My critique partners have been really busy lately racking up accomplishments. Today, want to give a shout out Carmen Steele for having her flash fiction piece, Kindred Chronicles: The Blood Prophecy, published over at Wicked Jungles. {click link to read it}
Congrats lady, keep it up.
Congrats to one of my writing buddies and critique partners, Mynfel, for selling her book today.
And not only did she sell her book, but she got a 3 book deal in the process. So big shout out to Mynfel, you go girl.
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.
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? 
The River City Romance Writers’s (my local writing chapter) annual Duel on the Delta contest is open and accepting submissions in the following categories:
New this year, the submission process is 100% electronic. So polish up your first 15 pages and enter. For complete contest & submission details click here.
2010 marks the 4th annual Chase The Dream contest hosted by Rachelle Chase and Leigh Michaels. This year, the final judges are Alex Logan of Grand Central Publishing, Deb Werksman of Sourcebooks, Theresa Stevens of Red Sage, Susan Swinwood of Harlequin/Mira/Spice, Esi Sogah of Avon Books, Kelli Martin of Kimani, Christine Witthohn of Book Cents Literary Agency, Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency, and Elizabeth Pomada of Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency.
For those of you unfamiliar with this contest, weekly winners are chosen from the pool of submissions for that week. At the end, all of the weekly finalist will be review by the panel of final judges and they will choose a winner.
So if you have a killer first 1,000 words, stop by and enter. I’ve already submitted my entry for the first week of consideration.
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.
Mary McCall, a fellow RCRW member, wrote an article on the creative process using military lingo that really spoke to me and my critique partner–don’t ask…. .
I really enjoyed the article and gained some insight. From now on, I will let my Scout have it BEFORE I call my Strategist in for consulation (who and I kidding, I will probably have to drug my Strategist to keep her out of the process until I’m ready for her, but I digress). And only once the Strategist has had her say, will I present my ideas to the Commander (otherwise known as the bitchy inner editor) for approval.
if I follow this progress, I bet my Solider will by much happier once I give her the ok to do her job since the Scout and Strategist won’t be interfering nearly as much as they currently are, and the Commander won’t be inclined to make many as visits to check on progress.
Check out her post in full here.
Decided to do a NaNo check in today, so here goes. It’s Day 6 and I’ve not written today yet (but I plan to, no worries.)
And I will admit, Day 1 & 2 were more than a bit rocky. For one, I’m still actively writing and polishing up my contemporary romance (Worth Fighting For), so that keeps me busy. But determined to get a good, more than good actually, start on my Urban Fantasy, I decided to challenge myself this month and give working on two manuscripts a chance.
It’s also been slow going because I decided to undertake this challenge without a plot overview/outline or character sketches. Apparently, just jumping in feet first is soooo not my style.
Now, I knew this going in, but I am always trying to make myself a better, more productive writer; and that means I have to challenge my established procedures from time to time to make sure I’m not bogging myself down with unnecessary processes.
So I decided to spend time during my lunch break this week to work on character profiles for my main characters. So far, I have 3 out of 5 done, and the story opens up more and more each time I complete one. Yesterday, I had my best day yet, clocking 700 words on my NaNo project.
Yes, is far below the daily word goal of 1,667, but I’m very encouraged by it. Now that I have I clearer view on my story, I know longer have to wonder around in wide circles, waxing poetic about nonsensical things. (Because trust me, I have. If you could only see some of what I’ve written thus far-lol)
I’ve been rolling along nicely, and I hope the trend continues.
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.
