New Voices Blog Badges Are Here!

There’s only few days left until the launch of the 2011 Mills & Boon New Voices Competition and I’m thrilled to have my internet connection back just in time. 

Today, I’m unveiling the New Voices blog badges for 2011.  These badges can link your blog directly to your entry to help people find your chapter.   You can find them at the bottom of this post along with instructions on how save and insert them into your blog and what to do if they won't centre or fit in your sidebar.  If you have any trouble, please let me know in the comments because I'm happy to help.

From September 13^th the New Voices Wall of Fame will be back and YOU can be on it.  The Wall is a great way celebrate hitting that submit button and you shouldn't underestimate that achievement.  Public forums are a scary business and it takes a lot of guts to enter, so i hope you've got a mini bottle of champagne on standby.

The Wall will help people find your entry and last year we formed a mini support group and there were a lot of helpful and encouraging comments left by members of The Wall at other members entries.  So, if you'd like to be on The Wall just leave a comment with your name and the name of your New Voices entry (so I can find it and link it).  Plus, this year you’ll also get a shout out on Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, today is also the official launch of my Twitter account. I’m now an active Twit and you can find me @laceydevlin or click on my crazy new friend below to follow me.  You know you want to ;-)

I’m looking forward to reading your entries and I hope you enjoy the blog badges!

INSTRUCTIONS & TROUBLESHOOTING:

To save a blog badge:

1.Right click on the badge

2.Click‘Save Image As...’

3.Select the file where you want to save the image.

4.Click‘Save’.

To add a badge to blogspot (ORIGINAL interface):

1.Go to your New Voices entry and copy its address. You can paste this into a Word document for safe keeping if you wish.

2.Sign into your Blogspot account.

3.In Dashboard click the ‘Design’ link (toward top of page)

4.Select‘Add Gadget’

5.Select‘Picture’

6.The‘From Your Computer’ option should automatically be selected, if not, select it.

7.Click‘Browse’ and find the saved blog badge image.

8.Then click ‘Open’

9.Paste the address of your New Voices entry into the Link box.

10. Click ‘Save’ and you’re done!

To add a badge to blogspot (NEW interface):

1.Go to your New Voices entry and copy its address. You can paste this into a Word document for safe keeping if you wish.

2. Sign into your Blogspot account.

3. Select your blog and then the 'Layout' link on the sidebar

4. Select ‘Add Gadget’

5. Select ‘Picture’

6. The ‘From Your Computer’ option should automatically be selected, if not, select it.

7. Click ‘Browse’ and find the saved blog badge image.

8. Then click ‘Open’

9. Paste the address of your New Voices entry into the Link box.

10. Click ‘Save’ and you’re done!

Why won’t it centre in my sidebar? *wails*:

1.   The image has a width of 200 pixels to fit the average sidebar.  Yours may be larger or smaller.  If this is the case you need to adjust the size of the image in a graphics program.  This can be a program as basic as paint (which can be found on any Windows computer in the Accessories folder on the Start bar so no downloads are necessary to do this).

2.   First you need to know the width of your sidebar.  If you do go to step .

3.   To find the width of your sidebar sign into your blogspot.

4.   Click on ‘Template’.

5.   Click on the ‘Edit HTML’ beneath your current blog template.

6.   You will then get some scary message about only advance users being allowed to play with html but since you won’t be making any changes you don’t need to worry.  Click ‘Proceed’.

7.   You need to scroll down until you find the coding that reads (look for the red because the rest varies per template):

#sidebar-wrapper {

  width: 200px;

  padding-right: 10px;

  float: $startSide;

  word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */

  overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */

  background-color:none;

8.   Make a note of the width.  In  the example it’s 200px.

9.   Now open Paint

10. Open your saved blog badge.

11. Click ‘Resize’ on the toolbar.

12. Where it says ‘by’ select “Pixels”

13. Where it says ‘Width’ type in the width of your sidebar.

14.   Save the image and you’re done!

15.   If you’re still having trouble and curse all electronics the world over, feel free to leave me the address of your blog and a way of contacting you in a comment (or email me directly) and I’ll send the modified image along.

Mills and Boon New Voices Competition 2011

In a little over a month Mills & Boon will be launching the New Voices Competition for 2011.  The winner receives an editor for one year, an opportunity to enter into a publishing contract, an iPad and a Mills & Boon book hamper.

It really doesn't suck, does it?

We were lucky enough to have the winner from last year, lovely Leah Ashton, right here with us pre-published folk on The Wall of Fame.  I'd love it if another one of us could take the title out again this year.

The Wall of Fame will be back for 2011 and this year it will be bigger and better because as we speak I'm setting up the Lacey Devlin Twitter account and when you submit  you'll not just be posted on the blog wall but on Twitter too.  This is a public domain X-Factor competition and it can scare the pants off you but it really is a lot of fun and a little exposure never hurt anyone.  So make sure you let me know if you're entering, and when you do send me a link to your entry so I can post it .  A little moral support can go a long way.

The New Voices blog badges will also be back for 2011, so you'll be able to link your entry to your blog in style.

So what else do I know about the competition that you might have missed?

Mills & Boon authors are mighty generous with their time and the lovely Liz Fielding and Jessica Hart have already written posts to help us out.

Check out Liz Fielding's NV post here.

Find Jessica Hart's NV post here.

Keep up-to-date with information right from the source at the NV facebook page (you can ask questions too) here.

M&B and Leah Ashton strongly recommend that you start writing before the competition launches because the rounds are close together.  If you are shortlisted you will only have a few days to write the second chapter.  Trying to do that could result in nervous breakdown.

Last but not least, Lynn Raye Harris has a blog post about the good, the bad, and the ugly of reviews and comments on your work that I highly recommend for first time NV's.  I particularly like one comment by Darcy who suggests replacing each verb ("or heck as many words as possible") with smurf.  Suddenly that one nasty comment is great entertainment.

I think this might also work when listening to your boss...

You can find more information on the competition at the official website.  Entry details can be found in the terms and conditions here.

Happy writing!