Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Conferences?


Currently: Yeah! Claudia's Pleasure (under my Anh Leod name) is released today at Ellora's Cave! If you like your romance hot and steamy, this is the novella for you... http://www.ellorascave.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=9781419917028

Mood: Overstimulated. Why, oh why, can't release days be holidays from the day job?

Sadly, I'm not much of a conference-goer. No matter how many times I promise myself to do it, I have never attended National. Any conference, unless maybe it is within an easy driving distance from your home, is pretty darn expensive and I'm a dollar store kind of woman these days.

I did attend the Romantic Times Convention in 2007. This turned out to be a good thing. Though it didn't mean, as a newly published author, that I sold tons of books (my naive expectation), I networked with fellow authors and management of my publishing house, and learned about a new imprint that I later sold a book to-nonfiction! It was a lot of fun to have fan girl moments as well.

Other growth experiences from conferences include learning about Natalie Goldberg and her timed writing method, thinking deeply about what drives me as an author courtesy of Stella Cameron and being moved to tears by Kristin Hannah's keynote speech on why she became a writer. All of these moments happened at the Emerald City conference, which is coming to Bellevue in October. If you can afford it (and only if you really can) it's well worth attending.

4 comments:

Delle Jacobs said...

Hooray for your new release, Heather/Anh! I'm off to buy it now!

I have to agree, Emerald City is one of the best buys around for conferences. I don't do many workshops anymore, but EC is one place where I do find some I want. And the energy level is so elevating!

For those who bemoan the impossibility of getting appointments at national, smaller conferences are really the best places to meet and interact with editors and agents, snd there is a really good line-up at EC this year.

Heather Redmond said...

I just signed up today! I hope to see a bunch of you at EC!

Jessa Slade said...

Congrats on the new book! EC was my first conference and I loved it. It's nice that it's close to Portland... but not too close :)

Anonymous said...

Small conferences are nice. You don't get lost easily and there is much more time to chat with authors, editors, agents. But national is like Disneyland to me. So many people and workshops and not enough time. But then I like being overstimulated on occasion.