Since many of you that read Working Writers are also bloggers, I thought I would share links from a group I’m in, that is called the Artsy Bloggers Group. Some blogger friends and I share links of the creative projects we work on, and I think many of you will be inspired by both the crafty and blogging aspect of our work. Each week I’ll be sharing some links. Here are the links for this week. Enjoy!

Beading Arts
Don’t miss your chance to win giveaway package #2 from Cherry Tree Beads!

Chicken Rotini With Fire Roasted Tomato Sauce
An easy healthier meal to throw together on hectic week nights.

Creative Dreamer
Last week June showed you how to create a woven “gum wrapper” photo frame… this week she’s giving it away!

Eileen – The Artful Crafter
Celebrate spring by making a pressed flower card.

Kim- Flowers and Art
Kim makes butterfly wings for a toddler out of fun foam!!

Friendship Memory Journal
How to create a one-of-a-kind gift for your pal.

Laura – Taz’s Corner
Laura shares some Free Mother’s Day Designs and more.

Made By Nicole
Add a little edge to your wardrobe with these easy to craft punk pins.

Moore (Gourd)Whimsies
Creative Paperclay Design Team!!!

More crafty resources to inspire you:

• The Big-Ass Book of Crafts
• The Handmade Marketplace: How to Sell Your Crafts Locally, Globally, and On-Line
• The Complete Book of Retro Crafts: Collecting, Displaying & Making Crafts of the Past

Image: sxc.hu

I’ve got an interview with Linda Weaver Clark where I am also giving away a copy of my book, 21 Simple Things You Can Do To Help Someone With Diabetes. But hurry! The giveaway only runs until Monday. To enter, leave a comment over at Linda’s blog.

How has your week been? Here are some links and news items I found of interest.

From All Twitter: 15 Hashtag Chats You Should Be Following.

Great list here: 100 Twitter Feeds That Will Improve Your Writing.

On BookBzzr, How to maintain your privacy on Facebook.

Interesting post from BookBzzr: Readers Who “Like” You, or Readers Who “Friend” You — Which Is Better?

Who doesn’t want more tips on how to sell books? Blogging Authors mentions 7 Book Selling Tips for Authors. Good info.

Very funny post from Terrible Minds: 10 Reasons Why Your Novel Won’t be Published.

Additional Writing Resources:

• Freelance Writers Needed
• How to Write Your Own Ebook in 7 Days
• Freelance Writing Jobs

Additional resources on novel writing:

• Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days
  
• You Can Write A Novel
• This Year You Write Your Novel

Image: Morguefile

Just in time for Christmas! Here’s another great Chicken Soup book with a focus on the holidays. I’ve got one copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Magic: 101 Holiday Tales of Inspiration, Love, and Wonder to give away to a lucky reader.

Here’s a description from Amazon:

Christmas is a magical time of year — a time of family, friends, and traditions. Readers will revel in the 101 holiday stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Magic that spread the special joy, wonder, and blessings of the season with its tales of finding the perfect Christmas tree, being with family, seeing the awe in a child’s eyes, and enjoying the magic of the season.

Hey, at this time of year, we’ll all looking for a little happiness. Right?

To enter, leave a comment on this post by Monday, December 27th. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or girl the next day. Good luck!

Additional Writing Resources:

• Freelance Writers Needed
• How to Write Your Own Ebook in 7 Days
• Freelance Writing Jobs

Also:

• Free ebook on work at home success strategies

Did you enter our contest for Melinda and the Wild West? If so, we’ve got our winner today! Using random.org, the winner was our 11th commenter, Daniel M who said it sounded like a fun read.

Congrats to Daniel! If you’re interested in getting this wonderful book and didn’t win, remember that it is also available on Amazon. Check it out. Thanks again to Linda Weaver Clarke for donating the book (and don’t forget to read her interview if you haven’t done so yet.)

Also, if you’re a Mad Men fan, be sure to enter our giveaway to win Roger Sterling’s book, Sterling’s Gold.

Additional Writing Resources:

• Make Money From Home – Real Jobs You Can Do by Telecommuting
• How to Write Your Own Ebook in 7 Days
• Freelance Writing Jobs

I’ve got the best possible gift for any Mad Men fan: Sterling’s Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man. Details on the giveaway are below, but first, here is my review.

I was thrilled to get Sterling’s Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man because like many TV viewers, I’m a big fan of Mad Men. I wasn’t sure what “story” Roger Sterling was really going to tell. On the show, we hear him making notes into a recorder about his life, but it’s really Sterling’s great one-liners that endear him to us. He’s got the best lines, and always delivered at just the right time.

Well imagine getting those lines back-to-back? It would make you feel as if Sterling was in the room, smoking away and making you giggle, take pause, and shake your head at the incorrigible-ness he projects. We love Roger because he says the things we didn’t think to say, at a time when we would never dream of saying it out loud.

One thing I appreciated about this book is that in delivering Sterling’s story this way (rather than a straight autobiography) was that it gives you Sterling’s essence much more completely than a longer, more traditional book. Kudos to the writers!

