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​November 10-14 is National Young Readers Week, an annual event to encourage children to read! It was co-founded by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and Pizza Hut! I think there is no greater incentive for anything than pizza, but the program also gets celebrities, both national and local, to read to children in order to reinforce the positive example of reading.

But back to pizza! Here are some events you can hold during National Young Readers Week to encourage young readers everywhere!

Update: Horrorstor has been added in the semi-final round! Thanks for voting it in, everyone! 

Ah, the Goodreads Choice Awards. I don't know about you guys, but I get pretty psyched for them every single year. I knew they would be opening up this morning, and I had a hard time sleeping, waking up and checking Twitter to see if they had gone live.

This year, Quirk has three FOUR titles nominated in the Goodreads Choice Awards, and we are absolutely thrilled. 

HORRORSTOR by Grady Hendrix is nominated in Best Horror of 2014.

WORLD OF TROUBLE by Ben H. Winters is nominated in Best Science Fiction of 2014.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE EMPIRE STRIKETH BACK by Ian Doescher is nominated in Best Humor of 2014. 

HOLLOW CITY by Ransom Riggs is nominated in Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction of 2014.

Go cast your votes! And congrats to Ben, Ransom, Grady, and Ian! 

November, mostly known to Americans as That Time When the Family Gets Together at the End of the Month to Awkwardly Eat Lots of Food Revolving around a Mythical (and Most Likely Inaccurate) Meeting of Two Cultures, is also a season for writers. Yes, you're correct: along with raising awareness for not shaving, banana pudding lovers, and sweet potatoes, November is National Novel Writing Month.

Interested in writing a 50,000-word novel and you're intimidated by the time limit? You're not alone. Thousands will join you in the pursuit and feel as though their fingers cannot chitter-chatter at the keyboard quickly enough. It's nerve rending.

Unless, of course, you regard those writers among us that take a helluva long time on their work.  With your permission, I'm going to explore some of the leisureliest (yep, that's a word) writers that decided to grace the page, either by pen or typing contraption.

Let's begin. Permission granted?

It’s officially Austen Month here at Quirk (Jane Austen Cover to Cover is almost out!), and what better way to celebrate than to revisit one of the great authoress’s beautiful novels. All month long, I’ll be reading and recapping Northanger Abbey, Austen’s love letter cum parody of the gothic novels of her day. I plan on going chapter by chapter for the next few weeks, and please consider this your cordial invitation to join in, whether that means reading along, or just commenting!

First off, my credentials: I first picked up Pride and Prejudice when I was 13 years old after being told that it was a “difficult book” and I would “probably have trouble with it.” I blew through it, fell very much in love with Austen’s sardonic style, and felt extremely pleased with myself for having proven the naysayers wrong. (Has trying to discourage a bookworm from reading ever actually worked? I’m genuinely curious.) In the following decade I read Austen’s other novels, determined that Persuasion was probably my favourite, watched pretty much every movie adaptation available, and was informed that I most closely resemble Sense and Sensibility’s Elinor Dashwood by a Which Austen Heroine are You quiz. So yeah, pretty much an expert.

Let’s get right down to it, shall we?

Want to start writing fanfiction? I’m not going to tell you what to write about, but I will break it down into six simple steps. You’ll be creating stories that feature characters you love in no time at all.