Dani Collins's Blog, page 62

Quick Catch Up

This is a very quick blast as I try to use the rest of my Sunday to close out some contest entries I’m judging. When I signed up to judge, I hadn’t yet been asked to write a surprise book from Harlequin Presents.

More on that when it’s official, but it means that I now have three books due by the end of the year. I also have one (short) book to read and a couple of partials by the end of August. Don’t even get me started on the partials I have to write or the marketing plan I need for my December launch–or, gasp! the September release. (More on that at the bottom of this post.)

It all boils down to Mr. C asking me today if I was going to set up my new printer and me almost bursting into tears.

‘Nice problems to have’ is my mantra at the moment. It’s true, I’m swimming in abundance and managing to make really good progress despite feeling overwhelmed by a few things. I got to The End of Theo & Jaya this morning. It’s not perfect, it needs revision, but that’s my job for this week, provided I get the contest entries out of the way.

In other news, I wanted to remind you to tune in to my blogspot radio interview coming up this Thursday, August 29, 2013 at 5pm. I’ll be chatting with Bernadette Wals at Nice Girls Reading Naughty Books. Don’t worry if you miss it, you can always click this link and hear it later.

And finally, I’ve September release is Shared Whispers, the anthology I contributed to with my Champagne friends last year. It was recently picked up by  Champagne Books after initially only being available on Kindle. I’m excited to tell you that as of Sept 3rd, it will be released on all digital platforms.

That means I should update its page here on my site, but judging comes first. You’ll be able to find it wherever you prefer to download your books. (eg. AllRomanceEbooks). Don’t panic if you see the author is MW Davies; I’m there under ‘and friends.’

Happy Sunday.

The post Quick Catch Up appeared first on Dani Collins.

This is a very quick blast as I try to use the rest of my...

This is a very quick blast as I try to use the rest of my Sunday to close out some contest entries I’m judging. When I signed up to judge, I hadn’t yet been asked to write a surprise book from Harlequin Presents.

More on that when it’s official, but it means that I now have three books due by the end of the year. I also have one (short) book to read and a couple of partials by the end of August. Don’t even get me started on the partials I have to write or the marketing plan I need for my December launch–or, gasp! the September release. (More on that at the bottom of this post.)

It all boils down to Mr. C asking me today if I was going to set up my new printer and me almost bursting into tears.

‘Nice problems to have’ is my mantra at the moment. It’s true, I’m swimming in abundance and managing to make really good progress despite feeling overwhelmed by a few things. I got to The End of Theo & Jaya this morning. It’s not perfect, it needs revision, but that’s my job for this week, provided I get the contest entries out of the way.

In other news, I wanted to remind you to tune in to my blogspot radio interview coming up this Thursday, August 29, 2013 at 5pm. I’ll be chatting with Bernadette Wals at Nice Girls Reading Naughty Books. Don’t worry if you miss it, you can always click this link and hear it later.

And finally, I’ve September release is Shared Whispers, the anthology I contributed to with my Champagne friends last year. It was recently picked up by  Champagne Books after initially only being available on Kindle. I’m excited to tell you that as of Sept 3rd, it will be released on all digital platforms.

That means I should update its page here on my site, but judging comes first. You’ll be able to find it wherever you prefer to download your books. (eg. AllRomanceEbooks). Don’t panic if you see the author is MW Davies; I’m there under ‘and friends.’

Happy Sunday.

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Cover Reveal – More Than A Convenient Marriage?

My week of vacation is winding down. My girlfriend and her kids have been in residence, helping me remember what it is to be human–as opposed to a seemingly permanent attachment to my laptop.

We’ve had lots of beach time and a bit of shopping, tons of good food and wine. I’d say perhaps too much of that good thing except we did boot camp twice (Ouch!) and yoga yesterday, so we’ve worked it off.

She hadn’t seen Downton Abbey and I had only finished the first season, so I rewatched that with her and now she’s hooked. Tonight is our last night, but also a bit of a send-off for my daughter who is leaving for University in September.

So we have a few heavy sighs happening.

Fortunately, I received the gorgeous new cover for my December book, More Than A Convenient Marriage? I’m really thrilled with it. What do you think of the angle? A bit different, isn’t it?

