Lightning Spliced promos and Chimera Critiques donations

[zellie-bean.livejournal.com]

Hey, I posted a little while ago about my novel Lightning Spliced and how I'm podcasting a sample of it. I just set up some promos to help advertise it so if you're inclined, I'd appreciate anyone spreading them around whether as a bumper on your own podcast or just as a link on your facebook page.

http://zellie.podbean.com/2010/03/04/promo-1/

http://zellie.podbean.com/2010/03/04/promo-2/

http://zellie.podbean.com/2010/03/04/promo-3/

If you think my listeners would enjoy your work, send me your promo (zellieblake-at-gmail) and I'll see about getting it exposure (:

Right now I'm offering samples as I go through Query Hell and try the traditional publishing route so I don't have a concrete payment scheme but donations to paypal on the bottom right are appreciated (:

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I also mentioned I work with Chimera Critiques (www.chimeracritiques.com). We're starting up some contests and a few artists have donated their work as contest prizes in exchange for the advertising attention the contests will generate. If you're interested in donating anything, let me know at zellie-at-chimeracritiques-dot-com

Rose and Bay Awards Followup Report

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

The 2010 Rose and Bay Awards for excellence in cyberfunded creativity have now concluded.  Winners have been announced for Art, Fiction, Other Project and Poetry, Patron.  We are currently working on the blog badges for the winners, and have plans for physical manifestations of the awards. 

Special Thanks To...
These folks helped make the Rose and Bay Awards a success.  Please give them a round of applause!

jenny_evergreen for proposing the Patron category and the hardcopy certificates
siege for proposing the name "Rose and Bay"
haikujaguar for offering the black-and-white "Rose and Bay" logo
xjenavivex for handling the Poetry and Patron categories, and some other support stuff
valdary for offering several different versions of a full-color LJ icon
zyngasvryka for connecting with Dave Kirby of Ace Awards, and other promotional ideas
karen_wehrstein for connecting with Dave Kirby of Ace Awards, colorizing the black-and-white logo, and making the award badges
Dave Kirby of Ace Awards for offering to create and donate plaques for the category winners ... ooo, shiny!

Also, thanks to all the folks who made nominations, to the nominees whose projects appeared in our polls, and to the voters.  Participation has been enthusiastic all around.  Given that Fiction and Other Project both had well over a hundred votes, and the other categories also had substantial numbers, we probably had several hundred participants even allowing for some overlap from people voting in multiple categories.


What Next?

We plan to run the Rose and Bay Awards in years to come.  Some suggestions were made that we weren't able to implement this year, so we have room to grow.  These include...

• Move the Rose and Bay Awards off LiveJournal to increase accessibility.  (This would require having a crowdfunding hub site and/or a separate award website.  It seems very useful, if such can be manifested.)
• Split off "Webcomics" as a separate category from "Other Project."  (This is relatively easy to do, and would probably benefit both the webcomics and the miscellaneous projects.  All it needs is a volunteer to manage it.)
• Subdivide the "Fiction" category.  (Our biggest category, this is the only one whose poll had to be split across two questions.  Any ideas for good ways to break this into smaller categories?  Volunteers to manage them?)
• Assign a different manager for each category.  (Again, easy to go, given sufficient volunteers who are not eligible for the category they wish to handle.  I'll probably keep Art.)
• Offer cash and/or other prizes.  (This would certainly make the winners happy, and be good publicity for the sponsors.  With more time to work on this, and preferably a team of volunteers, we might manage to pull this together for next year.)
  

Do you have other ideas for improvements?  Comment below!


You can read more about the Rose and Bay Award on the landing page.