It's Monday and Time to Catch Up...

You may have noticed that my usual weekend blog post was missing. Well I was quite ill Friday to Sunday and I spent part of Saturday afternoon waiting to see the emergency doctor, for some breathing problems.

The nasty winter bug that I had late last year has kept coming back and heavier medication has been needed. I'm recovering, slowly, but it hasn't been conductive to doing much of anything over the weekend...

So here's a brief round-up of book news that would have appeared Saturday...

Congratulations to Patsy Collins, who entered a novel writing competition which she'd mentioned on her (very useful) blog, and won. Her novel 'Escape to the Country' will be published in March.
Do play Patsy's short video on the post- it will make you smile...

As last year, a man has made it onto the contenders list for the Romantic Novel of the Year. You can read the list of contenders for each category in the article, or for more detail on the Romantic Novelists Association website.

This year's awards include a new category "The Young Adult Romantic Novel category features protagonists who are teenagers/young adults."

And we can all dream of one day having our novel picked up by Hollywood. As a number of literary adaptions feature in this year's Oscar nominations, you might like to read the thoughts on the subject by five writers who have experienced this. "Hollywood ate my novel: Novelists reveal what it’s like to have their book turned into a movie."

Would you want one of your novels turned into a Hollywood film?

A Chick-Lit Novel Competition...

Thanks to Bertieb a member of the Writers News Talkback forum for highlighting this great competition.

"Novelicious has teamed up with Avon (HarperCollins) and Books and the City (Simon & Schuster UK) to bring you the chick lit event of the year!"

Novelicious Undiscovered 2012 is running this competition for UK residents, and offering some great prizes-a manuscript critique and a Kindle among the goodies for one of the winners.

All you need is the first 3,000 words of your chick-lit novel and you can send it by e-mail, so there's no postage to pay, or entry fee.

If you're outside the UK, already under contract to a publisher, or signed to an agent at the time of entry, you aren't eligible- sorry...

Closing date of the first stage is 3rd of April 2012- so get your first 3,000 words shining and ready to go. You retain the rights to your work too, so this is a good one to go for.

There are various stages, but you can read the details on their main page to see how it will work.

Now as with any competition there are rules and it's always a good idea to read the terms and conditions and understand them completely, so you don't disqualify yourself by making a simple mistake.

Rule 7 is very important. Especially for bloggers/website owners.

The winners are due to be announced on the 26th June, so it's not too long. But like any competition if there's a lot of entries then planned dates can go a little astray.

And if you enter- good luck. :-)