Anna Staniszewski

Archives: January2010

• Blog Awards!

  I’m veering from my regular blogging schedule for a fun announcement. This past week, the lovely Heather from Edited to Within an Inch of my Life gave my blog the Silver Lining Award. Thanks Heather! Now it’s my turn to pick five favorite blogs  and bestow this award on them. Decisions, decisions! All right, I

• Creating Tension on Every Page

  As I’ve been reading an ARC of Carrie Ryan’s The Dead-Tossed Waves, sequel to The Forest of  Hands and Teeth, it’s been making me think a lot about what Donald Maass stresses in Writing the Breakout Novel: the need to create tension on every page.
  In Ryan’s book, we know from the very first page that

• Choosing a Point of View

  Choosing the best POV for your story is an important step, but often people’s definitions of the different POVs vary so it can be tricky to know what you’re choosing and why you’re choosing it. Here’s my attempt at a simple breakdown of the most popular types of POV, with the pros and cons of

• The History of a Place

  Over the weekend, the husband and I headed down to Newport, RI for a change of scenery. Winter is actually a good time to visit this adorable town since it’s not nearly as busy as usual, and there’s still a lot to see and do. We’d already gone to the most famous mansion during our

• New Blogging Schedule

  When I first started this website, I decided to try blogging five days a week. Amazingly, it was pretty easy to get into the routine of posting something every day (apparently I can babble on a wide range of topics). But while it’s been a lot of fun blogging so much, it’s also started taking

• Online Book Browsing

  As I was looking for an excerpt from a book the other day, I found something pretty interesting. HarperCollins has a new “Book Browse” feature on its website that allows you to read several chapters of certain books online.
  Being able to browse inside books is nothing new, of course, but this was the first time

• Book Giveaway Winners!

  Thank you to everyone who entered the New Year Book Giveaway! It was great to hear about all the things you were looking forward to in 2010 (not surprisingly, most of them were reading or writing related). I wish I could give each one of you a free book or two, but unfortunately there can

• Recent Great Reads

  The New Year Book Giveaway has officially come to an end! Thank you to everyone who entered. I plan on crunching the numbers later today and posting the winners tomorrow, so make sure to check back!
  In other news, I’ve been making some progress with my enormous reading list recently, and I wanted to highlight a

• ALA Midwinter Recap

  First, just a reminder that today is your last chance to enter my New Year Book Giveaway! If you want to win some free books, you only have until midnight tonight to enter!
  Also, check out the fancy new search feature on the right-hand side of the page. A big thank you to my husband for

• January 2010

  I talk about writing, blogging, and tea-drinking in my first ever blog interview at Edited to Within an Inch of my Life.