Category Archives: Stuff I feel like reblogging

Hello, writers. We’re Quirk Books.

We’ve brought you bestselling YA fantasies, Edgar award-winning mysteries, and masterpieces of zombie literature.

But looking back at all the weird and wonderful books we’ve published, we can’t help but ask ourselves… where is the love?

To answer that age-old question, we’re announcing the Quirk Books “Looking for Love” Fiction Contest. First prize is $10,000 AND publication by Quirk Books. We’re looking for love stories that are fresh, fun, and strikingly unconventional. Boy Meets Girl. Girl Meets Girl. Girl Meets Shark. Shark Meets Pirate. Anything goes!

Except vampires. Sorry.

Win us over, knock us out, and show us what we’re missing! The contest deadline is October 1st, 2013.

Here are the Official Rules:

Love has no rules. But contests do. Please read carefully.

1. There is no entry fee.

2. The contest is open to any professional or nonprofessional writer,
regardless of nationality. Writers may…

Every month Simone Kaplan answers questions in her newsletter that people send into her. I thought the one she answered this month was a good one that you would be interested in reading. Here it is:

Question: Let’s say a number of good manuscripts come into an editor’s office. All have good grammar, good punctuation, etc.; and all are by first-time writers. In other words, all things are equal. What would make one manuscript stand out so much that the editor would want to publish it? Donna R

Simone’s Answer: First, Donna, I have a question for you: when was the last time you walked into a bookstore and asked for a book with “good grammar, good punctuation, etc.”?

I thought so!

Good grammar, clear sentences, and a cohesive structure are the basic requirements of a manuscript. Without them the manuscript doesn’t stand a chance of publication.

So let’s turn…

Everyone knows Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III (or knows of them at least). Even Richard II, As You Like It, and Antony and Cleopatra can be said to be well-known William Shakespeare plays. But what about the others? He wrote or collaborated on nearly forty, after all. Here are ten of the least-known plays by the Bard, with the reasons why people should read them (or reread them), along with an interesting fact about each. We hope you enjoy them. If you like this list, be sure to check out our follow-up pick of Shakespeare’s ten best plays (complete with interesting trivia about them) our interesting facts about Shakespeare too.

1. King John. This is one of the Bard’s least-performed plays, although it was popular with the Victorians because of its pageantry and medieval pomp. Nevertheless, the play has been…