My best guess is that they took the scene where Adara and Gideon climb down to a private beach in Greece. She’s already asked for a divorce and while they’re swimming reveals a really heart breaking secret.

I’m going to leave you with that tease for now. There will be a blog tour and I’ll have lots of other insider info when that starts up, likely in October.

I’ve learned that the Release Dates are fluid. The book will start to go on sale in November, on Mills & Boon and eHarlequin. It will probably be on sale mid-November on Amazon, but it can be pre-ordered now if you want to skip the step of checking back to see when it’s up. Looks like you save a buck or so if you buy now and this is a two for one so great value if you haven’t read No Longer Forbidden?

Here’s the back cover copy:

More than a Convenient Marriage?

It started with a signature

Rich, powerful, with a beautiful wife, Greek shipping magnate Gideon Vozaras has it all. Except, his perfect life is a facade….

Gideon can’t afford the public scrutiny of divorce, but if his past has taught him anything it’s to fight dirty to keep what’s his!

No Longer Forbidden?

The limits of his control

Rowan O’Brien is the only woman ever to have tempted Nicodemus Marcussen’s steely control— but she was always forbidden.

Years later, tragedy brings Rowan back into Nic’s life— and when deeply buried secrets begin to surface, they are forced to confront their darkest desires!

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I’m On TV!

Except it’s Youtube, but it’s called Grand Forks TV.

Yesterday I had a signing at Pedallers Place in Grand Forks. Bill and Sandy, known well as the former owners of Contact Photo Arts, have sold that business and converted their store into a bike shop slash used book store. Bill is the Canadian distributor for Stride bikes, one of which you can see on their cover photo for their Facebook page if you follow the link above. They’re a different looking bike, but very comfy as you sit up tall. They collapse into a neat bundle in ten seconds that fits into the trunk of a car.

Sandy runs the book side of the store and is kind enough to carry my books. Harlequins are only available on the shelves for a month, but I buy extra copies and sell them through her so when people ask me where they can get my books, I can point them to Pedallers Place. (I’m also in the Christina Lake Living Arts Centre, in the gift shop of the Visitor’s Centre.)

Les Johnson runs Grand Forks TV which is merging with What’s Up Grand Forks, both a news channel and a means of promoting local events. If you weren’t aware of it (guilty) then you are now. It’s a great hub for news, events and even local politics so if you’re a Boundary resident, you probably want to check in often.

Huge thanks to Bill and Sandy for hosting me and Les for dropping by the shop to interview me. As for the signing, I only had a few people sign up for my draw for a bag of signed books by Harlequin Authors. If you’d like to be included, drop me a line by commenting here, email me off my contact page, or catch me on Facebook or Twitter. Let me know you’d like to be included in the draw and I’ll pull a lucky name next Saturday, August 17th.

Dani’s Interview on Grand Forks TV.

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RWA 2013 – Saturday, Last Day

Photo is me with editor Megan Haslam, from Mills and Boon London, and Megan Crane/Caitlin Crews. I know, looks like there’s only three of us, but there’s actually four. Maybe I should change my name to Megan to avoid confusion?

After the marathon that is an RWA conference, it’s always a shock when you hit the last day. I was pretty burnt out by now so I slept in and had a very lovely brunch with my roommate, Natasha, whom I hadn’t seen much of despite our sharing a room.

By the way, if you’re just coming across these posts on the National Conference, here are links to the previous posts:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference
RWA 2013 – Floorganized
RWA 2013 – Wednesday Cont’d
RWA 2013 – Thursday
RWA 2013 – Friday
RWA 2013 – Indie vs Traditional Publishing
RWA 2013 – Harlequin Party (and Writing a Series & Reviews & other stuff)

After a lazy brunch where we caught up and checked in for our flights, I went to the Harlequin PAN session which is basically an opportunity to Q&A some of the senior editors and marketing executives.

There will be posts on HAN about that so I won’t recap here, but will reiterate that yes, Harlequin was a big ship to turn around when the market changed so suddenly (and somewhat violently) a few years ago. They are responding, strengthening and using the brand, always looking at expansion opportunities, working on SEO and keywords and lots of behind the scenes discoverability stuff that indie authors have to do for themselves.

