I want to take a minute and congratulate one of my chapter members on the publication of her first book. Today marks the release of Along Came Quinn by Suzanne Rossi.

Congrats Suzanne!!  

 So I asked Suzanne to share a little about the book  with me & she sent me over the book trailer and a blurb:

     Alexandria Montgomery doesn’t like or trust adventurer, Quinn Rafferty, but needs him to guide her through the jungles of Guatemala in search of her thieving ex-boyfriend who has stolen a priceless treasure map.     

    Deep in the jungle, Alex learns love can strike at any time with the least likely of men, and Quinn comes to the realization an uptight antique store owner, who upon their first meeting shot him, just might be the woman of his dreams.     

    But what will happen when Quinn discovers Alex has lied, and the treasure, earmarked as a way to provide for his mother and grandmother, doesn’t exist? Can he forgive her betrayal, or will he just walk away?  

If you like what you’ve seen and read so far about Along Came Quinn, please visit Wild Rose Press and pick up a copy.  Available in both ebook format and print.  I’ve already ordered mine, I’m getting a sexy “Indiana Jones in the Jungle” type vibe from the trailer and the blurb.  Now come on, what not to like about that combo?

Through tomorrow, January 6, Kelly Martin, Senior Editor for Kimini Romance, is giving you the opportunity to pitch to her.  Click here for details.  You can find Kimanin’s guidlines here.

And in strangely beautiful news,  author Leanna Renne Hieber has posted the official book trailer and 3 excerpts from “The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker” on her blog.  Darkly Luminous is the much anticipated (at least by me   ) follow up to her best selling gothic Victorian fantasy “The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker”.  For those interested, you can find my review of Strangely Beautiful here.

I was asked by the nice ladies over at Petit Fours & Hot Tamales to be their guest cook this Friday, Dec 4th.   I decided to continue to discussion on African American romance and it’s place in the romance genre.  Please stop by this Friday and join in the discussion.

This is my first guest blog appearence and I’m excited about it.

I’m going National!  Well, not really… But I have been asked to be a guest blogger over at Petit Fours & Hot Tamales.  I must have made some sort of  impression on those lovely ladies while at M&M, because I have no clue why I was presented with this opportunity.  Hmm, I think it must have been  my Cha-Cha- Slide that wowed them. 

Now, in all seriousness, I consider this an honor.  I mean who am I really?  I’m a virtually unknown, unpublished writer.  So I’m really looking forward to this.  

I don’t know what I will “talk” about yet, but I’m leaning towards continuing the discussion about AA Romance  and it’s place in the industry I started the other week.  Come on over to the Petit Fours on December 4th to find out.

If any of you have any suggestions for blog topics, leave a comment below letting me know what they are.  All will be considered (except those involving anyone with the name of Cullen or Black–sorry Megan, I had to stop you before you got started- LOL)

I got word this past weekend that my entry finaled in the SOLA’s 4th annual Dixie Kane contest. 

I received  Honorable Mention in the Long Contemporary category. 

I am so excited!! 

 Yay me!!

Now, back to the grindstone.  I have a manuscript to tweak and send out, and another to start.

I survived my first pitch (barely) to Deb Werksman from Sourcebooks yesterday.  It went well… not the actual pitching so much (although Deb assured me, once I’d calmed down, that I did a good job), but I did come away with a request, two actually.

YAY!!

Currently, Deb is not accepting multicultural or IR romance, so I was given a referral to an editor at another publisher.  I also got the chance to speak to her about my Urban Fantasy trilogy I have in the works, and she requested that I send that one to her when I was ready.

Can you say “Woohoo”? 

I am over the moon at this opportunity.  So needless to say, I am off to the bat cave to polish up my contemporary romance so  I can submit it.  Then I’ll be digging into my Urban Fantasy trilogy in a couple of weeks.

This has been an unbelievable year for me, as far as my writing goes.  I decided in January to get serious about getting published, and I set several goals that would help me accomplish this task.  So while it is just a request to read my manuscripts and not an offer to buy– at least not right now 

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.”- Peace Pilgrim

 (I’m working on channeling more optimism)

I feel good now knowing that I am actually making progress in my journey.  While I’ve not reached my destination, I have past several mile markers.  This means I’m further along the path now than I was at the beginning of this year; In fact, I’m now closer to my goal than to my starting point, so that’s a very good thing. 

I’m feeling like a real writer now.

Ok, I got a lots of work to do, so I’m off to the bat cave.

I attended the RWA Conference in D.C. last week.  This was my first time at Nationals and I had an excellent time.  I met some new authors (both aspiring and published), caught up with some friends I hadn’t see in a while (or ever as the case with my online critique group),  picked up a few pearls of wisdom, & attended some very informative workshops.

The best part of the conference for me was meeting some of my critique partners for the first time.  We all meet in an online workshop and hit it off, so we  formed a critique group.

