La-Tessa Montgomery

Just got back from GRW’s Moonlight & Magnolias conference.  And as usual, it was excellent.  The workshops covered a variety of topics, and the hands on workshops on critiquing–which I had the pleasure of co-moderating– and pitching went very well.  The conference was in Decatur, GA this year and was my first time visiting.   I must say, the area we were in was very charming, had excellent restuarants, bars, and shopping all withing walking distance.

Now, on to the conference highlights:  First up, I really enjoyed the pitch workshop.  The attendees were divided up and paired with a published author for hands on pitch work.  I was lucky enough to get author Mark All, and just let me tell you, he really helped me get my urban fantasy pitch together.  Trust me when I say I needed it.  I’ve been writing, living and breathing Contemporary Romance the last 3 years and had no clue how to best pitch my UF.  Mark stepped in and shed light on it for me.  A big help as I went on to successfully pitch that day and received a submission request.  YAY!! for me and THANKS!!!! to Mark for his help.

Leigh Michaels’ workshop, Things that Stump the Best of Us was super awesome.  One of my weaknesses as a writer is that I tend to focus a lot on back story and character history, as opposed to present story action as I start off my stories.  Leigh reviewed quite a few quick tools to help eliminate this, improve pace, and fix up transitions.  Really good stuff, I can’t wait to implement in my revisions.

Of course, meeting up with friends, making new connections and the Maggie Awards are the crown jewels of M&M for me each year.  Here are a couple a memories from the weekend:  Some of the authors I met:

Author D. Renee Bagby

D. Renee was up for a Maggie for Eris this year in the Paranormal category

Jodi & author Leigh Michaels

Leigh delivered two excellent workshops this year.

Author Shiloh Walker

Got the chance to meet Shiloh at the book signing.  She was being coy

Author Gabi Stevens

Gabi gave a great workshop on themes and how they can be used to strengthen your story.

Now, on to the Maggies, we had a ball:

Me & 3 of my critique partners.  Lovely ladies in blue, black and white

Pam and & I posing with author Jax Cassidy

Chudney mid groove- LOL

No clue what Jodi and I call ourselves doing right here.  None at all

J is feeling the music I tell ya.

Nicki, Trish, and DJ Silver Knight.  He kept us on the dance floor all night long, whether we wanted to be or not!  Good times all around!

Again, another great conference put on by the members of GRW.  I’d be remiss if I left out the highlight of the conference…. I pitched to 2 editors and 1 agent and received submission requests from all 3!!!  WOOT! I’m super excited, even more so because my the editor I pitched my contemp romance to seemed just as excited about my story as I am.  This is important because my contemp happens to fall into a subcategory that makes it a bit hard to place.  But I love the story, so I’m sticking with it.

If you’re an author, published or not, and looking for a conference to attend in 2012, I’d highly recommend Moonlight and Magnolias.  It will be back in Norcross next year which means one thing… The Norcross Train Station for dinner and desert.  Personally, I can’t wait

I’m fresh back from my trip to Charleston, SC. 2 of my crit partners, along with another member of RCRW, drove down to attend the Low Country Writers beach retreat.  It was a small, weekend retreat that was quite productive for me.  I took advantage of the scenery and the quiet time to get some writing done.  I am proud to say that I knocked back a total of 4,337 words while I was there.

That’s quite the accomplishment considering all the distractions I encountered  (like the beach, sightseeing, the beach, the excellent food, the beach, the wine, and let’s not forget the beach….).

All in all, a great trip for me.  Being away from everything allowed me the opportunity to really focus on my wip.  Here’s my writing desk I set up during the retreat portion of the trip:

The Beach Bound Retreat itself was a small, cozy affair.  There were workshops going on, but if you wanted to just go sit and write you could.  And I did, as evidenced by the pic of my writing desk-lol).  I found the tranquility and white noise sitting on the back deck listening to the ocean + the tunes from my Pandora station to be the balm to my writer’s soul (ok, that was cheesy, but you get the point) and I couldn’t resist it.

However, I did attend a couple workshops and my favorite 2, by far, were “Welcome to the World, Baby Book”  led by debut author Kieran Kramer and “20 Ways to Kill a Novel”, led by Joanna Wayne.

Kieran’s workshop was a fun, upbeat look at the journey of an author.  She shared several motivational points and overall advice on how to keep your wits about you as you write, polish, and sell your novel.  She shared her 9-1-1 rule (which is all about staying focused and pushing through the hump to complete a draft) and she gave us all a prescription to take ADVIL whenever we need it: Attitude, Depth, Validation, Involvement, Laugher.

Joanna couldn’t whittle her list down to 20 items, so she actually shared with us 25 ways that we would kill our books.  The list is mostly of stuff I’d heard at some point in time before, but I really enjoyed her chat, along with the personal recounts she peppered throughout it.   The list contains such standards as lack of motivation, too much back story, too much telling, not enough showing, etc.  But one thing I’d never thought about was the fact that you may have your book set in the wrong  location or time.  Setting never consciously occurred to me as being an area that could kill a story.  But when you think about it, it’s obvious.  The group spent a bit of time talking about this as we came up with examples of how certain books would not work if you change the environment in which they are set.  Joanna also recounted how she once used her story idea , along with the plot twists and her characters’ GMC to back her way into the setting for the story.  This chat really made me look at setting in a different way.  I really get the adage of using “setting as a character” now.

It was very pleasant the entire weekend and I got lot accomplished, not only with writing, but I was able to de-stress and unplug a little.  And with the beautiful views  how could I not. Also, I got to meet some new authoring comrades & I even won a prize, Kieran Kramer’s debut novel “When Harry Met Molly”.

I had a  great time down in Charleston and will be blogging over at  A Bit of Clarity about some of my non-writing adventures in the Low Country in the upcoming weeks.

I just got back from visiting the lovely authors of the Colorado Romance Writers chapter of RWA.  I was invited to their fall retreat last week to speak on blogging and social networking for authors.

I had a blast and would like to thank Liz for inviting and all the members for being so welcoming and bearing with me and my nerves as I did my workshop AND for not booing me when I read my first chapter.

I didn’t get a chance to stay long, but Colorado is a beautiful, peacful place.  Very inspiring.  Once I got over my nerves (and my workshop was done), I was able to really settle in and work on my new story a bit. I spent the weekend doing the character profile for my antagonist, which was a lot of work because in the past year I’ve been “knowing” this guy, I really didn’t know a thing about him.

Now, I know that sentence sounds odd, but I’m sure all the writers know what I’m talking about.  The only thing I knew about this character was that he was a bad dude and wanted my heroine for his own nefarious reasons. 

No, really, this is all I knew about him when I was writing the first draft. In fact, his name is Bad Dude (or some variation thereof) throughout the entire draft.

Never let it be said that I let something as trivial as the lack of a name or GMC  stop me from writing a story, gosh darnit. 

But I had a good time in Colorado.  I made some new friends and have possibly stumbled on a new path. There was a lot of interest in my workshop and I’ve been asked to expand it into a full 4 week course.  So now I have 3 different 4 week course ideas playing around in my mind… (and you all know that being in my mind is not always the best place to be- hahahahaha!).

Here’s a shot of a bit of the artwork from my cabin.  This was on the wall directly by the bed

I dubbed him the Guardian. Well, I sort of had too. If not, I would have freaked out waking up and seeing him first thing every morning-lol. 

Oh, and I got up close and personal with some wild life. Look, it’s Bambi!

And his son (or daughter)

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.