Creative Leaps

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ Time Swimmer Soca Mom's Teen Pick for April's Book Club Selection (click link for other Soca Mom's April Selections) BUY NOW at Amazon - Available on Kindle After failing the Jamaican primary Common Entrance exam tempts suicidal thoughts,  ancient mythologies combine with historical fiction to whisk our boy-poet and light bearer Luke across the Caribbean Seas of Time on a fantastic journey that ultimately returns him home and restores his sense of self. Readers of all ages will be asking, "When's the movie coming out?"

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ Multi-ethnic Women Writers/ Based in the UK/ Check Eligibility for your unpublished manuscript The SI Leeds Literary Prize is the prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women resident in the UK aged 18 years and over.  A biennial award, the 2014 Prize was launched at the 2013   Ilkley Literature Festival  – submissions can be made online from 1 December 2013, with a deadline of  31 March 2014  using this link: Submit to SI Leeds Literary Prize The prize aims to act as a loudspeaker for Black and Asian women’s voices, enabling fresh and original literary voices from a group disproportionately under-represented in mainstream literary culture to reach new audiences.

If you're unpublished or just feeling generous enough to want to see/ share your work in print, this opportunity may be worthwhile. The rates aren't great, and the rights are broadly in the publisher's favour, but you do retain copyrights. I've cut to the chase here and only copied the payment schedule for you. Do click on link for full details. Caribbean Reads call for Caribbean Christmas content for kids is well thought out and promises to be a credible publication. Above All, Happy Writing, JJ CARIBBEAN READS CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Caribbean Christmas Children's Content Payment CaribbeanReads and  Jaxon Photography  are committed to recognising that the work done by creative writers and artists is valuable. In this light we are offering a small compensation for material that is published in the book. Stories and articles: 3¢ per final word count, $10.00 minimum Poems: up to $1.00 per line; $10.00 minimum Activities and recipes: $25.00 flat rate Artwo...

Want inspiration for your next YA novel? Do you measure success by your book's ability to secure passion and commitment in your audience? Think of your young readers this way: up a tree, with a good book and worried that the fifth book in the series marks the end, because then they're hollering, "Now what will  I read!?!"  Some kids today have everything at their finger tips so we tend to believe only in the stats that say books are competing with other games and technologies, including books of the e-kind; Kindle etc.  BUT - no one ever wanted to smell their flat-as-glass screen when a new text was being down loaded. Even when we're laying down with the digital box, who really snuggles technology the way we do when we have the texture and weight of our latest literary conquest in print, and in our hands, propped on our chests or leaned on our thighs? There is flesh and bone, blood and heartbeat in holding an actual tome.  I've personally neve...

Finalists for Inaugural Burt Award for Young Adult Caribbean Literature Announced! http://www.bocaslitfest.com We are proud to announce the finalists of the inaugural Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. The Burt Award for Caribbean Literature was established by   CODE   – a Canadian charitable organization that has been advancing literacy and learning for 55 years – in collaboration with William (Bill) Burt and the Literary Prizes Foundation. The Award is the result of a close collaboration with CODE’s local partners in the Caribbean, The   Bocas Lit Fest   and   CaribLit . The shortlisted titles are: ·     Island Princess in Brooklyn by Diane Browne, Jamaica (published by Carlong) ·       All Over Again by A-dZiko Simba Gegele, Jamaica (published by Blouse & Skirt Books) ·       Barrel Girl by Glynis Guevara, Trinidad and Tobago (manuscript to be published) ·       Musical Yout...