Dani Collins's Blog, page 62

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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Shared Whispers

This anthology was picked up by Champagne and will come out on all digital platforms in September. Watch for it!

 

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RWA 2013 – Wednesday Cont’d

I’ve written three posts on the conference, not counting the one about my conference preparations. I know, it was very busy. If you’ve missed the previous three, they’re here:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference
RWA 2013 – Floorganized

In this post, I’m still on Wednesday, the first full day I was in Atlanta. You’re probably starting to get a sense why we don’t bother bringing spouses or children. It’s busy!

After the mini-conference, I attended the Librarian Networking Event. Fortunately I had homework from my good friends with Westcoast Romance Authors, a group of published authors who put out a newsletter for librarians and booksellers. They asked me to interview a few librarians and write up a suitable article on what they get from attending. I won’t repeat the article here, but if you are a librarian, bookseller, or interested individual, please contact me through my contact page and I’ll get you subscribed to that newsletter.

I was waiting for Cathryn to arrive and expected to find her in the HAN presentation which is the digital database Harlequin uses to service their authors. I didn’t find Cathryn, but it was a worthwhile session that taught me a few tricks about what I can find on there that I hadn’t known previously (mostly industry news and how to update my bio and other content).

I also inadvertently sat down with Joanne Grant, Senior Editor for Harlequin Presents, i.e., the woman who waves the magic wand to publish my books. She was also kind enough to escort me after the session to find Megan Haslam, my editor until about a month ago, whom I was scheduled to have a drink with. (I’ve since been switched to Laurie Johnson and love her too. They’re all fabulous.)

Megan and I had some great laughs as she described participating in something called the Moonwalk in London, which is a breast cancer fundraiser that essentially has fifteen thousand people walking a marathon through the night. It sounded pretty gruelling, but she got to cross it off her bucket list.

Two gin and tonics later, I was ready to cross something off my own bucket list: the Literacy Signing. I didn’t expect to sell a lot of books. The room was full of two hundred authors and most were there for the NYT Bestsellers, but the energy was amazing and I was incredibly thrilled when one of the librarians I’d spoken with earlier in the day rushed up to say, “I want your book!” Personal relationships sell books, people.

Cathryn Parry finally turned up with her good friend and roommate (and one of my favourite people), Blaze author, Karen Foley. I also had a surprise visit from Nancy Warren who I hadn’t seen since leaving the lower mainland, so that fabulous and we immediately made plans to catch up.

You’d think I would be exhausted by then and I was. With the time change, I’d been up since before five body-clock time and hadn’t slept well. However, I’d been invited to Sandra Marton’s suite for a pizza party with some of the Presents authors and I really wanted to go, since I hadn’t yet had much opportunity to get to know them.

I could name drop the dickens out of that ninety minutes: Jane Porter, Sharon Kendrick, Lynn Raye Harris, and–this will sound funny–but Melody Ann‘s assistant, Nicole. But Melody Ann was there too and was the sweetest person ever, I was just burnt to the bone by the time we were introduced so we didn’t talk long. There were tons of others coming and going, but it was past my bedtime and I hadn’t yet spent any time with my roommate, Natasha, so I went ‘home’ and visited with her while she unpacked.

Next up: RWA 2013 – Thursday

 

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RWA 2013 – Floorganized

I’ve unpacked from conference, but loosely–as you can see. My mom was just here and took half the books I brought home. I let her have them on one condition: she has to make review notes. I’ll then post them and offer some as giveaways.

I also have some signed copies from some Harlequin authors. Since I’ll be doing an in person signing in Grand Forks on August 9th, I’ll put some of those in a basket with my own, but watch for a giveaway here. I often pull my newsletter subscriber list for giveaways so make sure you’re signed up to that too.

I’m still working on my conference postings and will write another instalment below, but I had to finish a synopsis first. That’s a really fun project I can’t wait to talk about, but I don’t want to jinx it. All in due course, Dear Reader.

Since I made such great progress on that synopsis I have time to write up this blog post and review my To Do’s, one of which is setting my general goals for the rest of the year (three books to finish, several proposals to write.) Then I’ll feel organized, which is way better than floor-ganized. That’s something I resort to when my desk is under siege by scraps of paper, books, flash drives, spilled M&Ms, empty glasses, file folders, maps, business cards, highlighter pens, character naming sourcebooks and crumpled tissues.

There’s no room on my white board either which is stressing me out.

So where were we? Ah yes, at the RWA-WF Mini Conference.

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After the State Of The Industry presentation, there was an excellent presentation by a panel of reviewers: Barbara Vey from Publisher’s Weekly, Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and daughter/mother team Gwen and Sarah Reyes from Fresh Fiction.

What a smart, funny bunch of ladies and so heartening. Getting a crummy review sucks, so it’s great to see these are real people who aren’t out to gut anyone for their own gain. They actually love books and have crushes on authors and love interacting with readers and writers.

A few highlights:

Online networking is about engagement. Be authentic and lay off the hard sell.
Remember that readers are customers (ie. the customer is always right) Therefore, don’t engage with someone who gives a lousy review. You’ll only dig yourself into a deeper hole.
If you do screw up online, own it, apologize, move on. Someone else will screw up in ten minutes anyway. (Loved this perspective, thanks Sarah Wendell)
Develop a social media policy for yourself (eg. no politics or religion, Don’t tweet angry etc.) I haven’t done this formally myself but I do have two that I follow fairly strictly: my family is not identified by name and I don’t go online if I’ve been drinking.

They identified other levels of engagement beyond reviews and social networking: eg. book clubs, street teams, podcasts, newsletters and Goodreads.

Above all those things, however, is a well-maintained website. Nothing is more frustrating for a reader (and I’ll join in here as a reader and agree) than a website that doesn’t appear current.

Which reminds me I have work to do on my own, including my much promised List of Books. It seems simple, but I need to decide where it will live and how to link to it off the Home Page. I have ideas and keep making the excuse that I don’t have that many books to worry about yet. I just put it on my To Do list though. It’ll happen before the end of the year, promise.

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I had to leave the RWA-WF mini before the final presentation which was a round table discussion, but I did stay through Lori Wilde’s workshop on craft. This was one of the best craft workshops I’d ever attended and I won’t be able to do it justice so if you have the opportunity to attend one of Lori’s workshops, do.

She talked about why readers read: Escape and Exercise (of the mental variety, working through imaginary conflicts.) As a writer, you need to identify your reader and her stress level, ie. the level of imaginary conflict she’s willing to go through.

This segued into When To Show and When To Tell, telling being a way to allude to something that might exceed your reader’s stress level. I especially loved that she debunks the Show Don’t Tell ‘rule’ since I’m a huge fan of believing we need Tools not Rules. There are times when telling is better, but for less experienced writers still working on understanding the difference, she offered these tips on how to Show:

Action: This could be a physical action the character takes or a physical reaction like heart pounding. The way your character responds to a given situation demonstrates his/her character.
Specific and Concrete Detail: You can tell the reader ‘the window was broken’ or you can show them ‘the jagged edges of glass formed a toothy pattern inside the frame.’ (That’s my example. I know, I’m brilliant.)
Dialogue: Again, this is a way to demonstrate character so use it
Internal Monologue: She offered up some great examples of exposition vs deep third person POV. Use your character’s voice, slow down, focus on emotions and character development

Remember that what you do affects pace so Telling is often used in transitions.

More over the next few days. If you missed the other posts in this series, they’re here:

RWA 2013 – Overview
RWA 2013 – RWA-WF Mini Conference

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