If it sounds like I’m trying to justify my decision to work with them instead of pursuing the indie path, I may be a little bit, but I think there’s a huge swell right now of screaming voices telling writers the ONLY way to publish is indie and we need some calmer voices to say, Wait a minute.

Here’s the thing. Maybe the Bellas and Lilianas are making huge profits right now, but I have to wonder if they can maintain it? Loads of writers have shot to the top, but they don’t always stay there. Time will tell and all I’m saying is, having many eggs in many baskets can be a wonderful thing. Don’t underestimate the big houses. Corporations have a lot invested in their own survival and will find a way to do that.

Another topic I didn’t tackle, but which was bandied as gossip around the conference, was the smaller digital presses and how they are faring and how they are succeeding. When it comes to indie and digital, the name of the game is working with the Amazon algorithms. I heard one remark along the lines of ‘bought their author onto the best seller list’ which implies it’s not always about how good a particular book is, but how well the author and/or her publisher has manipulated the system.

At the same time, many were bemoaning that Amazon keeps changing their formulas and the way books are discovered and how reviews are counted to get a book on which list…

I could rant my way into the next decade on how writers have to figure out what they want: to reach readers? Or make money? Because you can make money in a lot of ways that are way easier than publishing. Start at a fast food chain and minimum wage and you’ll be making more than a lot of published writers ever will.

That doesn’t mean I think you should be ignorant of the importance of numbers and how positions on lists can affect your visibility and thus your sales and livelihood. But again, this is something a few players do really well and most of us suck at. It takes time and inclination. Have you got a lot of both? The big houses do and once the dust settles in a year or two, they’ll know very well how to play those numbers.

Indie is a golden goose and if you want to go after it, Fill. Your. Boots. Just recognize how much work it is. It sounds like easy money, but it’s not. It’s hard. So is writing, just in case you were wondering.

Back to Saturday afternoon, I won’t go into how I screwed up and dolled up for an event that didn’t exist, just let you imagine me in my LBD and sparkly earrings and necklace at the concierge. I thought I looked like an escort waiting to be let up to a room, but Cathryn kindly said I looked like I was waiting for my alpha-hero.

Bottom line, I got to the right event as it was finishing, everyone else was in jeans and T-shirts (except Sue Stephens who also got the wrong info) and afterward I went for coffee with Maisey, Megan, Jackie Ashenden and Jane Porter. Yep, name dropping again, but this was yet another moment at conference where I went: yeah, this is why the time, airfare, and lost vacation week is worth it. You feel normal when you’re among a group of like-minded (slightly left of centre) individuals.

Later I had dinner with Maisey and Jackie along with their friend Nicole (sorry, I missed her last name) and Nancy Warren and my roommate Natasha. We all debated the $18 mac and cheese with lobster, but none of us wound up with it. We had a great time regardless, then returned for the Awards ceremony.

I’ve been out of touch so long, I didn’t realize it was such a coup for Sarah Morgan to win with a Presents in Short Contemporary (second year running!) Apparently they’ve been snubbed for quite a while. Go Sarah!

Natasha and I were also cheering on our fellow RWA-GVC chapter mate, Jacqui Nelson, up for a Golden Heart. She has an anthology coming out soon, so look for it.

We slipped out early as we both had to be up before five to get our flights. Which bookends my Overview post that I began in the airport at that ungodly six o’clock hour two weeks ago.

All in all, a fabulous conference, but I knew it would be, based on the Grand Trine as noted in my horoscope before I left. Go ahead and laugh. I’ll have you know that Jupiter has moved into my fame and honours sector so you’d better believe I’ll be throwing books into the Rita contest as soon as it opens ;o)

I hope you’ve enjoyed my posts on #RWA2013 (“It’s #RWA13, trust me I’m a Twitter doctor” ~ Maisey Yates). (She is, follow her.)

Please leave a comment letting me know if you think blogging is dead.

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RWA 2013 – Harlequin Party!

Continuing my posts on RWA 2013 in Atlanta, I’m now at Friday afternoon and evening. If you’ve missed some in this series, links to previous posts are here:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference
RWA 2013 – Floorganized
RWA 2013 – Wednesday Cont’d
RWA 2013 – Thursday
RWA 2013 – Friday
RWA 2013 – Indie vs Traditional Publishing

Before I left for the Harlequin Party, I did attend one more workshop on Reviews with Jeannie Lin and Shawntelle Madison. It was very well attended, had great handouts, and they were good speakers.