Book Signings:
I missed the Avon book signing (because I didn’t know about it) but I made sure to attend the Harlequin, Pocket Book, Berkley, Grand Central, NAL, Ballantine/Bantam, St.  Martin’s, and Sourcebooks book signings.  With this being my first RWA book signing event, I went into the Harlequin signing with my money ready to purchase a few books and get them signed.  Imagine my happy shock and surprise when I was promptly told to put my money away because all the books were free.  Wait a second, free books???  And from some of my favorite authors???

Woohoo!!!

Here are a few, just a few, of the authors I got a chance to meet and chat with:

 Social Events

I attended both The Gathering (sponsored by the FF&P chapter) and the Samhain Publishing wine meet & greet.   The Gathering was a lot of fun, mostly because I met Allison, one of my critique partners, (see photo at top) for the first time and we got to hang out for a tiny bit.  One of the best parts about The Gathering was getting the chance to put a face with the names of several people that I communicate with online via the message boards.  Oh and let me not forget, Ms. Jade Lee is a trip!  LOL.

After dinner and the PRISM awards, they hosted a panel consisting of many of the PRISM award winners.  It was quite interesting and I learned of a new author (well, new to me at least), Leanna Renee Hieber.   She spoke of the need for perseverance and determination in all aspiring authors.  But the most important thing I got from her was to not write to the trends of the market, but to write the story of your heart. 

She’d been writing and trying to get her upcoming novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, published for 10 before she got her big break.  Talk about perseverance.  The Strangely Beautiful Tale… is a combination Victorian Paranormal/Gothic-y story.  I read the preview she included with our gift bags and let me tell you, I did not want to like this story.  But after reading the first 3 chapters, I am eagerly awaiting its release on August 25.

 

Thanks for reading my conference recap.  I know I haven’t touched on any of the workshops I took, but I may do another post about those later.  In the meantime, head over to the RWA site and browse through the list of workshops that were conducted.  I believe they are selling both DVDs and audio recordings of many of the workshops.  Also, I believe the handouts may also be available for download on the site.

If you are interested in reading about my sightseeing adventures in D.C., head over to my personal blog .

There were 3 keynote speakers at conference this year, Janet Evanovich, Linda Howard and Eloisa James.  All three ladies gave excellent speeches and I brought back 1 main piece of advice ( pearl of wisdom) from each of their talks.

Janet Evanovich:
Janet opened the conference with a  witty and inspirational Q & A session.  She spoke about her road to publication (it took her 10 years), the importance of writing daily (because being an author is a real job and must be treated as such), and how as an author, you are responsible for your career.

From Janet I got pearl of wisdom #1:  Never save anything.  She stressed the importance of not saving ideas for scenes, story lines, or dialogues for “the next book”, because frankly, they may never be a “next book”.

Linda Howard
Linda delivered a hilarious talk during the luncheon on Thursday.  She regaled us with “laugh out loud” stories ranging from how she ended up being the keynote speaker (she committed while still under the effects of local anesthesia-lol), to tales about her family.  From Linda came pearl of wisdom #2:  If she can write while being Keeper of the Nuts ( i.e. her family), then so can I.    Linda shared her stories to encourage us to not give up on our dreams and to persevere in the face of challenge, regardless of the number of distractions you may have going on.  And let me tell you, she had tons  to deal with- LOL.

Eloise James
Elosie spoke at the luncheon on Friday.  While she had her humorous moments, her talk was a bit more serious in nature.  She spoke of  how she got into writing Regency Romance with degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale; and parents who are well know authors in their own right (Robert Bly–poet and National Book Award winner, and Carol Bly–and award winning author of short stories and essays).  She shared some touching anecdotes, one of which leads me to pearl of wisdom #3: Use all of your emotions, (fear, pain, humor, etc.), and pour them on the page. 

Eloise shared with us that she had some complications while pregnant, and she feared she would miscarry.  So she took all of that fear and poured it on the page while she wrote scenes in which her heroine miscarried.  She was emotional spent afterwards, but she said the effort was well worth it as she was able to produce a very heart wrenching scene that conveyed the emotion she was going for.

Yes, each speaker made many salient points and dispense several pieces of sage advice; however, these 3 pearls were the most important points for me, and keep them with me in my writing going forth.

I came across the Life After Agent, Part 1 article by Dean Wesley Smith via the message boards on the FF&P site.  Now I’m a newbie to this industry, but I found this article very interesting and conversation starting.  (To read it, click on the blue hyperlinked text above.)   

Mr. Smith’s article takes a look at what life would be like if the role of agent just dissappeared one day.  He provides bits of history on the publishing industry and speaks to the roles & responsibilities of agents  in relation to those of the writer and the editor.

It’s a very though provoking article, to say the least.  And it did challenge some of my beliefs about agents and their role in the grand scheme of things.  All in all, it’s given me a bit of perspective, which we all need from time to time.  My main take away is this quote : “YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN CAREER.”

Great advice.

 —

I got the contest results back this morning from the RSJ Aspiring Authors contest, and…

I didn’t place, but I scored much better than thought I would.  In fact, the feedback was very encouraging.  I’ve recently been battling writer’s block with this story, and the judges’ feedback, along with my CP’s, have helped spark the muse.

So I’m off to increase the word count.