ECWC 2011: Bigger and Better!

ECWC 2011, hosted by the Greater Seattle Romance Writers Association (GSRWA), took place last weekend--three days of networking, learning, and pitching. What more could a writer want or need? Nothing. This conference in downtown Bellevue, WA had it all. A hundred or so volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure a smoothly run conference benefiting all attendees.

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Finish the Damn Book

One of the most exciting things to happen to me during this conference had to do with Cherry Adair's Finish the Damn Book Challenge. At ECWC 2010, I pledged to write a single title romantic suspense of roughly 110K words.

I completed Deadly Addiction , revised, edited and polished it, and sent it off to Cherry by her deadline of 10/23. This earned me a very nice certificate of completion from Cherry as well as a wonderful pin.

But Cherry had a surprise for us this year. Twenty-six contestants completed the challenge. Of those, she would pick eight, at random, and send the first three chapters to an agent or editor that had committed to reading and responding to the author by November 15, 2011. To those not familiar with publishing, this may not sound like much. But to those in the biz, this is huge! Agents and editors often take months (or longer) to respond to a query.

Imagine my delight when Cherry called out my name Today, Cherry has sent off the first three chapters of Deadly Addiction to an agent/editor, and I'll hear back by November 15. Very exciting! Of course, this does not mean that I'll have an agent or make a sale, but with any luck, it does mean that I'll get some comments back.

Workshops

ECWC 2011 had some very interesting workshops. My favorite were:
1) Investigations 101 by M.A. Taylor
2) Death and Taxes: Essentials of Federal Tax Reporting and Audit Survival by Becke Turner and Diane Kelly
3) Cop Awareness: Body Language by M.A. Taylor

As you can probably tell, research oriented workshops catch my interest. What better way to learn how your characters would/should act and do their jobs than from an expert? M.A. Taylor gives you all that and more in a compelling way. I spoke to several other attendees of her workshops and all felt they'd learned a lot of useful and usable information. For details on M.A. Taylor's workshops and classes, please visit her at: http://www.MATaylor1010.com.

Diane and Becke's workshop on taxes was a pleasant surprise for me. I'd expected it to be your usual necessary but boring expository on what's allowed and what's not. And while they did go into detail on that and did cover the necessary forms, they did so in an entertaining and eye opening way. I kept the handouts which I know will be very useful to me as well as my accountant come the Q12012 tax season. For information on Diane's upcoming release as well as dates when this workshop will be taught again, please visit her at: http://www.dianekelly.com

Becke, who successfully fought an audit, discussed the audit process and provided the letter she wrote for her appeal. She can be contacted through her website at: http://www.becketurner.com/

Happy writing,
Kristine

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Copyright 2011 @ Kristine Cayne