As a matter of fact, we're kind of surprised at how fast the first two months of this year flew past.

If you're interested -- and we really hope you are -- you can find out everything you need to know by reading the Call for Entries posted as of right now on the Contest page.

(And, if you do plan to enter this year: please, please, PLEASE read the rules!)

Okay, all you writers out there ... keep 'em coming!

And just because I'm nice and just because I like you, I'm not even going to make you click through to the contest page to find out who they are.

Our 2007 Annual Fiction Manuscript Contest winners are:

#3 - Beyond The Morning Star, an exciting science fiction novel by Alex Watson

#2 - Promises My Love, a moving historical family drama by Deborah Larson

... and our Grand Prize winner is

#1 - Lunar Mourning, a howlingly different sort of romance by Laurie Albano (sorry for the bad pun, Laurie!)

We had a great batch of finalists this year, which made choosing winners both fun and difficult. And that goes double for deciding which of these three fantastic novels landed where in the top three.

Frankly, I wish I had the resources to publish all of them. But never mind ... I'll whine on my own time.

After the exercise of the last few months, we're looking forward to our 2008 contest. If you want to be notified about when we launch with our Call for Entries, sign up for the Fiction Contest email list.

Now that's done ... back to the party!

Now, really ... whatever gave you that idea? We simply sent out the finalist announcement to our email list first. After all, that's where are entrants are and those are the folks who need to know first, aren't they?

This doesn't get any easier, no matter how much practice we get. There are so many terrific entries to choose from that narrowing the choice down to ten is a real challenge. And we're particularly happy about the nice cross-section of genres represented in this year's finals.

So, we're (like, totally) looking forward to this last round of reading!

To review the full announcement and see the list of winners, visit the Contest page.

The entry period for the Fiction Manuscript Contest has been over for coming up on a month now, so that stuff about getting your entries in was just a bit dated.

We actually fell a little bit short in the number of entries this year but we decided to proceed with the contest anyway rather than calling it off.

At this point, Derek and I are settling in for our favorite part - reading through the manuscript partials to ferret out those undiscovered gems that, we think, will lead us to the kinds of manuscripts about which we say, "Who in their right mind turned this down?"

As usual, we'll be announcing our ten finalists from this initial phase of the contest on or before close of business on October 1, 2007.

Also as usual, our thanks to everyone who entered.

Now ... time to get back to reading.

But never mind that. There's another very important April date that we need to discuss: the deadline for the Fiction Manuscript Contest is April 30th!

That looming deadline makes it particularly appropriate that I've heard from two relevant authors within the last month.

Justin Gustainis, whose The Hades Project is our best-selling novel to date, has recently signed on the dotted line to get his second novel published. Bigger advance, bigger publisher and it looks like his writing career is well on its way.

And Graeme Herrod, whose third place winning novel from the 2004 Fiction Contest has since been published, told me in a recent e-mail why he thinks the Fiction Contest is not only good for winners but also for every author who makes it to the finalist round:

"I also feel your competition is not only a good exercise to feel out the content of a manuscript, but it also lends weight later on when presenting to potential publishers, especially if it was good enough to gain a finalist position."

Not a bad return on investment for a struggling debut novelist.

So get those entries in! Remember, they must be postmarked no later than April 30, 2007.

March is Small Press Month (you knew that, right?) and we have a double celebration going on here at Brighid's Fire Books.

First, we're celebrating the way we usually do, with our official Call for Entries for the 2007 Fiction Manuscript Contest. We're accepting entries as of today; all entries must be postmarked on or before April 30, 2007. You'll find all the details posted on the Contest page.

We've also got a birthday here at Brighid's Fire Books. It's our fifth anniversary as well as the fifth anniversary of the release of our very first title (which also happens to be my own novel), The Rise of The Phoenix.

Since I like to give you presents when I have birthdays - because I'm just backwards that way - I'd like to invite you to download a FREE copy of the just-released Fifth Anniversary e-book edition of The Rise of The Phoneix. You'll find a little secret tucked into it, too - just for you.

To download the e-book, just click here! (PDF, 1.1 MB download)

Happy March, everybody!

That's about to change, though. March is Small Press Month you know (or if you didn't, now you do), which coincides with the launch of our Annual Fiction Manuscript Contest.

And besides all that - just because I'm in the mood to tease - we've got another nifty milestone coming up in March, an anniversary in fact. To celebrate, I've got some goodies for you.

And that's all I'm going to say about it right now.

Check back here in about two and a half weeks. We'll be done hibernating and things will start kicking!

