Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone's having a good holiday! I'm Jewish, but that's no reason why I can't share a bit of Christmas-themed musical genius with all of you!

I have a dream

I love this song...

Writing Contest!

Young Writers' Contest

Maryland students: ages  14-18

Cash Prizes: 1st $150, 2nd $100, 3rd $50

The three winners shall also receive complimentary registrations for the Balticon Science Fiction Convention for themselves and their parents or one guest each and a free Balticon T-Shirt.

a. The deadline is March 31, 2010.

Submissions must be in the field of science fiction or fantasy.

Contest Website for information: www.bsfs.org/bsfsywc<http://www.bsfs.org/bsfsywc>

b. Submissions shall be no more than 2,500 words in length.

c. All submissions should include a title page with the title of the story, the entrant's name or note Home schooled, home address, evening phone number, and e-mail address if possible. Also, please include your English teacher's name.

d. Paper submissions must have numbered pages - all submissions must have a footer with the title and page number. They should not have the entrants name or other identifying information on the individual pages. Paper submissions should be typed or printed, double-spaced, on 8.5 x 11" paper.

e. Electronic submissions must be sent as an attachment to email in either Microsoft Word or Word perfect format. Otherwise they must be printed out and submitted on paper. One contestant may submit multiple entries, but only one prize may be won by any one entrant.

f. The winners will be contacted before the convention and their names will be announced to the public at the next Balticon on Memorial Day Weekend just before the Masquerade at 8:30 PM. Winners need not be present to receive their prizes.

g. Paper submissions should be addressed to:

Balticon Young Writers' Contest

BSFS, Inc.

PO Box 686 , Baltimore, MD 21203-0686


h. Electronic submissions should be addressed to: "ywc at balticon dot org"


i. Judges shall be drawn from the membership of BSFS, Inc. All submissions become the property of Baltimore Science Fiction Society Inc. (BSFS, Inc.), and may be published in Society publications.


For additional information, call the BSFS Building @ 410-563-2737 or the coordinator at 410-823-8913, or send e-mail to: "ywc at balticon dot org," Convention website www.balticon.org<http://www.balticon.org/> 


General organization information and science fiction resources check www.bsfs.org<http://www.bsfs.org/> 

Inspirational Speech From a 12-year-old

Truly inspirational speech from a 12-year-old girl. We ALL need to listen to her.

Concert this Sunday

Hey guys, here's a post by Aurora, about a concert this Sunday!


Please come and hear kids/teens perform with the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras at Strathmore Hall!
When: Sunday December 6
At: The Music Center at Strathmore
What time: Junior Orchestras and Harpists will play at three PM; Senior Orchestras will perform at 7 PM
There will also be a guest pianist (Lura Johnson) from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra who will solo during the evening concert
Tickets are $8 for kids and seniors, $20 for adults.
I am a TLCI highschooler who will be playing the violin in the evening concert. It will be a very exciting program! Happy Holidays! Aurora Wheeland

Loads of online writing resources!

    I've been finding a lot of online writing resources recently, and I though I'd share them with you!
    The first one is an ezine called Teen Inklings that comes out once a month and covers a different topic on how to make your writing better in each one. It is written by a 16 year old with the pen name Christian Miles, and can be found at teeninklings.blogspot.com 
    Next is the Advanced Fiction Writing Ezine, which can be found at www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ezine I haven't looked at it much since I don't like the style of the website, but that's just me ;) There's a bunch of other stuff on the website as well, including the "Snowflake Method" for creating a plot outline.
    Where The Map Ends (wherethemapends.com) is a website on writing Christian fiction, but there's a lot of good stuff on there for anyone! My favorite is the Tip of the Week column (You'll have to skim through a lot of Christian stuff if that's not what you want to read). 
    Teenage Authors is a GREAT website with loads of tips that unfortunately seems to have not been updated for a while. It can be found at teenageauthor.wordpress.com Make sure to check out the "Get Published" page, even if you're not looking to be published, since it's a great list of ezines and magazines!
    www.sfwa.org also has some good tips, mostly at the "Writing Tips " and "The Craft of Writing " pages.
    That's about it... There's also NaNoWriMo, but that's finished for the year.
For an offline resource, Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine is absolutely amazing. Unlike most writing books, the exercises in it are both interesting and helpful. Plus you might get a really good bit of writing out of it!
    And this one's just for fun :) As I was finding all the links for this post I ran across this typing speed test. speedtest.10-fast-fingers.com
    I hope you found this useful!
    If I left out any resources that you know of, leave it in a comment.
    Sara