I attended the RWA Conference in D.C. last week.  This was my first time at Nationals and I had an excellent time.  I met some new authors (both aspiring and published), caught up with some friends I hadn’t see in a while (or ever as the case with my online critique group),  picked up a few pearls of wisdom, & attended some very informative workshops.

The best part of the conference for me was meeting some of my critique partners for the first time.  We all meet in an online workshop and hit it off, so we  formed a critique group.

Book Signings:
I missed the Avon book signing (because I didn’t know about it) but I made sure to attend the Harlequin, Pocket Book, Berkley, Grand Central, NAL, Ballantine/Bantam, St.  Martin’s, and Sourcebooks book signings.  With this being my first RWA book signing event, I went into the Harlequin signing with my money ready to purchase a few books and get them signed.  Imagine my happy shock and surprise when I was promptly told to put my money away because all the books were free.  Wait a second, free books???  And from some of my favorite authors???

Woohoo!!!

Here are a few, just a few, of the authors I got a chance to meet and chat with:

 Social Events

I attended both The Gathering (sponsored by the FF&P chapter) and the Samhain Publishing wine meet & greet.   The Gathering was a lot of fun, mostly because I met Allison, one of my critique partners, (see photo at top) for the first time and we got to hang out for a tiny bit.  One of the best parts about The Gathering was getting the chance to put a face with the names of several people that I communicate with online via the message boards.  Oh and let me not forget, Ms. Jade Lee is a trip!  LOL.

After dinner and the PRISM awards, they hosted a panel consisting of many of the PRISM award winners.  It was quite interesting and I learned of a new author (well, new to me at least), Leanna Renee Hieber.   She spoke of the need for perseverance and determination in all aspiring authors.  But the most important thing I got from her was to not write to the trends of the market, but to write the story of your heart. 

She’d been writing and trying to get her upcoming novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, published for 10 before she got her big break.  Talk about perseverance.  The Strangely Beautiful Tale… is a combination Victorian Paranormal/Gothic-y story.  I read the preview she included with our gift bags and let me tell you, I did not want to like this story.  But after reading the first 3 chapters, I am eagerly awaiting its release on August 25.

 

Thanks for reading my conference recap.  I know I haven’t touched on any of the workshops I took, but I may do another post about those later.  In the meantime, head over to the RWA site and browse through the list of workshops that were conducted.  I believe they are selling both DVDs and audio recordings of many of the workshops.  Also, I believe the handouts may also be available for download on the site.

If you are interested in reading about my sightseeing adventures in D.C., head over to my personal blog .