IWSG July: Best things and story hops

Today is the first Wednesday of the month, when the…

…founded by Alex J Cavanaugh, blog about their hopes, dreams and fears. If you want to join this merry band of writers Click here to add your name to the list…
The awesome co-hosts for this month are; Yolanda Renee, Tyrean Martinson, Madeline Mora-Summonte , LK Hill, Rachna Chhabria, and JA Scott!

This month our IWSG hosts have given us a question prompt of “What’s the best thing someone has ever said about your writing?”

Well, it’s funny you should ask, because (in case you missed it) I recently had a story published in a magazine and for a lot of friends it was the first time they’d have read anything of mine. I suspect there may have been a bit of eye rolling and comments along the lines of “Oh god, I suppose I’d better read the damn thing now.”

But then I received this text;
“Oh my goodness I’ve just read your story. It was frickin amazing. I wanted more. It was my kind of story. I want you to write a full novel now!! x”

And that was just awesome. More than being published, more than being paid. Being told that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside and put a big stupid grin on my face every time I went back and read it (which I did several times over the following days!)

So if you like something, don’t forget to tell people – it can make their month 🙂

The other thing I wanted to mention is an invitation for authors of speculative fiction to join our Storytime Blog Hop.

Interested? Read On!

The STORYTIME BLOG HOP was founded in 2015 by students of “How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers,” writing course created by writer and teacher Holly Lisle.
The hop schedule follows this pattern:
The 4th Wednesday of the month,

January
April
July
October

The NEXT HOP is JULY 27, 2016.
This is the 3rd StoryTime Blog Hop of 2016!

Our host this month has opened the blog hop to authors outside the Holly Lisle forums. Write your story according to the rules below. Post it on your site and send the perma LINK to KLynn email down below.

Links are DUE on the 20th of July.
THE RULES ARE::

Short story/flash fiction up 1000 words
(PG RATED–No Violence, Erotica or Foul Language)
Genre: GENERAL Speculative Fiction

(The wikipedia definition of Speculative Fiction is: “a broad category of narrative fiction that includes elements, settings and characters created out of imagination and speculation rather than based on reality and everyday life. It encompasses the genres of science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, horror, alternative history, and magic realism.”)

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SEND your links TO (KLynn) at karen@reprobatetypewriter.com, or if you are a Holly Student you can PM Klynn on the forum with the link to your story.

Make sure to send your link to KLynn by July 20th to participate
Use the blog hop image (above) to announce the hop on your own site and social media.

And, of course, we’re grateful for all the publicity we can get.

Need to know what time to schedule your post to go live on July 27, 2016?

We’re using midnight GMT as the release time, as much as possible. (UTC, if you want to talk computers instead of airplanes.) Here’s a link to tell you when Midnight UTC is in your timezone–just find your location on the drop down:

Time Converter/Locator

Here are links to the January and April hops to give you an idea of what they were like.

Even if you don’t join us this time, I hope you’ll drop by and check out some great stories on the 27th July. And like I said earlier, if you like something, don’t forget to tell people – it can make their month 🙂