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RWA Forever!–Take 2

September 6, 2008 by Linda O. Johnston in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston, Writing Conferences tagged as Berkley Prime Crime, Linda O. Johnston, Silhouette Nocturne

Last month, I blogged about how much fun I had at the Romance Writers of America National Conference. This month, I’m blogging about how great I think RWA is in general!

As most people who know me are aware, I’m a lawyer. Lately, I’ve had a part-time job at a law firm that’s a temp position–one that’s gone on for 2 years, as of today!

Recently, I learned that another attorney at my firm has an interest in writing fiction–not just legal fiction, like contracts, but real fiction. Soon as I heard that, I had to put my two cents’ worth in: no matter what stage she was in her writing, no matter whether she was interested in writing romance, she ought to come to an RWA meeting. Since she lives in southern Orange County, OCC seemed a good fit.

Why do I recommend RWA to everyone? Because it’s such a great organization! It provides information and support to anyone who wants to write, whether published or aspiring to publish, or even just interested in learning the craft and writing to please oneself. In RWA, and especially if one attends local meetings, a writer can learn about writing, publishing, staying published, what current trends in writing are… whatever.

Even more than that, the networking, sharing with others who are eager to share in return, can’t be beat!

I belong to other writing organizations, and I enjoy them. I’m glad I joined them, too, and get something important to my writing career from each of them. But for an all-around excellent experience for writers, I’ll continue to recommend RWA to everyone!

Linda O. Johnston
http://www.lindaojohnston.com/
http://www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com/

Linda O. Johnston is the author of 14 romance novels as well as the Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime–and has 2 Silhouette Nocturnes and a Nocturne Bites upcoming!

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A Fantasy Life

August 27, 2008 by A Slice of Orange in category A Fantasy Life by Janet Cornelow tagged as Janet Cornelow, Janet Quinn

By Janet Quinn Cornelow

Barbara Clark, aka April Reid, and myself, aka Janet Quinn, had a book signing last Saturday at Sunshine Books in Cerritos. It was quiet, but we had fun and sold some books. Linda McLaughlin came and visited with us and took pictures.

I started reading a fantasy series written by Lilith Saintcrow. The main character is Dante Valentine who is a necromance. I didnâ€™t sort them when I started, so I am reading them out of order which makes for a bit of confusion at times. She does write well enough that the books stand alone, but a character that was dead in the last book I read is alive again in the next one. That probably isnâ€™t bad since I always read the end first anyway to see who is going to live.

What fascinates me about these books is the world that Saintcrow built. I like dark urban fantasy where the heroine can take out the monsters. This world is filled with creatures that have different powers. There are Magi, Shaman, Necromances, and various creatures who are not quite human. There are also demons and Lucifer who have a great deal of power over the world. There are even humans, which are pretty much throw away creatures that no one seems terribly impressed with.

The author has also created a world post Christianity that lives by rules formed after the fall of Christianity. There is a glossary in one book explaining all the terms that she has created. This is a very complicated world housing good and evil beings who fight each other to defend their own lives. There are even those who Death has refused to take.

Saintcrow had to have spent a great amount of time building this world. She has covered everything from religion to education. It is a great example to look at if you are thinking of doing world building.

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Writer on the Verge

August 18, 2008 by A Slice of Orange in category Writer on the Verge by Kate Carlisle tagged as Kate Carlisle, National RWA Conference, Romance Bandits, Writer on the Verge

More Conference Talk!

Everyone’s been sharing their conference and post-conference experiences, so I thought I’d join the crowd. And I brought photos–mostly of me, I’ll admit. But ya know, it’s my camera. 🙂

For me, this year’s conference was all about networking with fellow writers and I think I succeeded. Well, I partied a lot, anyway.

I was thrilled to finally get a chance to visit and party with my fabulous blogging group, Romance Bandits, and even had a few chance encounters with the Golden Rooster. (A long story, but visit the blog a few times and you’ll catch on!) Here’s a picture of the Cheeky Chook with Romance Bandit and Kensington debut author Jeanne Adams. Don’t they make a cute couple?

Here’s a shot of me with another Bandita and double Rita finalist, the lovely and talented Avon historical author, Anna Campbell.

Here are a few familiar OCC faces. This was taken the night of the Rita awards. It’s me, with Jennifer Apodaca and Michele Cwiertny. Don’t we all look fabulous?

And here I am with yet another Bandita, Sourcebooks Casablanca author Loucinda McGary. Her first book, The Wild Sight, is out in October and she’s already starting to garner wonderful reviews! We’re showing off our first sale ribbons!

I’ve got lots more photos but an alarming number of friends have threatened me with death if I post them here. I won’t mention any names … but some people are so touchy!

Hope your conference experience was wonderful!

Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile mystery series from NAL debuts in February 2009 with HOMICIDE IN HARDCOVER.

