"I wonder what it is in the New York air that enables me to sit up till all hours of the night in an atmosphere which in London would make a horse dizzy, but here merely clears the brain." ~ James Agate
I am flying into NYC this Saturday, arriving at the ungodly hour of 7:00am. It isn’t so much the 7:00am that’s ungodly as the 3:30am wake up to get to the airport to catch the 6:15am flight to arrive at 7am that’s ungodly. But it’s for a worthy cause, so I’m willing.
I’ve already made up my packing list, printed off my event invites, worked up my workshop agenda around my agent/editor appointments and purchased all my little travel sized toiletries. I have a brand spanking new iPad 2 to take with me to stay wired in (thanks to J for the early wedding gift!) and I am ready to rumble.
This is the first conference I’ve attended as a published author and I have to admit, it has a different feel to it for me. I’m not sure exactly why that is – I’m still doing all the same things. Editor and agent appointments, workshops, getting lost in the labyrinth of hotel hallways… Maybe the difference is that my goal was by the time the NYC conference arrived I would go as a published author. I’ve vaulted over one hurdle (only 1,486, 234 to go) and it feels good. I mean goooooood.
FYI – if you see someone doing cartwheels through the hotel lobby shouting “I did it! I did it!!”, it’s not me. I don’t care how much she may look like me. Also, if that individual is doing these cartwheels while wearing a skirt, please tell her to stop. She’ll thank you for it later.
But NYC isn’t all about the conference for me. I’ve wanted to see the City That Never Sleeps for eons and going down a few days before conference gets underway will be a great opportunity to do that. I’ve also tried to book out a little time each day for myself, even if that means just getting out and walking around Times Square or somewhere else. And given my horrendous sense of direction, there is no telling where ‘somewhere else’ may be.
FYI#2 – if you see someone who looks a lot like the cartwheeling maniac from the hotel lobby wandering around Times Square trying to find the hotel, please send her back in the right direction. You may also want to watch for a minute to ensure she heads in the direction you indicated. Yes, her sense of direction is that bad.
FYI#3 – if she starts up with the cartwheels again on her way back to the hotel, just let her go. You’ve done all you can.
"Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for one big one to come along." ~ Hugh Allen
I’m getting excited about New York in June. I know I have a while to wait, but I can’t help it. I'm arriving in the Big Apple on Saturday before conference starts to spend a little time exploring the city with my two RWAC cohorts, Lilly Cain and our chapter prez, Annette Gallant. I’ve never been to NYC before, so while this is a work trip, it’s also a pleasure trip as well.
I love that we’re staying in the middle of the action. It’s a great central point. I plan on doing a little shopping, a whole lot of sightseeing, and a general wandering around. I’d love to take a run through Central Park too, though I have no idea how close the park is to our hotel. Time to break out the map.
The other thing I’m happy about is that I made the goal of going to the New York conference as a published author. Check and done. By the time conference rolls around, THE OUTLAW BRIDE will have been on the electronic shelves for two months. Where I don’t have a print book to allow me to do the literary signing, etc, I will have to get a little inventive on what promo materials to take with me to help get my name / book out there.
Would walking through the lobby of the hotel with a bullhorn be too much do you think? Perhaps so. A more subtle approach then.
Just as an aside, while I am typing this, my dog has his nose jammed under the register and is snorting up a storm. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to find there other than a dust bunny or three…
Meanwhile, back in the everyday, this will be a busy week. My partial of Salvation Falls sent to Harlequin over a year ago, seems to have fallen through the cracks somewhere. So I need to resend it to the editor. I’m doing one final read through and then off it goes. Wish me luck.
I will be attending the Neptune Theatre this week to see The Beauty Queen of Leenane. My friend Julia Smith hooked me up with the theatre’s Word of Mouth evening. I was given two tickets to see the show, then will blog afterwards to promote it, hence the Word of Mouth. Or blog as it were. So stay tuned for next week’s blog to hear all about my night at the theatre and a recap on what went on this week.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go dislodge my dog’s nose from the register.
I'm blogging about the RWA National Conference (along with posting a few pixs) over at Miss Make A Movie today. Check it out!
Well I’m back from San Francisco. At least in body. My brain has yet to make it over the border. Jetlag has hit me big time today. I’m at work and barely able to function.
As for conference, I had a blast despite only averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night until Friday. Nothing like going to bed on San Fran time and waking up Halifax time. Who knew four hours could make such a huge difference. I spent a lot of the conference feeling like I’d been, as my friend says, ‘rode hard and put away wet’. Despite that, the conference was a huge success for me, more so than I had been expecting.