We've announced our Fiction Contest winner, on time as usual.

We're particularly happy about our winner this year, because we move away from speculative fiction with a thrilling action/adventure by Robert Mestrovic called Reclamation.

I was starting to fret about the possibility that people would decide that Brighid's Fire Books only published speculative fiction — no matter what I said!

As usual, we are grateful to all our contestants — who deserve a round of applause simply because they actually wrote a whole novel — and we hope to see more work from many of them in the future.

Our next call for entries will go out in March. Meanwhile, happy reading and Happy New Year, everybody!

And it has a lot of lovely new features, too! There's a full-fledged shoppping cart system, a wish list (and you don't need an account to use it), registered customers can sign up for news about specific products, and there a new newsletter to let you know about author events and special offers, too.

I'm still trying to get the gift wrap option working but I hope to have that up and running soon, tool.

And (here's the best part) right now, we're offering free shipping on all book purchases here in the United States, up through December 20th!

Head on over there and check it out (click here - or you can get there by using the "Current Releases" button over there, soon to be replaced with a "Our Bookstore" button) -- and be sure to take your holiday shopping list with you. Hey, you never know ...

We're pretty busy here, reading through these great contest finalists and still on target to announce the 2006 winners on New Year's Day 2007.

Meanwhile, there's this holiday gift giving season upon us and Brighid's Fire Books is doing its part.

All Brighid's Fire Books titles are on sale at 20% off the cover price right now. That means you can pick up our latest, Yesterday's Falcon, for only $15.96 (down from the original cover price of $19.95).

Not only that but, from now through December 20th, you get free shipping on all orders!

You can take advantage of all this nifty stuff by visiting the Brighid's Fire Books section of our online book store here

I could say we're doing all this because we like you -- and that would be true, too -- but we're also doing it because we want you to buy our stuff. They're all great reads by talented, if little known, authors, the kind of folks whose work deserved to be brought to the public -- the kind of writers we publisher here at Brighid's Fire Books.

Hope you're enjoying your holiday season.

If you remember the news reports of flooding in upstate New York, then you know where I've been. The summer months were enlivened by alternative between flood cleanup and repair and manuscript partial reading for the contest.

For awhile, we weren't sure we'd be able to get it done. But we did.

If you want to take a look at the ten finalists for the 2006 Fiction Manuscript Contest, visit our Contest page.

And we'll all hope that, as the year winds down, it is a lot less stressful than the summer months have been!

Happy October!

It is especially appropriate at this special time that Brighid's Fire Books joins author Tim Newman to celebrate the publication of Yesterday's Falcon -- a wonderful story that celebrates the ancient tradition of Druidry even as it faithfully portrays the early medieval conflict between it and Christianity.

Along more practical lines, celebrate with us by taking advantage of this week's special at Wahmpreneur Books: Yesterday's Falcon, the latest title from Brighid's Fire Books, is on sale this week. The book's cover price is $19.95 but if you order this week you can save 20%.

Have a look ... and joyous Alban Hefin!

On a more interesting note, I'll be able to start shipping Yesterday's Falcon starting next week, now that I've got all my issues with the printer worked out. Tim is working on a launch event to coincide with Summer Solstice on the 21st, and I'll see if I can work something for then as well.

I'm jazzed about this book.

Here at Brighid's Fire Books, we're coming up on another end-of-countdown event -- the release of our next fiction title.

Yesterday's Falcon is an wonderful Authorian fantasy by first time novelist Tim Newman, our second place winner in the 2004 Fiction Manuscript Contest who got bumped up to first place when our original grand prize winner pulled her novel on us.

Not that I'm complaining about that. It would have been nice to have gone with our first choice -- if for no other reason than to counter this box that is closing around us. If we keep publishing speculative fiction, people are going to think that's all we do. But we are just as happy to publish Yesterday's Falcon, simply because it's a really good book.

I love finding stuff like this, that's why I just love holding this contest. Yesterday's Falcon is emotionally rich, vividly descriptive and historically authentic. I'd call it an exciting, engrossing read.

We expect to release Yesterday's Falcon on June 1, 2006. Look for the official announcement here.

You may recall that the IRS had this problem earlier this year, which is why we all wound up having until April 17th to file our taxes.

So, rather than changing things so that you have less time, we decided to emulate the IRS (who better?) with the following modification:

Entries must be postmarked on or before May 1, 2006.

We hope that will help out those last-minute folks who might realize in a panic sometime around 4:45 p.m. tomorrow that their time was running out.

Don't forget, that's postmarked by May 1st.