And the winners are…

I just did the drawing for the winners of a free copy of Next of Kin, Conflict of Interest, and Backwards to Oregon.

Actually, this time, I didn’t do it the old-fashioned way (putting the names on slips of paper and then drawing three folded notes) but used an online random number generator.

The three people who won one of my books are:

Anh Tran

Peggy Adams

Katherine Standell

Congratulations!

Please contact me at jae_s1978 AT yahoo.de and let me know which book you would prefer (first one to contact me gets to pick first) and where to send it.

Book giveaway

It’s time for another book giveaway.

I’m giving away a signed copy of Conflict of Interest, one copy of Backwards to Oregon, and one copy of Next of Kin.

All you need to do to enter the drawing is to leave a comment on my blog, in which tell me your favorite book of 2011 (or several favorites).

Also, I’m looking for a beta reader for my newest novel. It’s a contemporary romance with the (working) title Something in the Wine. It has around 70,000 words.

I already have a team of skilled betas, but I would like to have a fresh set of eyes—preferably someone who’s a native speaker.

If you’d like to beta-read Something in the Wine, send me an e-mail (jae_s1978@yahoo.de).

Keeping track of writing time

In interviews or when I talk to readers, I often get asked how long it takes me to write a novel. I usually answer things like, “About a year” or “It took eleven months to write Hidden Truths.”

But when it comes to actual writing time, I have no clue how many hours it takes to write a novel.

With the start of the new year, I thought that it would be interesting to see how much time a week/month/year I spend writing, so I decided to keep track of my writing time.

To help me do that, I’m using two types of software:

A stopwatch. Here’s a simple one online.

And I’m also trying out an automatic time management software called Slife. Slife tracks what applications, documents, and websites you use throughout the day and for how long.

Is anyone else keeping track of writing time? If yes, how do you do it?

And has anyone ever found out how many hours it takes to write a novel?

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 22,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.