Unfortunately, my brain had checked out for the afternoon. My takeaway from this was: Have a reason for seeking reviews because they don’t necessarily sell books.

I was glad to hear this because I was initially overwhelmed by all the info they offered on how to get reviews. I was like, Seriously? I’m not busy enough? Then I went, okay, a review would be nice, but I can wait to worry about that in a year or two after I get some more books written.

And, before I forget (Wait, don’t guess yet!) I wanted to talk about a workshop I attended on Writing A Series. I can’t figure out from my notes or the schedule of workshops when I was in it, but it was hosted by a pair of Avon authors and one of their editors. I know, I am a bad note-taker. 

Basically they identified Types Of Series, which I kinda knew but hadn’t concretely separated in my head. So, for those of you planning a series, you can link books in many ways. I missed the beginning of this workshop so I don’t have definitions for all of these. They’re pretty self-explanatory anyway:

Situational
Cultural
Geographical
Family – This is very common with a number of siblings in one family. I didn’t plan to do this with the Makricostas, but as you can see from my More Than A Convenient Marriage? page, No Longer Forbidden became More Than A One Off Story. 

One of the speakers had a series set in a casino which I thought was a cool idea. They also mentioned that having an over-arching romance can cause reader confusion. While teasers about a couple having some chemistry might work through a number of books, ultimately readers want the whole romance wrapped up in one go. Having said that, writing a complete romance in each book but having an over-arching mystery can work for a romance reader.

The other advice they had for writers planning to write a series was: consider what you’re good at. What is your brand, what are your stories ‘known’ for, what fairy tale are you telling? What is it about you that you’ll bring to your series? If you’re having trouble figuring that out, look at the types of books and myths that resonate for you.

If you do write a series, be sure to have a book list on your website telling readers the order in which to read the books. Not everyone cares, but the ones that do care, care a lot.

Harkening back to the indie vs trad post, writing series seems to be a terrific way to develop momentum as an indie author. I don’t think it hurts on the traditional side either, which is why I made a point of going to this workshop. Why yes, my infamous To Do list contains the phrase, “Plan a Series.” Watch for it ;o)

Finally, we get to the Harlequin Party which holds a lot of mystique for the unpublished writer. I went last year with Cathryn and Karen and was a little overwhelmed, to be honest, but the same dj is flown in every year and he keeps the place hopping. I love to dance so I have a great time no matter what.

This year I walked over with Nancy Warren, met Cathryn and Barb Wallace when we arrived and partied with the Presents editors and authors. All my photos were taken on my iPhone 3s, so they’re all grainy and awful. I have a few with Nancy, Aimee Carson (one of my first friends from last year’s Presents lunch), Maisey Yates, Megan Crane, Sharon Kendrick trying on Maisey’s golden shoes, and a photo of a gal I met at the librarian’s lunch and discovered she’s my neighbour from Creston. We bumped into each other several times over the conference, but do you think I can find her business card in this mess? Argh.

I’ll put up photos of the socks however, because they cracked me up yet turned out to be such a lifesaver. Once you kick off your shoes, you kind of want something on your feet while you continue dancing or you’ll get blisters on your toes-ies.

I missed it last year, but I guess they offer up socks every year with some Harlequin branding. This year they were hot pink and advertise the new Cosmo Red Hot Reads. Photo on left and, big surprise, still Floorganized only worse. I know, today it will get tidied, I swear.

(Aside: it was going to be my evening project last night, but we went to dinner and on the way home saw a man staggering along the street. This isn’t a completely crazy sight–we live in a tourist town and it’s summer. Some people overindulge on their way from the pub to their camp site.

However, he was probably seventy and looked extra confused. We stopped him and he couldn’t remember his name or where he was. After getting the police and paramedics on the way, we figured out he was diabetic and got some apple juice in him.

He remembered his name at that point–it was quite amazing how quickly he began to recover–and he said, “I think if I could get some sugar.” The paramedics arrived and I’m sure after he got packaged up and stabilized he was able to remember where his family was, but it was a bit of drama for us in our small town here so I didn’t get back into my office after dinner the way I meant to.)

