I'm thrilled to welcome Hildie McQueen, one of my fellow Crescent Moon Press authors, as a guest poster on my blog today. I'm trading places with her and posting on her blog about selecting names for fantasy characters and places. Hope you stop over at her blog.

 

But for your reading pleasure here, Hildie will share her advice on attending conferences. I'm very envious of the fun she's had and all the networking she managed. Please welcome Hildie McQueen!

 

The Conference Junkie

Conference whirlwind girl reporting from Newark, NJ Airport.  Let me tell you, it's been a wild ride that although I am glad to finally get off, would not have missed for the world.  After each conference, I leave excited and refreshed, fully charged after being surrounded by amazing uber talented authors.

My conference advice to future conference attendees (It's worth at least two cents)

#1 Be prepared to step out of your comfort zone, introduce yourself, make it a goal to meet new people. This is a hard one for introverts, but it's the only way, you'll meet fellow authors and make life long friends.  If you are a shy person, pair up with an outgoing writer and ride her coattails. 

Those being said, if you are one of those life-of-the-party types, reach out to those hanging on the fringes.

#2  Be Flexible -- Don't expect everything to go as planned and do not have a strict schedule that you feel you have to stick to.  Like life, conferences have a way of taking on a life of their own.  A 50 minute session at the Georgia Romance Writers M&M conference ended up lasting over two hours when we decided to take our group to the lobby, sit on the floor and continue a super interesting exchange.  Guess what?  We ended up hanging out for the rest of the conference, made some awesome new gal pals!

#3 Be Proactive - - Carry the following with you at all times:  Business Cards, Tissues, Gum, Pens and safety pins.  Business cards (Self explanatory), Tissues, (well you'll need them, trust me on this).  Gum (in case you get sleepy or after meals/coffee), Favorite pen (to take notes, get numbers) and Safety pins (because if I'm at the conference I'm always falling apart and will yell, "anyone got a safety pin?!"  You will be my immediate hero if you do).

 

#4 Go to lunch or dinner away from the conference with your new group of pals.  It's where friendships are cemented, some 'ah ha' moments happen and y'all can promote outside the conference.

 

Lastly, one of the things I love to do is collect extra swag and when I get back home I make small bags of swag as prizes for my book club, and for my blog and Facebook giveaways!  It's a great way to pay it forward by helping fellow authors reach new readers!

 Bio:

Hildie McQueen's goal is to bring the unexpected into people's lives, one reader at a time.  Using sense of humor, coupled with her love of the unusual, she writes across romance genres, from paranormal to western historical, contemporary to erotic.  The recurring theme in her writing is the search and discovery between two people to find true love.

 

Hildie enjoys traveling, shopping, wine tasting and relaxes by scrapbooking when possible. She lives in a small town in Georgia with her super hero husband Kurt and two unruly Chihuahuas Pancho and Pepito.

Keep up with Hildie on her blog, Facebook or Twitter @HildieMcQueen

 

 

Author of The Protector Novels.  Latest Release Desperate Surrender

 

Wendy O'Sullivan’s life drastically changes upon discovering she is not human, and is charged with guarding the Key of Peace. To make matters more complicated, she reunites with the Protector she's dreamed of since the day he rescued her from a demon attack.

Kieran Frasier, hasn’t kissed, much less loved a woman in over three hundred years, his heart firmly encased behind thick walls. The fierce immortal defends innocents from powerful demons, but can he defend himself from diminutive Wendy, who manages to get past all his barricades?

 

Faced with arranged marriages to others and battling demons that will stop at nothing to capture Wendy, will they be forced to surrender their chance at true love for the greater good?

 

Sometimes your biggest obstacle is not who you are, but who you love.

 Thanks so much for visiting with us today, Hildie. Please, wonderful readers, take a moment to check out Hildie's work and visit me on her blog. Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

Busy Week Ahead

Time is flying by. I have some fun bloggy plans for this week.

Tomorrow Hildie McQueen and I will be guesting on each others blogs. Join me on hers to read my take on how to name characters in fantasy. I'll be using examples for my epic fantasy series, The Futhark Chronicles. Do you know the origin of the word, Futhark?

 You can check out her blog now to hear about her experience on the recent Moonlight and Magnolias Conference in Georgia.

Hildie will be sharing even more about her recent conference experiences on my blog on Monday. I'm very envious of my writer friends who are busy with fall conferences. Next year.

On Wednesday of this week, I'll be joining around 90 other bloggers in the Did I Notice Your Book blogfest, another great idea for Alex Cavanaugh. You can still sign up and join us. Even if you don't join us, hop around and read about some books and authors you may not have heard of but that maybe you should check out.

So lots to do besides working on my current WIP, The Heir of Futhark, fourth and final book in my series. Work, work, work, but the fun kind. Hope to see you around this week.

Are you joining Wednesday's blogfest? Have you heard of Hilde McQueen?

Time Line

I can't believe we're almost halfway through October. Where has 2012 gone? Hopefully everything doesn't end in December because I have plans for 2013.

I read a short article in a writer magazine written by an author who had left the big six publishing company she wrote for to take the self-publishing route. She had many reasons for changing the course of her career and with a lot of hard work, she made pretty good money. I'm not sure I could ever spend 10 hours per day promoting online, but it was inspiring. One of her reasons for abandoning the 'big boys' publishing game struck a cord with me.

