Breaking out and splashing down

I want to give a Blatant Plug to P.A. Baines, the first member of the New Authors Fellowship to land a book contract. His Alpha, renamed Alpha Redemption, will be published this fall by Splashdown Books. At left is the cover art by Zoë Demaré, also of the NAF.

The fellowship grew out of the critique-partner atmosphere of last year's Marcher Lord Select contest. I post about once a month on the Fellowship blog.

Speaking of contests, my poorly named A Gift With Which To Serve was a runner up in the Novel Journey contest, apparently getting no help from a name change to The Prophet's Chronicle. The judges wrote, "Very good story. Initial set of characters needs work--tripped from the beginning, not realizing there were three different people on stage. A little smoothing out and this piece could be awesome!"

Slightly discouraging, because I thought I'd smoothed this opening out already. Ah well. The folks at my new, live-in-person critique group, Word Weavers, can have at it next month.