For starters, I was thrilled to get Brimstone out the door to Berkley before I left. I had a slight heart attack on Saturday morning though. I switched it over to Courier and double spaced it (I was working in single space TNR during revisions) and my 187 pages increased to 478. ACK!! So from 7 am to 2 pm I worked like a mad woman going through larger scenes and cutting them down, then I cut one scene out completely. I managed to cut 38 pages, then on the advice of some of my chapter-mates, I switched back to TNR 13 and came in at 373 pages. Whew!
At the conference, I had requests for two full manuscripts: The Outlaw Bride and Brimstone (as well as the blurbs for the next 3 books in the series), a partial for Brimstone by the agent I met with, and another partial for Brimstone by a different editor thanks to a mention from a friend about the series to that editor.
I also got to crash the Harlequin party with Julianne MacLean (who has a new book out, The Mistress Diaries, check it out!) and had an awesome time dancing and snapping pictures. I got to run into some blogging buddies: Michelle Willingham, Rene Miller & Amy Ruttan, plus Christine D’Abo who moved to Toronto, and my former critique partners Christine Wells and Jennifer Haymore.
I'll give a better run down of the conference once my brain starts function again and post some pictures through the week, but if anyone wants a quick preview of pixs zip over to my Facebook page and have a look.
For now, I’m going to go and tap a vein and hook up a java IV…
It looks like July is going to be a high speed ride from start to finish. I need to finish Brimstone and get it out the door to Berkley before the conference. The last thing I need is to finally finish this thing and then have it get lost in the mayhem of post-conference requests. Then I need to allow myself time to re-read The Outlaw Bride and make edit notes to try and shave off about 25 pages and tighten the story. Then I have to write pitches for both as well as short blurbs on books 2-4 for the rest of the Brimstone series just in case they ask what I have planned there. That leaves me 36 days to get this all done.
Oiy vey.
To top things off, the last half of July I’m likely going to be in a bit of a funk (okay fine, probably more than a bit) because the BF and I will only see each other about one day out of 20 between the Writers Retreat, his being away on vacation with his son, and then my leaving for San Fran. Perhaps I should give him a picture of me so he doesn’t forget what I look like.
Oh well, if nothing else, while he’s away on vacation I can bury myself in my work and get what I need to done. Either that, or I can just sit around and drink heavily. I may choose the latter depending on how the writing actually goes.
Remember when summer used to be easy and fun, not a care in the world? I have vague memories of my thirteen year old self enjoying an unlimited sense of freedom. Sigh…how I long for those days…
I’m starting to get excited about National. I haven’t been on a trip since the conference in Reno, so I’m really stoked for this one. I managed to get my editor and agent appointments with minimal effort. It took 11 minutes to get both booked, which may put me in the minority given some of the posts I’ve read about others who had a tough time logging on. I’m not sure if it had to do with the fact that I logged in a few minutes before and just started hitting the refresh button until access was granted or what. Either way, I pulled off a coup getting both the editor and agent I wanted. Someone indicated you could see the time of the appointment when you clicked in the box, but I wasn’t wasting time to even look. I saw the names, clicked and rushed to the finish. So I know I have appointments with Hilary Sares from Kensington and Jessica Faust from BookEnds, and I hope those appointments don’t crossover into any of the other sessions I really wanted to attend, but if so I’ll work around it.
Meanwhile, I’m barrelling through the read through, making notes for the synopsis as I go which will hopefully help me condense this baby down to a 5 page summary. I’m tightening things up as I go and doing some line edits, but so far things are reading pretty good. Some of my chapter-mates and I are doing a write-in at Starbucks tonight so I’m hoping to get some more done this evening.
In other news – I am signed up and geared up for soccer. I have my cleats, my shorts, my socks. Need to exchange my shin pads because they aren’t very comfortable, but then I’m good to go. We start on May 25th. No practices, just jump into the game. Which should be interesting given I haven’t actually played in over 20 years. Here’s what I remember of the rules: See ball, chase ball, kick ball, score ball. Do not score on your own net. Do not touch ball with hands. Do not kick other players in the shins or hip check them off the field. I think that should get me through. We start softball the same day, so right now my Sunday schedule looks like this: 9:00 am to 12:00 noon – two softball games. Nap. 5:00 pm – Soccer. Somewhere in there I’m hoping to get some BF time too. Maybe I can nap on his incredibly comfy couch between games…
I printed off the Conference Workshop Schedule. Oiy.