Remember when I said I’d be all over the board with my posts on conference? I’m not the type to say I told ya so, but I’m just saying.

One more post, a quick wrap up on the final day, Saturday, coming next.

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RWA 2013 – Indie vs Traditional

In case you’re just coming across my posts, I’ve been blogging about the RWA conference I attended in Atlanta this year. Here are the previous posts:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference
RWA 2013 – Floorganized
RWA 2013 – Wednesday Cont’d
RWA 2013 – Thursday
RWA 2013 – Friday

Being Queen Of Cliff Hangers, I’ve made you wait when I actually promised this in my Overview. I’m sorry, but these posts have taken longer than I expected.

Technically we’re still on Friday. In the Friday post, I forgot that I’d gone into the Liliana Hart workshop on Indie publishing between breakfast and the Harlequin booksigning. After lunch, I went to What Traditional Publishers Offer Their Author which was a PAN session, meaning only published authors could attend.

It’s worth noting that they had to bring in extra chairs to the Liliana Hart workshop and she was already in a ballroom with a big screen because she was just a speck in the distance. Also worth noting: there were many a pink PAN badge in that room. Quite obviously, everyone is interested in what indie publishing can do for an author.

Further note that if you click onto my Books page, I have an indie title, Hustled To The Altar, and three Harlequin Mills & Boon titles. I can tell you right now that even though I haven’t seen a royalty cheque from HMB yet, I’ve received advances on five books and still haven’t earned out what I paid to produce Hustled.

My indie experience is very typical and that is why I am what the industry is now calling a ‘hybrid’ author. I’ve seen my sales pick up slightly on Hustled since Proof of Their Sin came out in North America, but it is not paying the bills. HMB is.

So that’s the short answer to what Traditional publishers can do for an author. Pay them.

Having said that, for a savvy few indie authors, their cheques are in the neighbourhood of $120,000 per month. You read that right, it is not a typo. HMB has not sent me a cheque with that many zeroes on it as yet.

I already knew what trad pubs could offer in terms of production and I’m quite happy to let Harlequin (or Champagne or a future publisher–call me Sourcebooks, Montlake or NY agent) take over the task of cover art, back cover blurb, copy editing, formatting, printing, and distribution.

Distribution, by the way, is a huge, huge reason I’m thrilled to be working with Harlequin Presents. Liliana Hart’s schedule is as gruelling as mine. I’m currently putting in sixteen hour days because I have a day job. My first book only came out in N.America this month.  My expectations with regards to writing full time are very realistic.

Liliana Hart is doing as much social networking as I am, likely more. Incidentally, she said blogging is dead. I disagree, we all have different reading tastes for different reasons, but a comment from a real live reader would make me feel better about all the work I’m putting into these posts

The biggest secret she put on the Power Point was frequency of releases. Her marketing strategy is to have five titles and one in the hole before you even start publishing. Then you put up one title a month and maintain that pace. These can be full length books, short novellas, boxed sets… whatever keeps you on the Just Released lists.

A lot of her strategies can be pulled over to traditional publishing, series for instance. She put out four novellas of 20k words each (she didn’t mention what she charged for them. I’m guessing ninety-nine cents. Then, after a free snippet at Christmas, she put out a full length book that was linked to the series and because the anticipation had built since August, it went gangbusters when it came out.

Her other big advice was that indie writers should price to make a living. (To that end, I just went into Amazon and Smashwords and put Hustled up to $4.99.)

Liliana had other material, but I’m not going to transcribe her whole workshop. Basically, if you read ten or twenty books on how to indie publish, you’ll know what to do and frankly, it would behoove you to do that kind of research before jumping in.

Now we’ll skip into the What Traditional Publishers Can Do For You workshop. This was a panel consisting of Dianne Moggy (Harlequin), Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks) and Liate Stehlik (Avon/William Morrow.) It was significantly less attended than the indie pub one.

To my mind this puts me in an even better position with HMB.  Author retention will work in the favour of the writer, likely increasing advances and royalties . It won’t happen overnight, but long term they will be forced to compete with Do It Yourself publishing.

