Available in paperback CreateSpace for $16.95	Writing to Win: The Colossal Guide to Writing Contests by Moira Allen If you'd like to win great prize money this year by entering a writing contest, look no farther than Writing to Win. This book includes the complete contents of Writing-World.com's former "Contest Database" -- all in one easy-to-use, easy-to-search volume. It offers more than 1000 contests in the fields of poetry, short fiction, nonfiction (including articles, journalism, memoir, creative nonfiction and more), book-length manuscripts (published and unpublished), scripts and screenplays. The book is set up by category so that you can easily locate the types of competitions that interest you, by deadline. Only paying contests are included (no "win five books and a big thank you"). This book lists the biggest and best literary contests in the country and throughout the world, as well as hundreds of smaller competitions that are ideal for the less experienced writer. (351 pages) Download a Free Sample -- or check out the Index to see what you're missing! Some Reviews: ...with the multitude of contests out there, where does one start their search? Moira Allen of Writing World has an answer with her book Writing to Win: The Colossal Guide to Writing Contests. Weighing in at 350 pages, this book provides hundreds of contests for every style and level of writing imaginable, from short story competitions for unpublished science fiction writers to literary awards for experienced novelists... The advice at the beginning is alone worth the price of entry, and the listings are user friendly and browseable, allowing the reader to discover contests they might not find if they were actively searching for what they thought they wanted. -- Sean McLachlan, author I have yet to find an online compendium of writing contests that compares to the one compiled by Ms. Allen. Because its listing are organized by writing type (poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, books, scripts and screenplays) and also by deadline (so that the author knows when to submit her work), Writing to Win is easy to use. And, with over 300 pages of listings, the book is probably as close to comprehensive as any resource like this can be.... it [also] offers plenty of good advice about how to prepare a story for submission as well pointers on how to determine whether a competition is legitimate or not. If you are at all interested in entering writing competitions, then I recommend this book. --Elle Scott, "Writing for Newbies" "Awesome! A steal at $16.95." - Wendy Burt-Thomas, author of The Writer's Digest Guide to Query Letters
Available in paperback from Amazon.com for just $15.56!	Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer by Moira Allen This really should have been called "everything you need to know about becoming a freelance writer" -- because that's the book I kept trying to find on the bookshelves. There are lots of books on "getting started" out there -- but so many seem to turn into "one writer's journey..." What you need is a book on how to start your journey as a writer! This book takes you by the hand and helps you set up your writing office (even if it's just a place on the kitchen table, which, by the way, mine is), helps you find the books and resources you'll need, guides you through the process of determining what to write about and where to send it -- and then takes you the rest of the way through querying, interviewing, developing your article, submitting your manuscript, and more. It also offers chapters by other experts on such topics as writing for newspapers, writing for online markets, tackling commercial and technical writing, and more. If you are looking for one book that will give you everything you need to launch your freelance career (and help you start earning some valuable extra income in these tough times), this is it! Read the chapter on Income and Expenses online! Check out the Reviews for this book!
Electronic Edition $12.95 Available in Paperback for $16.95	Guide to Paying Fiction and Poetry Markets by Moira Allen Frustrated by outdated market guides and market sites? Annoyed by guides that are packed with non-paying publications? If you really want to sell your short stories and poetry, you need this guide to over 700 paying markets. This guide lists nearly 600 print and online markets for short fiction (including literary fiction, genre fiction, children's stories, Christian fiction, flash fiction and more), plus over 400 markets for poetry of every type and subject. It includes more than 100 nonfiction publications that also use fiction and poetry, and offers more than 150 international fiction markets. See a Sample Section. "Moira Allen has done it again. Markets are divided into logical sections... Each section contains alphabetical listings, including payment, length, rights purchased, contact info, and the website where more specific guidelines can be found. More than a third of the listings in this guide are literary magazines, which is extremely valuable because many of these publications don't appear in other market guides... This marketing guide is ideal for both beginner and experienced writers." -- Barbara Florio Graham, SimonTeakettle.com
Electronic Edition $10.95 Paperback Edition $14.95	How to Write for Magazines by Moira Allen Why pay $100 for a writing class when it's all right here? This book includes my entire "Getting Started in Magazine Writing" online course -- lectures and exercises - for under $15. You'll find out how to research and select the perfect markets for your work -- and how to develop and tailor ideas for the markets you want to reach. Learn how to write a can't-miss query, research your article and conduct interviews, develop your article idea from broad subject categories to tightly focused topics, how to write the article itself, and how to format it for submission. This book also walks you through the issues of contracts and rights, and shows you what goes on behind the editor's desk! Plus, a special chapter on enhancing your article (and increasing your sales) with photos. Download a Sample Chapter.
Electronic Edition $8.95 Available in Paperback -- now only $11.53 on Amazon!	The Writer's Guide to Queries, Pitches and Proposals by Moira Allen I wanted to call this book "The Perfect Pitch" because that's what it's all about: Pitching just about every kind of writing you can imagine. It covers query letters, electronic queries, multiple-pitch and quick-pitch queries, nonfiction book proposals, fiction synopses, column proposals, pitches for newspapers, grant proposals, and so much more. It's also packed with samples of queries, pitches and proposals that worked -- and that show you, step by step, how it's done. If you want to sell your writing, you have to know how to pitch your writing -- and this book is your one-stop guide. Read sample chapters online: Writing the (Almost) Perfect Query Self-Syndicating Your Column Sample Proposals Check out the Reviews for this book!
