January 2011.
Starting this year I have decided, in addition to having a weekly guest author on my webpage I will be sharing a little bit of my journey as a newbie author with all of you on my blog at http://killarneysheffield.blogspot.com . I am calling this posting "Tales from a Newbie Author." Please come with me on my journey as I navigate and learn everything a new author needs to know about publishing.
What I'm Up To:
Wow! It has been a very busy season for me! I signed my first contract with Museitup Publishing in July, then signed a second, a third and a fourth by October. However that isn't all I have up to. Between running 5 kids around, working 2 partime jobs, working on manuscripts and volunteering for various community events I have managed to create another job for myself. I have headed up a writing program for Canadian youth.
The program is called the Museitup Young Writers Workshop & Contest. We tested our idea on the students and staff at Mother Teresa Catholic School in Halkirk, Alberta. I went in at the beginning of October and did a 1 hr writing workshop with the 4/5/6 class and the 7/8 class. We covered things like basic grammer, hooks, writing myths and how to put a story together. The kids were amazing! At the end of the workshop I asked the kids to write a 500 to 1,000 word 'fall story' and gave them two weeks to do it. At the end of those two weeks I asked the kids to email their stories to me then some of my fellow Museitup authors helped me judge them. The talented and gracious head of Muse Publishing, Lea Schizas donated signed copies of books, mousepads and all sorts of other goodies to the winners and Nancy Bell (editor) donated bookmarks, pens pencils and certificates to all who participated. Let me tell you, the stories were really amazing and it was tough to pick the best one!
After all was said and done the response we got from the kids, teachers, parents and local media convinced us to go Canada wide with the program by 2012. The CEO of Museitup and the marketing director have gone the extra mile, contacting major Canadian corperations to donate some big grand prizes for Canada wide finalists. This is the way Museitup Publishing and their authors have decided to give back to their communities. Way to go Museitup for encouraging writing and literacy in Canadian youth!
You can check out www.museituppublishing.com and see the finalists stories posted on the website. Please check it out, these kids did awesome stories!
For more information or to get a workshop hosted in your area please email me @ killarneysheffield@gmail.com
Check out this youtube video on publishing, it's too funny and true in many cases.