It’s interesting to note that Liliana Hart published her first indie title in 2011 under a pseudonym because it was still considered a vanity move. The next year, it was a legitimate route to finding readers. Last year, writers were bemoaning publishers slow response to this revolution, but can you imagine what had to happen to turn these behemoth ships of publishing?

I think this is something that many authors are overlooking and again, will hopefully work in my favour long term. Once the big houses have got themselves up to speed in these new publishing waters, um, look out little guy.

Obviously the editors were quick to point out how much work they do on the writer’s behalf with regard to production and while it would still behoove me to read up on the industry, they are doing massive studies on marketing, reader focus groups, trends and all sorts of things that aren’t available to the average dopey writer who just wants to stay home and write books.

Most interesting to me was the pie charts from Sourcebooks that showed how they analyze each writer’s market, so if one sells better in Walmart and another has a bigger chunk in libraries, they take advantage of that and look to respond in a corrective way to those places they’re not selling.

A quotable quote from this panel was Dominique’s “Fire us if we suck.”

In an attempt not to suck, they’re trying to get their authors noticed above the pack and visibility and discoverability are becoming a real issue with the influx of self-published books. They talked about it taking a village to launch a book and yeah, I agree. I’m already working with Market or Die and am shopping for an assistant.

Indie authors can do a lot of what they’re doing: sampling, securing foreign sales and translations, audio books, etc., but do you/they have time for that? How about the will? Do you really want to be your own (small) corporation? If you do, Fill your boots. If not, keep reading.

Harlequin is looking at developing new compensation models–see? They’re already responding to the author retention problem. They are as invested as the author in nurturing them to the next level. They’re looking outside the box at new tools that create a more interactive experience for the reader and you know what? They have the deep pockets to experiment with something like that.

Paying monthly is still tough for some of the houses, partly due to the way their business partners work. Amazon might report sales monthly, but other retailers don’t.

Print publishing is not dead, by the way. That’s why Bella Andre signed a deal with Harlequin to publish all her books in paper. And the relationships they have developed with those print merchants, like Walmart and Target, are invaluable.

Oh, and then they have the in house publicists–people who are somewhat better connected than my husband and kids.

Okay, my computer has been on all day and keeps trying to go to sleep. I think it wants a break. I hope this has given you food for thought. If you have questions on this topic, shoot them through my contact page and I’ll do my best to compile and answer them.

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Signing – Aug 9th

I’ll be signing books at Peddler’s Place in Grand Forks on Aug 9th from 4-5pm as part of the Downtown’s Arts Day. Come by the old Contact Photo Art’s building to say hi and enter to win a basket of signed books.

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RWA 2013 – Friday

As said in my previous post, Jennifer Fusco of Market Or Die is amazing. I met her in Annaheim last year when I attended RWA right after I sold. I didn’t have the first clue how to market myself and she helped me brand myself–Pursuing Happily Ever After, One Page At A Time–and has done a ton of other work for me, including some suggestions for improving this website which I have yet to find the time to execute.

Small disclaimer: I have realized that marketing is one of those beasts you cannot slay. There is no ‘finished’ when it comes to promotion. There’s always one more thing you could do. However, Jennifer is working really hard to find the strategies that pay off best so I’m really thrilled to be working with her.

Also, she bought me dinner then breakfast. We had to be there at seven in the morning, but it was worth it to meet some of her other clients and hear about some of the things she has planned including MarCon2013, a one day conference on marketing to be held in New York October 5th. I sat beside Sara Humphreys who was absolutely lovely and she’ll also be speaking at that October event. (I’m still debating going, but my husband changed jobs so can’t come with. We wanted to do a Turning Of The Leaves tour, but doesn’t look like that’ll happen.)

Jennifer gave out a few doorprizes. I won the sock monkey above, made by Melanie who you can see in the background. But since my kids are in high school and new Blaze author Sara Jane Stone was away from her very small children for the first time in three years, I gave it to her. (Don’t tell my daughter.)

After breakfast I had another bucket list moment: the Harlequin Signing. Here I am with Jane Porter (yes, I’m shamelessly name dropping again) and Megan Crane, who writes for Presents as Caitlin Crews. She is made of awesome.

After this, I had a wonderful visit with a friend from my first Golden Heart Final, Bridget Hodder. We’d lost touch over the last few years, but recently began catching up online so this was a treat that we were able to chat in person.