Other Books by Moira Allen:
Available on Amazon.com for $16.53.	Coping with Sorrow on the Loss of Your Pet edited by Moira Allen In 2007, I celebrated the 20th year "in print" of the first book I ever wrote -- a book designed to help those who grieve the loss of a beloved animal companion. Drawing on the comments and experiences of pet owners across the U.S., this book covers the emotions of pet loss, personalized coping strategies to help you deal with grief, tips on helping the rest of the family cope (including other pets!), choosing when it's time to euthanize a pet (and tips on making this, if not easier, at least less stressful on you and your pet), suggestions on when and how to choose a new pet, and much more. It also covers how to deal with the "missing pet" (including tips on how to find a lost pet), how to provide for pets in your will, how to choose a pet cemetery and other "final disposition options," and how to help a friend cope with loss. This book won the Dog Writers of America "best book" award in 1998 and has helped thousands of pet owners deal with the grief of loss. Check out the Reviews for this book! Visit the Pet Loss Support Page for chapter excerpts, articles on pet loss, and more.
Electronic edition $7.95 Available in paperback from Lulu.com for $14.99	Mendocino Memories It started innocently enough. All I meant to do was create a digital archive of my family photos -- by which I mean some 2000 slides, stowed in the back of the closet, taken by my mother of the property we once owned in Mendocino County, California, known as "Vinegar Hill" (we just called it "The Ranch"). Then I thought, wouldn't it be nice to give a copy of this archive to everyone in the family? All I had to do was organize the photos, give them some captions... Next step was to create Photobooks, which I showed to my mother-in-law, explaining, "this was the Christmas when... and this was where we... and this was my favorite... and this was the dog who..." and so on. "You should write a book!" said my mother-in-law. (When all else fails, blame your mother-in-law!) "I don't do memoirs," I told her. I don't write a journal, I don't scrapbook, I don't blog, I never even kept a diary. But the more I looked at these photos, the more memories they brought back. And the more I found myself wanting to write those memories down. I’d just write a short description of a few photos, I thought. An essay, no, a vignette. And see what happens. What happened was 200 pages. It is not a personal autobiography. It is not a life story, or even the story of my childhood. It is a memoir of a place -- of pets and pies and holidays, of harvesting chestnuts and huckleberries, of chopping wood and feeding fires and making popcorn on a wood stove. (Oh, yes, and since the photos are what started it all, they're in here too!) "The Ranch" was a refuge, our escape from "reality" -- from the city, from the tedium of job and school and housework. We lived for the weekends, when we could pile into the car (literally) and leave it all behind. Had our lives been a movie, the weekdays would have been filmed in black and white, and weekends at Vinegar Hill in glowing color. In town, a rainy day was simply dreary. At the Ranch, it meant sitting by a crackling fire with a good book and a purring cat. In town the change of seasons went almost unnoticed; at the ranch you saw them in the daffodils sprouting in the garden in January, in the chestnut leaves turning golden in October, and in a hundred things in between. In town, going outdoors meant playing on the lawn or sidewalk. At the ranch you could run down to the old barn and pretend to be visiting your horse, or gallop through the meadow, or climb a tree, or build a stockade of rails in the dog’s yard, or... Well, the possibilities were pretty much endless. In town you filled a grocery cart; at the ranch you stepped outside to pluck an apple crisp from the morning’s frost, or braved swarms of mosquitoes to fill your bucket with sweet, tangy huckleberries, or risked pricked toes to stomp chestnut pods. At Vinegar Hill, we were taught to see. We had an artist for a father and a photographer for a mother, and it was impossible not to learn to look at things when growing up in such a family. We didn’t just panel the walls, we carved that paneling into geometric shapes. When, for some reason that escapes me, we hauled an old horse-cart into the yard and left it sitting there until it had just about rotted away, Victor went out and painted the wheels red and green. Odd roots turned into decorative sculpture. At the ranch, we were nearly always "making" something. Vinegar Hill left me with an awareness that there was much more to the world than the urban rat-race. I learned that it was possible to find a different pace to life, different priorities. I’ve never been able to care deeply about makeup or fashion or MTV or nightlife. I would still rather curl up with a good book by the fire and listen to the rain on the roof than go to a cocktail party. I’d rather have a functioning apple tree in my garden than a wide-screen TV. My husband chuckles at my love of "harvesting," even if it’s just filling my pockets with cherry tomatoes from the pots on the deck. And I suppose that there will always be a part of me that wants to recapture that way of life. But for now, it has been a great deal of fun simply recapturing this collection of Mendocino Memories! Download a Sample Chapter.
Available in Paperback for $14.95.	Six Centuries of Costume edited by Moira Allen In the 1930's, my grandfather, California artist Victor Anderson, set out to design a book on historic costume. That book was never finished, and for decades Victor's exquisite sketches sat in a box in the back of a closet. Now, more than 70 years later, I've assembled these sketches into an "artist's sketchbook" of historic costume -- a fascinating glimpse of costumes from historic paintings and from costume books of the 1920's. The book focuses primarily on British costume but also touches on several periods of European costume. Ideal for re-enactors, SCA members, and writers researching historic costume details. Download a Sample Selection (note that this file is about 15MB, so it's a slow download).
Available in paperback for $14.95 or electronically for $5 from Lulu.com	The Arms, Armour and Military Usages of the 14th Century edited by Moira Allen This charming 155-page book is excerpted from Gentleman's Magazine (1858-1859). It's a remarkable overview of military armour and practices of the 14th century, drawn from even earlier sources such as Froissart and contemporary documents. It has great illustrations, and is an excellent research tool for anyone interested in the military history and accoutrements of this period. It also marks my first foray into what will be a number of "Victorian" book projects, so watch this space for more "cool" reprints! Read a Review of this book!

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