March Fourth/Forth to the Tucson Festival of Books!

My blog is a day early because today is National Grammar Day, March fourth. In addition to that, next weekend will be the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona mall. To top it off, it is spring in Arizona, our wildflowers are blooming! Life is good.

National Grammar Day is always on March 4^th. You can check out some Grammar Day activities at http://nationalgrammarday.com/ There are all sorts of activities (including contests) to celebrate grammar. From that website I have copied (yes, outright copied) the 2011 Haiku contest winner.

I love it!

2011 Winner - Haiku

Spell-checkers won't catch
You're mistaken homophones
Scattered hear and their

-- Gord Roberts

I would love to say that I am a wonderful grammar devotee, but alas, I am not. Perfect grammar and language usage is a goal not an absolute, since there will be times when ending the sentence in a preposition is the right thing to do. Especially if you are writing for a character who could care less about grammar – then sky's the limit! Still, there is the plot and most of the other characters out there for which correct grammar in writing is necessary and English is a rather goofy language. So let's celebrate tools which allow us to communicate with each other understandably. Because as we have seen with texting, it can be chaos.

~~

Now we can march forth to the Tucson Festival of Books on March 10-11. I know I will be there! For more information here is their website: http://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/ where you can find out abut author signings, exhibitors, symposiums, workshops, and UA Science City with lots of cool stuff for the kiddos. If you really want to go to one of the signings or workshops – come early. There was rarely an empty seat at the start of any of these programs.

Many authors will be there including southern Arizona local J.A. Jance, Dr. Andre Weil, and Elmore Leonard. I am looking forward to meeting up and coming suspense author A.J. Scudiere. I am hoping to learn more than a few tricks of the book marketing trade but I will also probably end up with more than a few books.

~~

With that new knowledge and with April Fools Day coming up, now is a good time to ramp up my book marketing. I am very happy to announce that paperbacks of “The Chronicles of IDIOT” will be available at Mostly Books and Antigone Books. I am hoping they will have a copies available at their booths at TFOB.

Also, starting on April Fools to April 5th, Great Minds Think Aloud Literary Community will be running a contest for “The Chronicles of IDIOT,” giving away 10 digital copies and 5 paperbacks! On April 4^th GMTA will be posting and interview with little old me – I am so nervous! If you are not familiar with GMTA, you must not have seen their 5 star review of “The Chronicles of IDIOT”. Please check it out! They are a wonderful society dedicated to helping out independent authors. There will be more to come for my marketing mini-blitz. Any suggestions for someone who is still trying to get her book out there?