely regular visitors' delight.

Please notice that you can receive Randomities by RSS feed, by email, and you can follow its content by becoming a Google Pal and a Facebook Pal as well.

If you have any difficulties, I'd ask you to be a little patient, as the final details are still being arranged. You know, when you move in there are a lot of boxes to unpack!

Note to all Randomities's Pals: guys, please follow here too, so we won't lose contact. :)

Finally, if you're curious about the reasons why we moved, stay tuned. Soon I'll explain the whole thing. ;P

Uh, oh! Randomities Won the One Lovely Blog Award!

This is a very nice award, granted by Amy K. Nichols, who I'm happy to have met on Twitter.

It came incredibly timely, as I was musing on a way of welcoming some new twitter friends I've come to appreciate really fast.

I felt incredibly welcomed on Twitter, once I found out how to interact there that is, heh, so I wanted to spread this feeling around. There is no better opportunity than this. :)

So, to the fun part, I grant the One Lovely Blog Award to:

1. Jodi MacArthur, of Fiction Writer - Jodi MacArthur
2. Annie Syed, of Trial of Words: Writings and Fragments
3. Valerie, of As the Moon Climbs
4. Jeanne V. Bowerman, of ramblings of a recovering insecureaholic. A small confession here: I've known Jeanne for a while on twitter. She's the #twitterPIMPangel everyone talks about, and the incredibly cool moderator of #ScriptChat. Since I've found out about her blog only now, I gave myself the liberty to bend the rules a bit, heh. ;P
5. Susan Bearman, of 2KoP: Two Kinds of People
6. Kathryn Magendie, of Tender Graces
7. Jim Wisneski, of writers 'n writers
8. Estrella Azul, of Life's a Stage
9. Margo Gremmler, of Margoblog
10. Catherine Russel, of Ganymeder
11. Barry Northern, of 21st Century Writer. Psst, check out his cool CYOA project - Choose Your Own Adventure. ;)
12. Jem, of Jemfyr
13. Claudia Hall Christian, of On a Limb With Claudia. I've also known Claudia for a while, but I just found out about her blog. She's the co-moderator of the incredibly educating and welcoming twitter chat #BookMarket, along with Carol Corbett. Must check out!
14. Carrie, of Purelycarrie Blog
15. Aindan Fritz, of Aidan Writes.

Whew, what a generous award! Finding fifteen new blogs to spread the love isn't as easy as it seems. Sorry folks, for the extra work I'm giving you with this thing. ;P

Just a final reminder, here are this award's rules:

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.

3. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Guest Post: Olive O'Brien - Writing for Kids

I often wondered how would it be to write for this audience. It sounds really interesting and challenging. However, since I know absolutely zip about it, I've invited the author of no less than two picture books -- Perry the Playful Polar Bear and Perry the Polar Bear Goes Green -- to explain things a bit.

Please meet Randomities' first honorable guest, Olive O'Brien. :)

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Olive O'Brien is a children’s writer based in Cork, Ireland. You can find out more about her at Silver Angel Publishing or at her blogs, where she spends most of her time, at Write Olive and Movie News First.

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If you’re like me and thought one day, I’d like to write a children’s book, it’s important to look at the differences between writing for adults and writing for children.

First, I guess it’s important to remember that children are intelligent creatures! One of the more common mistakes that children’s writers make is they think that they can throw a story at a young reader and expect them to like it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Trust me, I’ve learned that lesson. So, in that sense, writing for children isn’t a whole lot different than writing for adults.

You still have a main character with whom readers can identify with. And you have a plot which faces that character with a situation, which he or she will have to struggle to resolve.

But, there are other significant differences between writing for children and writing for adults.

1. One of the things I love about children’s writing is that the characters can be as crazy and as fantastical as you want them to be. For example, animals who talk, sing, dance and do everything that humans do, is a fairly common occurrence in children’s books. And it’s such fun!

2. Most children’s books are pretty short. I’m not talking about teen fiction, which can often run to hundreds of pages in small print or indeed middle-grade fiction. I’m a picture-book author and most stories in that genre do not run over 1,500 words. But, sometimes it’s harder than it seems to try and write and condense a story down to 1,000 words, which is the average picture-book length.

3. Many books for adults involve long descriptive passages. Try this in a kid’s book and they will quickly tire of the “padding.” For picture-books in particular, sentences need to be short, easy to understand and you also have to bear in mind that each page will be accompanied by an illustration.

4. If you don’t grab a child’s attention within the first paragraph, you can forget about it. I’m sure we all have ploughed through a book or two, in the hope that it will somehow grab our imagination halfway through. This isn’t the case with children. The very first sentence must capture young readers immediately.

5. Children’s stories usually end on a positive note. There are books and poetry out there that have dark themes, however most end on an encouraging message which gives children hope.

6. Children like to read stories about characters and themes that they can relate to. As a children’s writer, you need to focus on themes that children often experience in everyday life, such as being afraid of the dark, adjusting to the arrival of a new sibling, their first day at school or moving home.

7. Children love heroes! When you look at many popular children’s books, they involve characters saving the day, the world even.

8. Most children’s books involve child characters or animals. Books with characters based on inanimate objects aren’t as successful. There are some quirky exceptions though.

Overall, writing for children is so enjoyable and entertaining and you can allow your mind to wander to some amazing places. But maybe some day I’ll start writing again for “big people.”

Random Cool Things #5 - Winnie the Pooh et Le Crocodile

See this little French girl's fantastic tale. Cute awesomeness! :D