Freya’s Bower.com Celebrates Its One-Year Anniversary To celebrate our one-year anniversary on March 5, 2007, we’re having a call for submissions and offering a nice advance against royalties for the top two manuscripts that fit the following categories. For general submissions, we’re looking for sweet and/or tangy erotic romance manuscripts of category length (30,001-45,000 words) and longer of any genre. See our guidelines for regular submissions and how we rate sweet and tangy: http://www.freyasbower.com/content/view/12/31/ For our T.R.O.U.B.L.E. line, we’re looking for sweet to beyond sizzling ratings for category length and longer only. Out of the accepted manuscripts, two will be chosen to receive a publishing contract, a print version of the manuscript six months from eBook release date, and a nice advance against first royalties, which will be discussed upon signing the contract. One winning manuscript will be chosen from the sweet and/or tangy submissions and one will be chosen for our T.R.O.U.B.L.E. line. Second place manuscripts for each of these two categories will receive a smaller advance, but the print option will depend solely on eBook sales. Other outstanding manuscripts will receive a publishing contract with Freya’s Bower. T.R.O.U.B.L.E. Guidelines: (For male or female protagonists) She’s gorgeous and causes chaos wherever she goes. Perhaps she’s a klutz, a walking disaster. Maybe she has the worst luck imaginable. For males: He’s dangerous. The bad boy you can’t help but love. Maybe he’s a chick magnet, or maybe he’s the guy flipping burgers at the local diner. Catastrophe and mayhem seem to follow him around. Use your imagination for the trouble theme. Any ethnicity, any genre welcome. Protagonists can also be characters such as Valkyries (for our Valkyrie series), werewolves, vampires, wallflowers, etc. Category length and longer. (30,001-45,000 words.) Ratings can be from sweet to beyond sizzling for the TROUBLE line, but we are very open to sweet submissions right now. First person submissions must be well written. Please read our guidelines http://www.freyasbower.com/content/view/12/31/ for formatting and any questions you might have before submitting. ATTN: We have also opened an Angels and Demons category. If the angel or demon fits the TROUBLE theme or the sweet and/or tangy rating, these novels are eligible for the top novel decisions. Final words: Submissions may be semi-rough drafts, but please don’t send something to us that you obviously have not checked over at least once. The key is semi-rough. Send the entire manuscript attached as an MS Word file to submit@freyasbower.com with the word TROUBLE or SWEET/TANGY in the subject line. Deadline for this call is February 20, 2007. If you have questions email Faith at editorfaith@sbcglobal.net or Marci at mbaun@freyasbower.com

Debbie has an "anyone who wants to tag". :D And here I go: 1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate unless the egg nog is home made. If not, yee-eck! 2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Used to be unwrapped when I was little, but hey, all my kids caught on quick and now they're wrapped. Not the kids! The presents. 3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Coloured! Wheeee! Colours everywhere! (Yes, I'm attracted to bright anything.) 4. Do you hang mistletoe? Never ever. 5. When do you put your decorations up? I'm late and still haven't done it. This month has been insane. Hopefully it'll end peaceful. 6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Gee, have to think about this one. Cookies. Home made gingerbread and shortbread. Or at least, that's the favorite this year, because I have a craving for them, and any excuse to use the KitchenAid mixer makes me happy. Does a cookie count as a dish? I don't care. It counts today. 7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Snow coming down on a black black night while I stand a little outside the light of a street lamp. 8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? No idea. Don't remember. 9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Don't remember that either. Maybe never have. 10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? We have a tree with multicoloured lights, and many different sorts of ornaments, from balls to cookie cutouts (fake), from wood to glass. There are birds, toy soldiers, crystal things. When I look at it, it makes me think of the best Christmas cartoons from my past, which had bright things and toys and so on. It's a tree full of nostalgia. Many of the decorations have their own history and were given as presents back when I worked in a school. 11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love it, except when I have to shovel. But we have a snow blower now. Yay! 12. Can you ice skate? Yes, I can. Rather clumsily, but I can get where I want to go. And stop. Sometimes. 13. Do you remember your favorite gift? No. But I remember how good the chocolate tasted from the good box of chocolates from Costco. Mmmmm! 14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Having fun. Relaxing (O_0 maybe not so much this season), being with my family. 15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Home made fruit cake, and I mean good fruit cake, with rum in it. Yum. 16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Taking turns unwrapping presents so we can all watch and enjoy the experience longer. The last unwrapper chooses the next present to be opened (but not one of his/her own). 17. What tops your tree? A star, a plain gold star. 18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Giving, except that I will always accept chocolate. 19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? ??? Don't think I have one. 20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? Yum. In small doses. (Chocolate, please!) Tag anyone! (Sonja? You? Poke.)

Go, Debbie!

Debbie had two reviews this week, one for Glass Magic and one for Sorcha's Heart. Is good, Debbie. Keep collecting them. ^.^ I'm back from my road trip, as you can all see. The working goals for the remaining month and January are (in no particular importance; just writing them as I think of them): 1) Finish editing Debbie's novella, Second Sight. 2) Finish editing Sonja's novel, Broken Angel. 3) Write some more chapters of The Pearl for Erotic Dreams. And Larry! I can't contact you. If you read this, you should get in touch with me. :-)

Road trip

Hey everyone. I'm off line for a few days. Will be back in touch by Saturday. ------------ P.S. Debbie has the Sorcha's Heart cover as cover of the week on Erin Aislinn's site. Congrats Covervan.

Who owns what? What!

Not to be lumped in with alarmists and conspiracy theorists, but have you all ever thought to wonder if the bottleneck in the publishing industry -- I mean the large numbers of manuscripts and small numbers of people rejecting/accepting them -- may actually be a flaw resulting from the attitude and/or actions of a few large corporations and their narrow-minded opinions or goals? Have you? Look at this site and see the reference within on who owns which publishing companies. Be warned. It's a political site with political/social opinions, but it's interesting, because what if what this fella is saying is true? Hmm. Then go look here, at a site that's supposed to keep track of who owns what. I put Doubleday in the search function and came up with one of the conglomerates reported in the article on the first site. You all know, who read my blog regularly, that I've said bullshit to the way big publishing houses conduct "traditional" publishing. I mean, I'm talking bribes to put books on the front shelves and all that. Sure. It's business. They want to make a buck off a potential seller, and they have the bucks to bribe bookstore chains so us folk walk past a store and see a blaring bright cover right at the front of the shop. The average reader walks on by thinking, "Hey! Must be good if it's at the front? Right?" Hell no. It's called positioning. It's a form of PR. With a bribe involved. I look at what this guy Livergood says, and he ain't yanking on a chain leading to nowhere. All we see is the result of monopolizing an industry. We see the bottleneck. Oh, and that bright cover at the front of the store. Yep. Those bloggers touting that traditional publishing is the only legitimate form of publishing are only forwarding the purposes of a few individuals. Now compare those few individuals to the multitude wanting a voice. How fair is that? Hmm? Why are these bloggers sticking up for a monopoly? It's a monopoly, you know. It is. When you have only a few outfits running most of the show, you've got a monopoly. Nevermind the small publishing houses. If one gets big, you can be sure someone from a monopoly will come knocking on the door looking to buy up that small company's success. Folks, the times are changing. POD printers and epubbers are clearing a field to which all players have been invited, but watch those conglomerates. What's your bet they've noticed and have already started manoevres to regain control, squeeze the leak shut and crimp that bottleneck tighter? Didn't Amazon already make moves to start a POD publishing branch? Didn't I read that somewhere? I think I did. Oh, yeah. According to the "who owns what" site. Time Warner is partial owner of Amazon.com.