Call For Nominations: Carnival For Book Writers

The deadline for submissions to the 14th edition of the Carnival For Book Writers is Wednesday night, the 21st, at 11 pm.

If you've written or read a post related to the process of writing, publishing or marketing books which you think would be of interest to those who write books, please nominate it.

Posts that give first-hand insight into the process of writing a book and/or getting it published and sold are especially welcome. That includes interviews with industry professionals or information about changes in the industry.

Please don't submit book excerpts since this carnival focuses on sharing background information useful to other book writers. If you have a post about the craft of writing, brief examples from books are allowed.

The process is simple. All you have to do is go our carnival submission form and provide the permalink and fill in the rest of the form.

If you want to get a sense of what I'm looking for go to http://carnivalforbookwriters.blogspot.com and follow the links to the previous editions.

The 14th edition will be posted here on the 24th.

Technorati tags: carnival for book writers blog carnival blogging writing literary agents books publishing

Re-thinking: Going Squirrelly

The product shown in this video is designed to keep squirrels from successfully raiding bird feeders, but there are times I wish I could trigger a device like this when people try to take something not meant for them. Think of the violence we could prevent if burglars and other criminals got spun round and round as they tried to enter your home.

Re-thinking: God And The US Dollar Coin

This article describes an error in the new dollar coins which were created under a new high-tech process. (I wonder how much was spent on this "better" system.)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- An unknown number of new George Washington dollar coins were mistakenly struck without their edge inscriptions, including "In God We Trust," and are fetching around $50 apiece online.

The properly struck dollar coins, bearing the likeness of the nation's first president, are inscribed along the edge with "In God We Trust," "E Pluribus Unum" and the year and mint mark. The flawed coins made it past inspectors and went into circulation Feb. 15.

The U.S. Mint struck 300 million of the coins, which are golden in color and slightly larger and thicker than a quarter. About half were made in Philadelphia and the rest in Denver. So far the mint has only received reports of error coins coming from Philadelphia, mint spokeswoman Becky Bailey said.

Reportedly there are some people who say this was no "mistake" but a deliberate attempt to remove God from our currency. I guess if they find one of the Godless coins they won't try to cash in by selling it for more than a dollar.

Re-thinking: The Ripple Effect

This video clip from Barack Obama's speech given during his visit to Selma Alabama to commemorate the 1965 march, highlights how the events there led to the possibility of his parents being able to meet.

When we are tempted to minimize the fallout of our actions -- both positive and negative -- this should remind us that our actions, even those which will never be commemorated by anyone, have a ripple effect.

So the choice isn't whether we create ripples, but the nature of those ripples.

Re-thinking: Advertising Outside the Sex Box

This advertising video is great because it doesn't fall into the trap of using sex to sell a product that has nothing to do with sex.

What it does sell is the idea that people who work at computers want to have fun and are currently bored or frustrated. And it suggests there is a solution on the way.

I don't know if this ad does this because it is designed for the UK market or if it is looking for a way to make advertising entertaining and memorable so people won't skip it or fast forward past it.



This Adobe ad won't make me buy the product but it wins by not turning me off the product and the company as so many ads accidentally manage to do when they aim for pleasing adolescent boys and post-adolescent men.

Re-thinking: Getting The Lead Out

This story is one that all parents need to be aware of since lead in lunchboxes can be ingested along with the food in the lunchbox.

In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunchboxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe -- and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels.

But that's not what they told the public.

Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that they found "no instances of hazardous levels." And they refused to release their actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public.

That data was not made public until The Associated Press received a box of about 1,500 pages of lab reports, in-house e-mails and other records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed a year ago.

Protecting manufacturers should be far less important than protecting children from poisoning.

From a CDC report about the death of Minnesota child after he swallowed a metallic charm:

Lead-based paint remains the most common source of lead exposure for children aged [under] 6 years with lead poisoning in Los Angeles County had been exposed to items containing lead that had been brought into the home [...]

For information on different lead test kits, check out this OSHA site. Most inexpensive lead tests only show whether any lead has been detected and don't show whether the concentration of lead is potentially deadly.

If you determine a product has lead that wasn't disclosed on the packaging, contact the seller of that product so they know that the product has lead and so they know that their customers care about lead content and want lead-free products.