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The Write Way………

August 17, 2008 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives, The Write Way by Maureen Child tagged as Maureen Child, The Write Way

Ahhhh………another year, another conference!

Hard to believe National has already come and gone…….But here we are. We’ve mostly recovered, we’ve filed away all the notes and tidbits we picked up in San Francisco, and we’ve finally finished dissecting every conversation we had, looking for the ways we screwed up or said the wrong thing!

Time to move on. And what does that mean, you ask??

It means it’s back to work. Back to writing. Back to racking up the daily page count and meeting all of those deadlines. Whether they’re self imposed or set down in contracts, meeting those deadlines counts.

Did you get a request for a partial from one of the editors or agents you met at conference? Then don’t just sit there, get it shined up and out the door. And while your baby is sitting on that desk, tapping its proverbial toes, waiting to be read, you should be sitting at YOUR desk, working on the next proposal. Don’t sit there fingers crossed, hoping for luck.

Build your own luck.

I’m not sure who said it originally, but I heard a great quote in one of the workshops at conference……..If you want to succeed, double your failure rate………

Makes sense. You’ll never succeed if you’re not trying. So get those proposals out there. Take a shot. Make your dreams come true while you’ve still got time!

Maureen Child is the author of more than 100 romance novels and novellas. Right now, she’s typing crazily, rushing to meet those deadlines………

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Time: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

August 15, 2008 by Marianne H. Donley in category Java Plots by marianne h donley tagged as Java Plots

By Marianne H. Donley

I love clocks. I have wind up analogue clocks that chime every fifteen minutes, a KitKat Clock with red sequined eyes and a moving tail that acts like a pendulum, battery clocks that are boring but accurate, atomic clocks that know when to change to daylight-saving time without me telling them to do so, and, of course, digital clocks on the microwave, cable box and computer screen. With one or two exceptions they all report different times.

It starts in my bedroom where we have matching digital clocks on matching night stands. The old guy’s clock reads ten minutes faster than my clock. He sets it that way on purpose. Every morning when HIS clock says 6:30 and mine says 6:20 he shuts the alarm off BEFORE it rings. Then he goes back to sleep.

I poke him and say, “Time to get up.”

He says, “No, I can sleep for ten more minutes.”

I say, “Why do you set it early?”

He says, “So, I can sleep for ten more minutes.”

This makes no sense to me. He knows the clock is ten minutes fast. Why doesn’t he set the clock for the correct time and then set the alarm for ten minutes early? As much as I like math (and I really do–be careful I’ve been know to prove the square root of two is irrational with little provocation!) I don’t want to do arithmetic at 6:20 in the morning. In addition, he is legally blind without his contacts on, no joke. So he can’t even see the clock until he gets up and gets dressed. And, not to belabor the point, he turns the alarm off BEFORE it rings, so why does he even need to set the alarm?

Moving down to the family room we have the mantle clock, an eight-day, key wind, Westminster Chime, Seth Thomas, my sister, Rosemary, gave to me as an engagement/Christmas present. No matter how many times I set it or fiddle with the +/- lever in the back, it runs about two minutes slow. This doesn’t really bother me. The clock is thirty something and has survived my kids, my nieces and nephews, and now my grand kids trying to see how it works. I figure it’s entitled to be a little slow. This drives the old guy nuts. He complains about it nearly every day which is why I keep fiddling with it.

In the dinning room we have an eight-day, key wind, Westminster Chime that my brother, Michael, made for my son, David’s wedding. We hung the clock when David and his family moved in with us. It doesn’t work because someone (I’m not naming names, but it wasn’t me) set the time by moving the hands counterclockwise. We’ve taken the clock to a variety of clock repair guys who have told us a variety of tall tales as to why it doesn’t work, including one guy who said it needed to be cleaned to the tune of three hundred dollars and one who wanted to replace its expensive movement with a cheap battery operated one.

My KitKat Clock didn’t survive the move from California whole. One of the mover guys misplaced his tail (on purpose I suspect as I had to take the clock off the wall twice and hand it to the guy when he said everything was packed). I hung KitKat in the solarium anyway, and his red sequined eyes still move with the time. But without his tail, he doesn’t have quite the noble bearing he did before. He keeps pretty good time as long as he is perfectly balanced. Dust his pretty face and he’s likely to stop ticking completely until I get the level out. My five-year-old grandson would like the clock to completely disappear because KitKat has scary little eyes. When he visits, I think poor tailless KitKat will have to live in the basement for a while.Now here are two time related tasks for you.

Task One: Go look at an advertisement for clocks or watches. You can use a newspaper or even the Internet. What time is it in most of the ads? Do you have any idea why?Task Two: A Westminster Chime clock, chimes four times at quarter past the hour, eight times at half passed, twelve times at quarter to the hour and sixteen times at the hour PLUS one extra chime for each hour (so at 6 am the clock will chime twenty-two times). How many chimes will that be for this whole year? (I warned you about the math.)

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