Okay, so we're finally at the end of The Neverending Contest of Awesome. Which was supposed to end Friday, but a) I haven't managed to be on time yet, why start now and b) Friday was the start of the holiday weekend here in the states and I kind of figured we all had better things to do.

So, what am I giving away today? I'm glad you asked! Today I'm giving away a print copy of Undiscovered Country, and e-copies of literally everything I can get my hands on in the format of your choice. Everything I've got in print in one easy place, as well as some things that aren't technically in print but hey, who doesn't love free stories? If you win this one and you want a special kind of story I might even take requests (although that's dependent on deadlines and requests and blah blah blah). As with the others, you either need to live in the contiguous 48 or be willing to pay shipping yourself.

Alright, are we clear on what you're winning? Good. So how do you win? Another fabulous question.

I want you to share with me the strangest picture you can find. There are only two rules. 
1) It has to be appropriate for all audiences. No "nudity", no excessive violence.
2) It has to be Creative Commons or Public Domain. Most places you can search by those terms (Flickr is good at this). 

So there you go. Give me the strangest picture you can muster, and I'll give one lucky person all the stuffs. That seems like a good trade.

That's a pretty awesome map up there, isn't it? 

So, it's book promotion time, and nearly summer and I'm actually pretty excited about both of those things. Are you excited? Would it help if I promised you free stuff?

Yeah, I kind of thought so. Which should we do first, carrot or stick? Right, cause your gonna bother to read the rules if I don't tell you the cool stuff first. Sure.

Carrot:
Next week (May 25th through 29th) here on Words and Wanderings we're going to do a scavenger hunt/trivia contest. During those five days I will give away 5 books (two print, three digital). Not all of them will be mine. I haven't even decided which will be which yet. Mystery is exciting, right? Then, on the 30th and the 31st we'll do something special with an extra special giveaway to celebrate the fact I'll be at AwesomeCon all weekend. There'll be pictures of that one come Wednesday. Sound good?

Stick:
Rules. Right. Um... 
1) For physical rewards you have to live in the continental United States. 
2) You don't have to follow me on Facebook or Twitter, but you're going to have a hard time getting all the clues if you don't. 
3) Winners must furnish me with one of the following: an armadillo pup that has been certified leprosy-free, roughly twelve hours worth of life-force, or milk taken from an enraged salamander on midnight of the vernal equinox.
4) I don't really want #3 (particularly not the animal, much as I'd love an armadillo) but I feel like a list should have more than two things on it. 

FAQ (I'm guessing)
How do we play?
Every day I will set a task--either a trivia question or a scavenger hunt clue--and the first person to answer me correctly wins for that day. I'm keeping this simple, none of us need more stress in our lives.

But how do I answer?
Well, ideally you want to answer privately because then if you're wrong you get more tries and there's less chance of someone else stealing your thunder. So, there's a contact form on this website, or you can DM me on Twitter or Facebook. If you'd like to genetically re-engineer the carrier pigeon, that works as well. You'll probably get some pretty cool stuff from other people too if you do that. 


If the Weekend Giveaway is tied to AwesomeCon do I have to be there?
Yes! 


Really?
No. Obviously. I mean I'd love for people to come see me at AwesomeCon and if you're in the DC area you should just because it's giant and incredible. But no, the only rules are the serious ones up there. 




So. Now that we're all pumped for that, we get to wait a week. I know, I'm evil.


Come back Wednesday, we're going to talk about dynamic women in fiction (I think, unless I wuss out and we talk about something less serious) and then Friday we've got a guest post for Sci-Fi Friday! Also, if you're hard up for stuff to read, it's my week at the Art of Procrastination, and I'm talking about markety stuff and why everyone hates commercials. 


ps. The picture up there is Treasure Map by Jonty, and I embedded it so you could go right there and then I obviously don't own it and it's used under CC 2.0, but I'm not sure it took. 

When you sit down to write, one of the first things you're supposed to do is ask why your characters do what they do. What is their motivation? What do they want?


This is one of those fundamental rules of writing, the ones nobody questions, like 'write what you know' and I'm going to question it, because to me it's a ridiculous question. My characters don't know what they want, in the grand serious categories, any more than I would if you asked me. 

One of the hardest things I've found to learn as a writer is that things that happen in real life don't translate into fiction. In real life people's motives and thoughts are cagey and secret. Circumspect. And you can't get away with that in writing--supposedly--because everything has to be spelled out on the page. But there's a balance there, between telling your audience everything they need to know, and telling them everything they need to know.

The Star Wars holiday just passed, so I'll use an analogy from that. We need to know Luke's father was a Jedi, even an important one, from early on. The intention is for that to become a central part of his character, so we need it. But there's a...finesse, to giving us the information. Could Obi Wan have sat Luke down and hashed the whole thing out, beginning to end? Absolutely. And I bet, given it was Alec Guinness and space opera we'd even have listened. 

But we wouldn't have cared. All that dramatic tension comes from Luke's quest to be more like his father, to live up to that. 

There's no hard and fast rule for choosing what details to give and where to give them, no guideline that'll tell you where to but your grand realization (I'm a fan of as late as possible as long as it doesn't require twisting into gigantic Deus et Machina circles). 

I spend a lot of my writing life reminding myself I don't like it when complete strangers over-share their lives with me. Other readers probably don't like it either. 

Also, here's the bunny for the Marianas Trench contest, which ends on May 15th! Send me something, anything, and this little guy might be yours. Even if I'm not happy with his butt-to-ear ratio.

So if anybody happened to be paying attention there was supposed to be a deadline, on April 20th for the Marianas Trench Fic-let contest. 
Now if anybody else had remembered it and sent me an entry by then I'd probably call it closed and do my judgey bit, and make someone a rabbit. 
But nobody else managed it either (probably because you could have used some kind of reminder in April and I fell down on that one. Mea Culpa).


All of which means...
I'm extending the contest until May 15th. There's a smallish, knitted plot bunny who'd like a home if you're interested. Just post something short, less than 3000 words, either in the comments anywhere I've mentioned the contest or send it directly to me through the comment box on the front page of the site. I'm not looking for polished magnificence, just tell me what you think is behind the door at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. 


I feel like I should rename this thing the Bunny Ides Contest or something like that. Things to ponder. 


Now go, all my little hoppers. I wish for fic-lets.