Book Clubs

I love book clubs. I’ve had an opportunity to speak in person or via conference call to a number of book clubs since I published my first mystery novel in 2007. This week, I spoke to a group in Cincinnati. The members were homebound seniors who met via a conference call organized by a librarian who also sent them books. They had read my third book, Senior Moments Are Murder. I made some introductory comments and then answered some great questions about my writing and subject matter that included homelessness. We also shared a few chuckles, comparing life experiences. I can’t think of a better way to spend half an hour. 

After a Writers Conference

Two weeks after attending the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference, I’m almost caught up. I still have a lot of new action items from the conference, but I’ve taken care of the “A” items on my to do list. This included sending partial or full manuscripts to two agents and two editors. Next will be new promotional ideas to implement and finally some research items to check out.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference

I had the pleasure of attending the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in Denver last weekend. It’s always energizing to meet with other writers, agents and editors, attend workshops and schmooze. This is the eleventh year I’ve attended. That first year I only knew one other person. Now, I look forward to catching up on so many good friends and making new ones. On the badge is a ribbon for people attending for the first time. These are the most important people at the conference because they are taking the plunge to go to a writers conference. This conference has a balance of topics for newbies up through best-selling authors. Each year I take gobs of notes and come back with an action item list that takes me weeks to complete. This year I had a chance to officially pitch to one editor and informally to another editor and two agents for the first book in a new series. Author Cindi Myers gave an excellent presentation on Staying in the Game. She stated we need to accept failure as part of the business. She described being orphaned by publishers twice and having to part ways with two agents. After fifty books publishing, she is still dealing with rejection, as do all of us. It comes with writing. So I’m back in there pitching, writing new manuscripts and promoting what’s already published. It’s a never ending task but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.