Today's Clarion Blog-A-Thon Prize: Handwritten Letters From Favorite Characters!

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 15.678% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

Shades of Milk and HoneyIf you like Jane Austen, you should read Mary Robinette Kowal.  There.  I said it.
Now, if you like Jane Austen and have read Mary Robinette, you’ll know why I’m telling you to read her – her book Shades of Milk and Honey took a Regency-era romance where she mixes the concerns of polite society with the fact that every young lady learns how to do illusory magic.  Her sequel, Glamour and Glass, was even better reviewed, and so happily it looks like Mary is well on her way to creating a very fun series for lovers of Sense and Sensibility.
Mary Robinette (that name never ceases to be fun to type) is also a woman of diverse interests herself, being an award-winning puppeteer and a maker of interesting things and someone who has a very good sense of humor about what happens when the very first line of your second book is accidentally deleted at the printers.  So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when she gave me an extra-special prize for my Clarion Blog-A-Thon, but she did.  Rather than the usual signed book, she asked:

How about a hand-written letter from my main character, Jane Vincent?

How awesome is that, folks?  If you love Shades of Milk and Honey, the main character will write you a letter.  How often do you get an offer like that?  Once in a lifetime, that’s how. (And if, by some chance, you have not read Shades of Milk and Honey, I will throw in a copy of the book at my own expense so you know the quality of what you’re getting.)
So here’s how it works.  I’m blogging to help the Clarion Sci-Fi Writers’ Workshop, a six-week boot camp intensive that turned me from a wannabe into a pro with twenty-plus published storiesEvery $5 donation will get you an entry into the raffle.  At the end of the Blog-A-Thon (which will run for two weeks past everyone else’s Blog-A-Thons, thanks to a medical scare in my family), I will choose the winners.  The first drawn winner will have first pick of the available prizes, the second drawn winner will have second pick, and so forth.
Plus – plus! – if you donate $10 total, you will get access to my own writers’ workshop, The Clarion Echo, where I am currently plotting my next novel.  This is actually very worthwhile to watch, because I’ve spent four weeks tossing around ideas and I’m just finally realizing where it needs to go, so what you’re seeing is very much what a professional writer considers when he’s plotting.  There’s a lot to be learned here, and if you’re interested in writing then I’d recommend it.
Here’s the list of current prizes:

I’m also running behind, so next week I’ll have to announce a prize every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday just to show you the wealth of what we have available!  So donate!  Donate now.

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