This book is filled with great one liners like “The day you sign a client is the day you start losing him,” “Being with a client is like being in a marriage. Sometimes you get into it for the wrong reasons, and eventually they hit you in the face,” and “When God closes a door, he opens a dress.” The book is divided into sections on business, marriage, life, his coworkers, and more. It has pictures from the show at the start of each section, which make it that much more of a fabulous gift for Mad Men fans. The book is short and will take you no more than fifteen minutes to read. And guess what? You will enjoy every single minute.

Thanks to Grove Press for the review copy.

Want to win Sterling’s Gold? Leave a comment on this post by Monday, November 29th. (We’ve got a longer contest this time since the Thanksgiving holiday will be coming up.) I’ll choose the winner on November 30th and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day. Good luck!

Additional Writing Resources:

• Make Money From Home – Real Jobs You Can Do by Telecommuting
• How to Write Your Own Ebook in 7 Days
• Freelance Writing Jobs

Book provided by publisher.

Sometimes I think writers can get a little cranky. Or, more to the point, they see things a bit negatively. Now, I don’t blame them (especially because I fall into the cranky category a time or two myself) but how can we cheer ourselves up? How can we motivate ourselves to go out and get new jobs, approach new clients, keep querying?

Maybe this book (Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive: 101 Inspirational Stories about Counting Your Blessings and Having a Positive Attitude) could help. It’s all about positive thinking. Sometimes just a reminder about how to think more positively can help turn a negative attitude around. Here’s a review from Amazon:

Every cloud has a silver lining. And the stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive will encourage readers to stay positive, because there is always a bright side. This book continues Chicken Soup for the Soul’s focus on inspiration and hope, reminding us that each day holds something to be thankful for.

To enter to win this book, please leave a comment on this post by Sunday, November 14th. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day. I think a little positive thinking right before Thanksgiving could be a good thing, don’t you?

Additional Writing Resources:

• Make Money From Home – Real Jobs You Can Do by Telecommuting
• Create Multiple Articles from Just One
• How to Write Your Own Ebook in 7 Days
• Freelance Writing Jobs

Just in time for Father’s Day! I’ve got a giveaway for a brand new copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad: 101 Stories of Gratitude, Love, and Good Times.

The product description from Amazon says:

This book gives fathers the pat on the back they deserve. Children of all ages share their heartfelt words of thanks and loving memories in this collection of 101 stories. Personal accounts of learning from Dad’s example and lasting lessons, special moments and memorable outings, encouragement and expectations will bring any father joy, inspiration, and laughs. Whether the reader is a new dad, a father of teens, a father of grown children, or a grandfather, these heartwarming and humorous stories will resonate with him. He may even find that his kids did pay attention after all!

To win a copy, just leave a comment on this post by Thursday, June 10th. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day. Good luck!

I was really intrigued by the book Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating from Classic Fiction. It’s about the great literature and great food. So if you love to eat and read, this one is for you.

Here’s a description of the book from Amazon:

Our busy twenty-first-century lifestyle doesn’t allow much time for us to enjoy the pleasures of a good meal. Literary Feasts aims to change that by restoring readers’ desires to eat, drink, and be merry.

While Leopold Bloom fortified himself for his rambles through Dublin with a hearty breakfast of grilled kidneys with pepper, thinly sliced bread and butter, and a large pot of tea, James Bond started his days off with a half pint of chilled OJ, three scrambled eggs, two cups of black coffee, and a pack of Chesterfields. The lucky revelers invited to Jay Gatsby’s mansion feasted on baked hams, pastry pigs, and turkeys bewitched to dark gold, all washed down with champagne served in glasses the size of finger bowls. And of course P. G. Wodehouse made sure that Bertie Wooster always dined in style. The eating scenes gathered here — drawn from the works of Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Chekhov, Christina Rossetti, Louisa May Alcott, Shakespeare, and many other great writers — will inspire even the most jaded of palates. Literary Feasts includes a bounty of practical ideas, too, on how readers can dress up, prepare the food themselves, and make truly memorable occasions. Literary Feasts is perfect for book lovers who live to eat.

To enter, leave a comment on this post by Thursday, May 20th. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day.

Good luck!

We love the writing style and passion of Evie Wyld. She’s written a lovely book called After the Fire, a Still Small Voice: A Novel, and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re in luck! We’re giving it away here at Working Writers!

Here’s a description from Amazon:

Set in the haunting landscape of eastern Australia, this is a stunningly accomplished debut novel about the inescapable past: the ineffable ties of family, the wars fought by fathers and sons, and what goes unsaid.

After the departure of the woman he loves, Frank drives out to a shack by the ocean that he had last visited as a teenager. There, among the sugarcane and sand dunes, he struggles to rebuild his life.

Forty years earlier, Leon is growing up in Sydney, turning out treacle tarts at his parents’ bakery and flirting with one of the local girls. But when he’s drafted to serve in Vietnam, he finds himself suddenly confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father.

As these two stories weave around each other–each narrated in a voice as tender as it is fierce–we learn what binds Frank and Leon together, and what may end up keeping them apart.

To win, leave a comment by Monday, May 3rd. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day.

What a great gift for Mom for Mother’s Day. I’ve got a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Mom: 101 Stories of Gratitude, Love and Good Times to give away to one lucky reader.

To enter, leave a comment on this post by Thursday, April 15th. I”ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day.

Image: Amazon