Now, to all you scoffers who think astrology is a load of hooey, get this. I happened to mention to Bridget that mercury was retrograde so it brings a lot of old friends together. We then went into the Awards Luncheon where I introduced her to Cathryn and Karen and, yeah, they knew each other from way back. So there. The stars don’t lie.

Now, I’ve just reviewed my notes on where I went next and realized I missed an important workshop I attended before the signing, but it will make a nice post to talk about it with where I went after lunch. Read my next post entitled, RWA 2013 – Indie vs Trad.

~ * ~

If you’ve just come across my posts on the RWA 2013 Conference in Atlanta, here’s the list of posts thus far:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference
RWA 2013 – Floorganized
RWA 2013 – Wednesday Cont’d
RWA 2013 – Thursday

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RWA 2013 – Thursday

I was just bragging in a previous post about how I’m going to clean my office floor, etc., but I’ve decided to power through these posts and schedule them as my week in Atlanta is all becoming a blur. If you’ve missed some of the previous posts, they’re here:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference
RWA 2013 – Floorganized
RWA 2013 – Wednesday Cont’d

The big agenda item on the Thursday was my workshop with Cathryn Parry. Last year in Annaheim, she and I were talking about how important it’s been for both of us to learn the different between writing and publishing. (Writing = Joy, Publishing = Insanity) Apparently I said, “Cathryn, we should do a workshop on this.”

One year later, here we were, talking about The Joy Of Writing, With Or Without A Contract.

Small break here to point out what a goof I am: Before we did this workshop, Cathryn said, “And we’re not supposed to listen to ourselves on the tape afterward.” No problem there! Then she said, “Remind me to order my tapes.” I said, “Isn’t that what is on the flash drive in our registration packet?”

Yes, I really said that, before we had done the workshop.

Which makes you question how much inspiration I could possibly provide for an audience of disheartened writers, but hey, coping strategy #1 is Have A Sense Of Humour.

To that end, get a load of this irony: One of the reasons Cathryn and I are so good at overcoming the bruising that publishing can deliver through rejections and bad reviews is  because we came out of the American Title contest rather battered. We had put our unpublished selves on the line quite publicly and didn’t come away with a contract. That left us both feeling rather unsuccessful and it was a rough recovery.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and this is why we only laughed when we learned who was in the next room where it was Standing Room Only. Before we were knocked out of the American Title Competition, one of our fellow authors was cut and she bounced back very well. She now writes as Bella Andre.

We still had about thirty or forty in our own audience and lots of great questions after. You can listen to the tape and let me know if it went as well as I thought, but what a load off to get that finished so early in the conference. (Yes, this is still early days. We’ve got Friday and Saturday to get through!)

After gathering our things, we marched straight up to the bar (at 11am) and ordered mimosas to celebrate our success. We’ve come a long way, Cathryn. Cheers!

I lunched at Ray’s In The City, which was not at the Ritz Carleton as I believed, therefore I arrived late and all the rest of the Presents editors and authors were already there. It was a wonderful lunch and really, really nice to get to know editors Bryony Green and Flo Nicoll who were on either side of me. Sharon Kendrick was across and she tells a hilarious story.

This is something I often forget about hanging out with writers; we’re all a bit geeky, but we’re all storytellers so there’s never a dull moment.

I walked back to the hotel with Maisey Yates who has been really sweet to me this first year of being published, answering a lot of newbie questions I had.

I’m looking through my notes, but I don’t think I got to any workshops that afternoon. Seems to me I found Cathryn and Karen and we camped in the bar for an hour until I was due to go for dinner with Jennifer Fusco and Melanie Meadors of Market Or Die.

I have a somewhat insane schedule for the next year and wanted to give them a heads up on that and get some tips on what types of promotion I should work into my marketing strategy. Along with blog tours, they have me scheduled for a couple of blog radio spots in August and February. We talked about repurposing content (eg. adding links to the bottom of blog tour posts ‘for more info on Dani and her books.’) They are very smart ladies, plus funny and fun so it was an awesome dinner.

Afterward, it was wine with Natasha in our room. Cathryn and Karen came by and we all shared the bits of gossip and things that make us go, Hmmm, before I kicked them out because I had an early breakfast meeting.

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