Guest Blogger: Me on writing book reviews

Many thanks to Clark Bjorne, the "barker" of the Book Review Blog Carnival who invited me to contribute a post about writing book reviews.

To those who follow my blog, my post One Person's View of Book Reviewing will be familiar territory, but maybe you are a newbie around here, or you've just dropped in to find out about guidelines for book reviewing.

If you are not familiar with the Book Review Blog Carnival then check out the widget which I have running down on the bottom right of my side bar.

The current Book Review Blog Carnival is running at Breeni Books. If you do write book reviews of any sort why not contribute a link and description of your review on the submissions page? The carnival accepts all categories of book reviews, fiction, non-fiction etc. Theoretically participation should drive a few people to your blog, but there is a certain thrill about seeing your links featured on someone else's blog too.

For those who are here because you read Agatha Christie novels, consider submitting your next review (or all your reviews past and future) to the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival which I developed after I had seen the idea functioning on the Book Review Blog Carnival.

Once again you will find the "live" widget down in the bottom right corner, but you can also go to the home page of the carnival and view the postings there. Your submissions to the carnival are made here. Be sure to put your submission into one of the categories and to write a brief teaser for your review.

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Monthly Carnival Launched

I've been trying to work out a way that those of us who are interested in comparing notes on our journey through Agatha Christie's novels and short stories can keep in touch with each other and I've decided on setting up an "official" Monthly Carnival.

This means that participants can contribute links to their own blog postings and book reviews on a monthly basis. The inaugural Carnival will be posted on about January 23 with submissions closing on January 20. Once one carnival closes, submissions for the next one will open. I plan that submissions will close on 20th of each month, ready for posting on about 23rd of the month.

I'm using Blog Carnival which I discovered late last week.
Click here and you will be taken to the site where the submission space lives.
If you have written any reviews of Agatha Christie books, however brief, I encourage you to participate in the carnival.
I don't mind for this inaugural carnival how many posts you link in but they must all relate in some way to your reading of Agatha Christie novels, and they must be on your blog. You don't have to join anything to create your links. Just use the URL of your particular post, and the system will check for it's existence. Write a brief description of the post in Remarks.

I've decided to create yet another, dedicated, blog for the purpose. It is called the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival. This gives it its own RSS feed and I have set up subscription links too.

If you look right down the the bottom of the column on the right you will see a widget that will take you to the Carnival too. This is something you can put on to your blog if you want. You will also see a link to the Book Review Carnival which I've joined.

So, will you join? Let me know. I don't mind if you are an intermittent participant. Feel free too to post about it on your blog and to use my logo for promotional purposes. A link back to this blog would be appreciated too. There is an initial posting on the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival if you want to respond there.