Why is it that the workshops I want to attend are always stacked in the same time slot? It’s like some sort of conference conspiracy. There are always so many great workshops it’s hard to narrow them down. It’s even harder when you have to choose between two or three that you feel would really benefit you and try to determine which one will help you the most at this particular time. Our chapter buys the Conference CDs so I know I can always listen to the ones I miss, but there is something energizing about being there in person that you can’t always get from the CD.
It starts off with the first set of workshops. Do I choose How To Layer and Texture Your Novel for High Impact? Or, Dialogue: Writing Between the Lines? If I pick the Layering workshop it runs two hours. Which means I’ll have to miss out on Susan Elizabeth Phillips' workshop in hour two where she reveals the Six Magic Words for writing the best seller. Given that I’m a huge SEP fan, I think I’m going to have to miss the layering, go for the dialogue and pick up another similar workshop on Friday about Layering the Story Concept.
Alright...that one's figured out. But then Friday morning I have to choose between an always inspiring chat with Debbie Macomber, the Spotlight on St Martin’s Press and Writing for the Historical Market. Now given that two Avon authors and an Avon editor are giving the workshop on the Historical market, and I writing mostly historical…sigh…I’ll have to miss Debbie and St Martin’s. Okay, two decisions made.
Saturday is where things start to get dicey. Do I (a) Pump Up My Productivity, (b) learn more about Scene & Sequel, or (c) swing by Writing Regency Historicals in the Here & Now. As much as I want to do (c), I think (a) will be a better use of my time since I’m already doing the historical workshop on Friday and I’ve been trying to figure out ways to be more productive.
Saturday afternoon at 2:00 pm is the real toughie. I’m writing a 4 book series and Susan Mallery is giving a workshop on the Arc of the Trilogy. Unfortunately it is at the same time Stephanie Bond is telling us how to make a living from writing the romance novel, Avon is doing a spotlight, agents are revealing 5 pearls of wisdom for career success and Elizabeth Boyle and her husband are enlightening us on project-planning. Ahhh!! This one will take some serious thought. All four of these workshops would be useful asap.
The afternoon gets worse at 4:30 when I’m forced to pick between The Three-Act Structure, Writing the Synopsis and the Seven Secrets for a Successful Novel. Given how badly I suck at writing synopses, I should go for that one, but I want to learn more about the 3 Act Structure, and who couldn’t use 7 secrets?? And then there is the Bantam Dell spotlight…
My head is spinning.
And I haven't even figured out what dress I'm wearing on Saturday night. Do I go with the little black dress I wore the last time? Or the more flattering but not quite as dressy red number where I won't have to worry about holding in my stomach. Or ditch both and go with the less dressy black dress that looks smashing. Oh good gawd. How am I suppose to figure all this out in only two and a half months??
I think I need a drink.
I had an epiphany. Actually I had two. But don't worry, I'm okay. It only hurt for a second.
The first one came the other day as I was thinking about San Francisco and the fact that I had decided not to go based on the monetary issues and whether or not I thought I would get my money's worth. You see, I started to think about how I was measuring 'worth'. I had been wanting to go to San Fran ever since I saw it posted in the upcoming conference sites. And I felt like 2008 was going to be my year. So that, coupled with a few other reasons, made me take a second look at the budget. In doing so, I discovered airfares had gone down by a few hundred. And the room would cost less with three of us sharing the cost. I reconfigured my numbers, took a look at my budget. The money was there. Well most of it. The rest I could put on my credit card and clear off in August since it was a three pay month. Suddenly San Francisco was doable again.
So it looks like the trip is back on. Yay!
The second epiphany came at 3:50 am this morning when I woke up and realized what I needed to do to fix the scene I had been struggling with for two weeks now. It's a pivotal scene, but because I was darkening Devlin up it required major changes. But whatever I was doing wasn't working. I knew it wasn't working. The writing felt flat, the scene wasn't moving and nothing I did seemed to help. But somewhere in the night it hit me, woke me up out of a semi-sound sleep and had me staggering through the night for my notebook. This morning I made much better progress.
So now that San Fran is back on, I feel an even harder push to get this manuscript finished and out the door to Berkley and to agents. My goal is to do everything I can between now and conference time to find an agent and an editor. It'll be a busy six months, but if I'm taking the opportunities provided in San Francisco, I want to make as much of them as possible by doing everything I can beforehand.
And there you have it. My two rather painless epiphanies for the week.
