Pssst. Pssssssssssssssst.

Are you someone who liked Nightshifted? Are you also someone who writes? Might you double also be interested in a giveaway filled with fabulous prizes?

THEN I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU.

Clarion West is doing its ninth annual Write-a-thon this year — and I’m gonna give away one Moonshifted ARC (and some other cool stuff!) to someone who signs up to participate in it. The Write-a-thon runs at the same time as the Clarion West workshop. You sign up, state your writing goals — words written, pages edited, chapters done, whatever works for you. And you can get people to sponsor you for meeting your goals along the way, too — but the most important thing is the writing. It’s all about making public goals and then committing to them fully for those six weeks.

I went to Clarion West awhile ago, and about three years later, I sold Nightshifted. Coincidence? I think not!  Seriously, Clarion West was the best experience that ever happened to me as a writer. That summer, I’d just gotten out of a crappy marriage and I was getting by on student loans and no guarantee of a nursing job on the horizon. For six formative, blissful weeks Clarion West let me feel like a writer in a way I’d never gotten to before. A real writer. Someone worth listening to, worth teaching, who just might someday just make something of herself. I formed lifelong friends there with my fellow classmates, and with some of my instructors. I cannot even begin to express how good it was for me. It changed my life.

The Write-a-thon is Clarion West’s biggest fundraising event — it’s what lets them get quality instructors in, year after year. This year they have Connie Willis, Chuck Palahniuk and GRRM! And it’s also what helps them give scholarships out to struggling newbies. That’s my personal stake in this game. If people hadn’t donated back-in-the-day for poor post-divorce nursing-school me, I would have never gotten to attend.

There’s $2000 of sponsorship money on the line, if we get to 200 participants before June 16th. That’s where you come in — and also fabulous prizes!

If you go to www.clarionwest.org/writeathon you can make an account, and make your own participant page. Challenge yourself big and small — I’m going to be doing 5k a week of Deadshifted this year. But any writing is good writing, if all you have time to do is 50 precious daily words. I have had weeks and months like that before, and I know sometimes it’s all you can do to just stay in the ring.

When you’re done with that, come back here and comment to let me know, and one person who signs up this way will winnnnnnn:

A Moonshifted ARC. A full two months before I give it away to *anyone* else. You can lord it over your friends. Or you can burn it for heat when the zombie apocalypse comes. (I won’t care then, because zombies.)

See how blue and shiny it is!

You will also get:

A bitchin’ pill necklace from Lost Apostle on Etsy:

A Cherry Ames Student Nurse that’s been turned into a writing journal, because sometimes I’m old school:

And I’ll also throw in a personalized copy of Nightshifted if you’d like, and some pins, and who knows what else? :D Candy! Wait. Not candy. But something else just as cool!

If you were looking at a way to encourage yourself to write this summer — to give yourself goals and direction and to get a sense of awesome community, for a good cause, no less! — the Clarion West Write-a-thon is it.

Again — comment here once you’ve signed up over at Clarion West to enter the contest :D. I can’t wait to write this summer with you! :D

much love,

Cassie