A Conference Made in Heaven

The Emerald City Writer's Conference is over now. It's a bittersweet feeling - I loved every minute of it, but by Sunday afternoon I was exhausted and ready to be done with crowds and excitement for this year. Here are the highlights:

Hanging out with my buddy from last year, Anna Kearie

Winning not one- but TWO - raffle prizes at lunch on Saturday! The board is for a beautiful, artist-designed book cover for a future book. I may self-publish my memoir at some point, so I was thrilled to win this one!

Hanging out with the Firemen. These hunky guys generously hosted a coffee-and donut breakfast on Saturday and happily posed for pictures with conference attendees.

My display for the Book Fair was exactly perfect. I was delighted with the swag choices I made. I gave away about 2/3 of the pens, and about 3/4 of the Rack Cards. Sitting at a table behind posters of my books, talking about them to strangers and to friends, was a fabulous experience. It didn't take long for me to come up with a couple of catch-phrases: "America's Darlings is about - wait for it - SEX in the Olympics! How FUN and ridiculous is that?" And this one: "They have coaches, and they have to practice just like any other athlete ... and they get POINTS TAKEN OFF for mistakes during performances!" (Wink, wink,wink!) And another: "And, oh, yeah - there's a love story, too."

Participating in the Book Fair for the first time

Getting to know my fellow Ellora's Cave authors

One of my favorite parts of this conference is the wide variety of great workshops and classes they offer. I took as many as I could, with enticing titles such as: Taming Twitter, The Busy Author's Guide to Social Media, and Reviews and Publicity - Where are the Readers? As you can see, I was giving myself a crash course in social media and in marketing. It turns out that even though I have a long way to go, I'm on the right path and I'm already doing a lot of things I should be doing to market my books. So - yeah me!

I have come away with a year's worth of inspiration. Spending time with other writers is crucial to my development as an author, and I am so grateful that this wonderful conference is right at my back door. I can't wait until next year.