More WCCL Sites on Writers Digest Top 101 List

As many of you will know, this blog is sponsored by the electronic public house WCCL, who also publish many of my writing courses.

In this recent post, I mentioned that another WCCL-sponsored site, my forum at Mywriterscircle.com, had just been voted into the Writers Digest Top 101 Websites for Writers list for 2008.

Well, I've just discovered that two other WCCL sites are also in the Writers Digest list. In case you've not seen them, I thought I'd mention them both here.

WritersFM is WCCL's free online radio station for writers. The station broadcasts 24/7 via the Internet, with a mixture of interviews with successful writers, laid-back music, and writing tips and advice (and, by the way, no advertisements).

Among the writers you can hear on WritersFM are historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, British politician-turned-writer Edwina Currie, US screenwriting guru Syd Field, and many more (including yours truly).

You can either just tune in to the station and listen to what is currently playing, or download most of the interviews from the podcasts page. Note that either way, you will need to have a broadband/DSL Internet connection. WritersFM doesn't work on dial-up, unfortunately.

The other WCCL site in the Writers Digest 101 list is WriteStreet, or Trent Steele's Write Street as it's described on the list. This is actually WCCL's writing portal. Here you can find details of all of the company's writing products and courses, along with other book and product recommendations, inspirational quotes, articles about writing, and so on.

Also from WriteStreet you can subscribe to WCCL's free Smart Writers email newsletter, and help yourself to a range of valuable free gifts just for signing up. Smart Writers includes articles about writing, along with reviews of the latest writing products. Of course, you can unsubscribe any time if you don't like it and still keep all the free gifts.

I hope you will try visiting both these sites, to see why they were voted on to the Writers Digest list by writers themselves.

And if you'd like to vote to keep any of them on the list for 2009, you can do so by sending an email nominating the site in question to writersdig@fwpubs.com with "101 Websites" as the subject line. The closing date for nominations for the 2009 list is 1 January 2009.

And yes, a vote for this blog would be very much appreciated too!

More Interviews on WritersFM

My colleague Karl Moore of the online radio station WritersFM has been extremely busy. As I mentioned in this post, he recently interviewed the British author Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat and a dozen other published novels.

Well, now in short order he has added two more interviews. The first is with Jean Macleod, the 100-year old Mills & Boon romance author. Karl chats with her about her 130 novels, life during the war, and the secret to longevity!

And the other new interviewee is Francine Silverman, author of "Book Marketing from A-Z" and editor of the Book Promotion Newsletter. As you might expect, Francine offers some great advice on getting your book into the spotlight.

To hear any of these interviews, you can either wait for them to come round on the station's normal rotation, download them as podcasts, or (probably the easiest option) stream them from the radio station's Podcasts page. As with all WritersFM broadcasts, you will need to have a broadband/DSL Internet connection. WritersFM doesn't work on dial-up, I'm afraid!

Joanne Harris Interview on WritersFM

As mentioned recently in this blog post, Joanne Harris is the latest big-name writer to be interviewed on WritersFM, WCCL's Internet radio station for writers.

Joanne Harris is the British author of around a dozen novels, the most famous of which is Chocolat, which was also made into a film starring Juliette Binoche. Her latest novel, Runemarks, published in August 2007, is her first book for children and young adults. Her official website is at www.joanne-harris.co.uk, or clicking on any of the links from her name in this post will take you to the Wikipedia article about her.

The WritersFM Interview with Joanne was conducted by the station manager, Karl Moore, as usual. The interview runs to about an hour and is entertaining as well as being informative. As you might expect of a former school-teacher, Joanne is a clear and articulate interviewee.

Fans of Joanne Harris will particularly enjoy listening as she talks about her various books, and Chocolat in particular. As mentioned previously, I've only read one Joanne Harris novel so far, Gentlemen and Players, but I definitely plan to read some of her other books now. Actually, though, I thought the last twenty minutes or so of the interview were the most interesting, where Joanne talks about her writing methods and offers some tips for aspiring novelists. I recommend having a pen and paper in hand when listening to this!

To hear the interview, you can either wait for it to come around on the station's normal rotation, download it as a podcast, or (probably the easiest option) stream it from the radio station's Podcasts page. As with all WritersFM broadcasts, you will need to have a broadband/DSL Internet connection.

Happy listening!

What would YOU ask Joanne Harris?

My colleague Karl Moore of the online radio station WritersFM needs your help!

He has managed to line up an interview with the British author Joanne Harris this Thursday, 20 March. And he has asked me to put out a request to readers of my blog for any questions he can ask her.

For those who may not know, Joanne Harris is the author of around a dozen novels, perhaps the most famous of which is Chocolat, which was also made into a film starring Juliette Binoche. Her latest novel, Runemarks, published in 2007, is her first book for children and young adults. Her official website is at http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/, or clicking on any of the links from her name in this post will take you to the Wikipedia article about her.

I must admit that I haven't read Chocolat or seen the film. I did, however, read her more recent novel Gentlemen and Players on holiday a couple of years ago. I enjoyed reading it, although I guessed the "surprise twist" about a quarter of the way through! If you haven't read it, though, I do recommend it as an enjoyable thriller with some memorable characters and a good evocation of life at a minor English public school. I've put a link to the relevant page at Amazon.co.uk below...


Anyway, if you have any questions you would like Karl to put to Joanne Harris, do drop him a line. Write to him at karl AT karlmoore.com (changing the AT for the usual @ sign). Put his name ("Karl Moore") in the subject line, to avoid your email being blocked by his spam filters.

If you want to listen to the interview, it will be online at WritersFM on Friday 21 March, or very soon afterwards. And if you'd like more info about WritersFM, please see my recent blog post about the radio station.

Happy listening!

UPDATE! - I've just heard from Karl that unfortunately he has the flu, so his interview with Joanne has had to be put back to next Friday (28 March). So you still have time to send him any questions you would like asked! I'll let you know on this blog when the interview is available on WritersFM.