Rambles and Links

It's Monday, it's gray out, and I don't really know what to blog about.... so let's take a tip from my blog title and ramble a little.

MarPrilWrimo a.k.a. the 30k in 30 (one) days challenge officially concluded on 04/10. I'd say it was a success! We didn't all make it to 30k, but many thousands of words were collectively written that might not have been. At least two of us are going to stick around the Facebook group that was created to try and finish our current first drafts. If anyone wants to jump on board for the comradery, you're more than welcome to. We could always create another "finish that manuscript" group or something.

I ended up writing 31k by 04/10, which brought my total to 35k (I had written a little over 4k before we began) so now I'm aiming to conclude this first draft with another 20-25k and then worry about editing and expanding where needed. Don't know how it will go but my goal is to finish draft one by 05/15!

A reading bug caught me late last week. I finished THE BOOK THIEF, and then burned through THE BOOK OF NONSENSE (thanks PJ!), THIRTEEN REASONS WHY, and THE GIVER over the next three days. I started WICKED LOVELY yesterday, which is the last of the pile I bought after my last book poll. So it looks like I need to go shopping!

What else?

Sarah Garrigues, who's building up a very informative blog, posted an article called The Art of 'Showing' Vs. 'Telling' that I thought was particularly well done (read the comments, too.) I can't tell you how many articles I've read on this subject! What a great refresher.

Be an Agent for a Day is heating up today over at Nathan Bransford's blog. What a blast! I'm drafting up a "rejection" right now.

Amazon is facing the loss of thousands of customers due to their epic Amazonfail - a supposed "glitch."

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature..."

Hum, censorship anyone? If you'd like to sign a petition, you can do so here.

Also, Queryshark shared this helpful link on Edittorrent for crafting log lines. A neat little process!

I think that's all I have right now. Feel free to do your own rambling in the comments.