Prize Giveaways and Writing--What's the Connection?

The winner of my weekly prize giveaway for August 7th is FIONA CHAN. Fiona, please email me to tell me your email address. You have your choice of a PDF download of the Civil War anthology NORTHERN ROSES AND SOUTHERN BELLES in which my novella LONG WAY HOME appears, or my June release OUT OF THE BLUE, which is a time travel in which a woman travels from 1845 Ireland to modern Texas to help a police detective discover the murderer who shot him and killed his partner, framed him for a drug scandal, and almost succeeded in other murders.

This is a BIG month for giveaways. I'm participating in the Long and Short Reviews webiste owners big Third Anniversary "Long And Short Of It" Celebration. They're giving away THREE Nook e-readers in their scanvenger hunt which lasts from August 2-29th. You can check the rules and the sites involved at http://www.longandshortreviews.com/ Each of these Nooks comes loaded with ebooks from the participants and a fifty dollar gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.Wow!

August is also when some of The Wild Rose Press authors are having a Wednesday Blog Tour, at the end of which a lucky visitor will receive a gift basket of PDF books from participating authors plus a banner from Aileen Harkwood. Participating blogs are as follows: Aileen Harkwood, Amber Leigh Williams; Caroline Clemmons (here, but you guessed that, right?), Catherine Bybee, Christine De Petrillo (scan down the page past her books to find the interview), Lauri Robinson, Lilly Gayle, Maya Blake, Rae Summers, and Sandra Sookoo. We're trading blogs and will be rotating through various blogs on Wednesdays this month. Follow us if you can for a chance at this fabulous gift basket.

What do these prize giveaways have to do with writing? Good question. This is one way in which authors hope to attract readers to their blogs and websites. We hope that with this exposure, you will remember our names and buy our books. If you win a book, we hope you find you love our writing voice and style and will want to buy our future books. We take pleasure in the sharing of these characters who have become real to us. No, they aren't just mere names on a page to their creators. The people about whom we write--while we're writing their stories--become alive, friends or enemies whose tale we must relate. If you read a book you enjoy, let the author know! That's what we live for after all---the knowledge that a reader/readers loved our books.

Doesn't that empower you? You have the power to touch an author's heart.

Writers don't write for money. Of course, we don't turn it down. We are humans, after all, and love fat advances and fatter royalty checks. Few of us receive those, however. So what keeps us writing? Our primary purpose is to tell our stories and share them with readers.  With you! You keep us going!