Friday Freestyle has a Blog Carnival

Sense-ational Blog Carnival

We're borrowing the concept of a Blog Carnival from the talented ladies over at YA Highway, but ours is more in the nature of a writing prompt. The assignment: You've just graduated from high school and your awesome parents have taken you and your boy/girl-friend on the trip of a lifetime to the Seychelles Islands off the coast of Africa.  This (picture above) is the view from your hotel window.  You have ONE paragraph to describe the setting, and you can use only ONE of your senses. GO!

Join the carnival tour to see how we Oasis Ladies flexed our creative writing muscles.

Sight - by A.E.

Sound - by Nikki

Taste - by Jessie

Touch - by Sheri

Smell - by J.A.

And we hope you'll join us.  Post your own description on your blog and link to it in the comments.  We'd love to see what inspiration you find from our prompt.

Thankful Thursday

(I choose this picture because of the soothing tones and title: Sanctuary, because in a way that's what I'm thankful for)

I'm not sure, but I think I've been at this writing thing longer than the rest of the Oasis girls. January of 2000 I signed my first contract with a teeny weeny literary agency in Mississippi. Since then, I have a few books with Samhain and a couple other indie publishers, and will hopefully be able to post some good news along those lines soon. *runs to check email box for the 100th time*

I fully understand how solitary the business of writing can be...unless you count all the people talking in your head. *snort* While I have connected with a few other writer-types in the adult world of Romancelandia, I never felt the depth of support and encouragement that I found when I turned to writing YA and joined Georgia McBride's then-budding YAlitchat Ning community. For the first time, I felt on the same level with people, I felt that people were honestly interested in each other as peers, and in helping each other grow in this business. I felt like I'd found a home, a sanctuary of sorts.

On this Thankful Thursday, I asked the girls who, or what, in this publishing business are they thankful for. Me? I'm going with Georgia McBride and the YAlitchat community for providing me sanctuary, and the Oasis gals and Heather Howland for the invaluable feedback on RESONANCE. You. Girls. ROCK.

Nikki said: I’m thankful for beta readers and critique partners who keep me on track and make huge red slashes on my manuscript to help me improve my writing. I’m thankful for my agent, who believes in me and my writing as a career. I’m thankful for the editors who are reading, or have read, my manuscript. Even if they pass, at least they thought the idea was worthy of exploring further, and their comments are invaluable in the journey to getting published.

And someday ... I hope to be able to thank my readers and fans :)

Jessie said: I'm thankful for my awesome co-author who has made writing less
solitary, more creative and more fun. You know who you are!

Sheri said: I'm thankful for any success my Oasis ladies have experienced this past week. Gives me hope. And I'm also thankful for vacations, which I'll be taking next week. Fully unplugged for the first time in two years. Hubby and kids' ordered.

Jessica said: I'm grateful to my new friends Cate Hart, Alice Gilmartin and Kaelee Morgan for rooming with me at Nationals. We were all newbies and it was wonderful to have such a fantastic group of woman to talk with, follow around, and just generally be lost together with. I love you guys and I hope we'll be able to do it again next year!

So, dear Oasis Reader. What about this wild world of YA publishing are you Thankful for today? Please share!

Going to the Conference And I'm ...

Going to dress up as the Queen of Hearts. Yep! That's a not-so-flattering picture of me at the SCBWI (Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators) Summer Conference in Los Angeles this past weekend! This is my second year attending the conference, and I'm already counting down the days until next year. I thought I'd give a quick post on this conference, why I love it, and why I hope you'll be there next year to join me.

The people. The conference attendees and staff are absolutely amazing, supportive, and welcoming - from the budding authors all the way through the editors. The conversations are creative and inspirational, leaving you wanting to go off somewhere and write!

The Program. It doesn't matter what you write (picture book, chapter book, young adult) or if you're an illustrator - there is something for everyone at this conference. It also doesn't matter where you are in your career! You can get your manuscript critiqued by a professional, meet with agents and editors, do book signings for your own book, and even join the Pro Track to learn about managing your writing career. The panels cover everything from writing craft to social media to the state of the industry. It truly is a conference that grows with you.

The Fun. There are definitely some uplifting moments in the keynote speeches. I think I shed a tear in at least three of them! But there's also a ton of fun. There's Pink Taco for lunches and of course the Saturday night ball. This year's theme was Heart & Soul and I went as the Queen of Hearts with my two writing group partners (who went as "&" and an angel). If I have one piece of advice, it is this ... go in costume! I'm an introvert by nature, so I would've normally stood on the sidelines with my glass of wine and my friends. Instead everyone came up to me wanting pictures and to talk!

As a quick round-up on the topics discussed at the conference, I'd have to say that several of the keynotes covered getting through the slumps in your career ... the times when you're unable to produce or be creative. Lucky for us, they all pull through and come out on the other side! During the editor panels (which I went to the most) they continue to say that children's books are strong in the industry - in fact it's what keeps many editorial houses afloat during the bad economy!

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask - I'm happy to share.