Chapter Book Challenge 2012

Those of you who have been following my writing blog Imagine! Create! Write! know that I have been joining challenges and submitting my writing to competitions quite often lately. The most recent challenges I have joined are NaNoWriMo, the 12 x 12 in 2012 challenge and the Picture Book Marathon. Well, I am adding to that list now, and I want you to come and join me.

As you already know, I am currently working on three different YA paranormal novels, and many children's picture books. There is another type of book that I have been wanting to try my hand at, in part, because I have children who are the right age for this type of reading - the children's chapter book.

Yes, I know and have read about what a difficult market it is to break into, but I don't really care about how difficult it is to be successful at writing and publishing a chapter book. I just want to write one of the chapter books that have been sitting in my mind whispering "write me" whenever I have a quiet moment.

During NaNoWriMo last November, I managed to write 50,000 words in 14 days and finished with 75,180 words for the month. A chapter book uses considerably less words than that, and so I am hoping that I will not only be able to finish a complete chapter book by the end of the month, but also be able to do a serious amount of editing on it. Chapter books generally range from 4,000 to 12,000 words. This will also be a learning process for me as writing a chapter book is a far different process tha writing a novel for an older teen or adult.

And that, in a nutshell is what the Chapter Book Challenge is all about. The goal is to write a complete chapter book in the month of March, starting on March 1st and finishing on March 31st. I am running this challenge, but be kind to me as I have never run one of these before. I already have some prizes ready to be awarded during the challenge, and will be setting up the terms for being in the running to win the prizes soon.

I've even lined up a published children's chapter book author for a guest post/interview on the Chapter book Challenge blog. I am working on getting guest posts and interviews from more professionals in the industry to help all of us along during this challenge.

I would love for you to sign up for the challenge. The official sign-up form can be found here. (You need to be signed up through the official form in order to be eligible for the prizes.) You can also sign up for the Chapter Book Challenge Facebook page where I will post useful links as I come across them and our Chapter Book Challenge Facebook group where we can all help each other out with ideas, tips and general conversation about our chapter books.

Now that you know about the challenge, I dare you to join us! You won't regret it!

If you are a published chapter book author already or an agent who deals in chapter books or has in the past dealt with them, then I am asking you to please join us and offer your help with a guest post and/or interview.