It's not unusual with a large publisher for the actual date of putting your book on the market to be two years in the future from the time you sign their contract. Two years. That's a long time from getting an advance check until you start to earn any royalties. In that time, most authors will write two or more additional books without every know how that first book will be received.

Most indie publishers get your contracted book to market much quicker, three to twelve months at most. And of course, if you self publish, your book is for sale as quick as you can do the preparation. The time line you make is your own.

I think more writers are getting impatient with the slow machine of the traditional publishing houses. Authors are more determined than ever to take control of their careers and the products of their hard work.

Is your career following your timeline? Have you felt 2012 flew by? Plans for 2013?

The Writing Nut

I am a lucky writer today. I'm guesting at The Writing Nut. Nutschell is graciously allowing me to post over on her blog. You can see a picture of my knee after surgery. It's mostly better now though jogging downhill is  somewhat uncomfortable. Check out my writing space.

Thank you, Nutschell. Please hop over and join me.

Writing Process

I'm busy on the fourth book of my epic fantasy series, The Futhark Chronicles. The Heir of Futhark will wrap up the series. Someday I might revisit the world I've created there with a series about the next generation of characters, but I have to finish this book long before that can happen. Before I talk about writing, I wanted to let you know I'll be a guest at The Writing Nut this week. So hop over there now and meet Nutschell, a very special generous person.

Writers develop their own unique ways to go about writing a book. I generally write a really rough first draft, hopefully rather quickly. Quickly for me currently is five to six months. Then I print it out and read it, making huge changes, pulling and adding scenes, writing all over it in red and blue pen until there's more colored ink than there is black. After that, I use that rough draft as an outline to write the book I intend to send to my beta readers. That's where I am right now with Heir of Futhark.

Using the outline, I can write a couple of thousand words a day. Not every sentence gets changed so some chapters go pretty quickly. When I have to add or do a lot of clean up on scenes, it slows me down. Sometimes a single sentence slows me down. I want to keep it because it says something important, but it just isn't saying it quite right.

Here's a rule I use during this rewrite. If I have to read a sentence twice to know for sure what it means, I have to change it. I don't want my reader to have to pause to understand what I meant to convey. I want the reader caught up in the story, not taken out by my confusing prose or poor sentence construction. I'm lucky in that my beta reader, Gina, is excellent at catching things that might be a bit foggy.

I'm sure that as a reader, we've all encountered a complicated part in a book that we have to slow down and reread. Perhaps a part where you're not sure which character is speaking or which head you're inside of.

Do you catch this in your own writing? Do you notice it when you're reading? Do you know Nutschell?

Insecure Writers Support Group

Can't believe it's the first Wednesday of a new month already. Thanks to Alex Cavanaugh, I always know what to write about on this day. Alex started The Insecure Writers Support Group and you can find all the links on his blog. You can always join or you can just take advantage of all those links to wonderful blogs. You're sure to meet interesting people and probably learn something.

I'd like to bring up an issue that every person using a blog or publishing a book or doing any kind of writing they intend to make public has to face. How much personal stuff do I share with everyone? My email? My picture? Pictures of my family? News about my family? Do I talk about where I live?

Will my blog be about personal issues, writing issues or a combination? Are my friends on Facebook really people I have a personal connection to, or are they a community of writing professionals? Do we share personal news or only promote our writing?

Each of us has to make our own decisions about how much of ourselves we put out there. Some people maintain more than one blog, one professional and one more personal. I've made my blog mostly about my writing, but some personal issues sneak their way into my posts. My day job, my family and my daily activities are sometimes tied into my writing news and views.

I never bring up politics on my blog and seldom ever comment on someone's blog who does. It's not the kind of debate you can host without angering someone.

So how personal is your social networking? Do you give a lot of your personal info out or keep most of it private? Do you dip your toe in the boiling water of politics or avoid it?

First Monday Health Tip

The months are slipping by, the sun setting earlier, the nights getting colder and soon we'll be spending more time indoors. Lots of people stuck together indoors means we're sharing not only enclosed, warm places where germs thrive, but we'll be breathing, coughing and sneezing on each other. Cold and flu viruses are not only varied and numerous, they're pretty hardy.

So my health advice is to stay home when you're sick. It's advice I've seldom followed over the years. Teachers get exposed to lots of sick children over the course of a school term. Kids come to school when they're not well because their parents make them, or they're responsible and don't want to fall behind, or perhaps they have an athletic event they need to be present for. Walk in nearly any classroom during the winter months and you'll hear someone coughing or sniffling. If you don't catch a few of those illnesses as a teacher, you've been very lucky or very, very careful.

Then the teacher gets sick, drags their feverish self into the classroom anyway, and spreads the cheer around a little more. When you're a teacher, it takes lots of planning to be absent. Most teachers will tell you it's easier to be there even if sick, then to try and makes plans a substitute can follow. I've been very guilty of this myself. But this year, I've faced the fact that I'm not irreplaceable. School will go on, even if I'm very ill. I'm going to keep all my coughs and sneezes at home.

So wash your hands often. Cough into your elbow. Avoid the ill folks. And maybe you'll escape some of those cold and flu viruses making their creepy rounds.

So do you take off work when you're sick or do you try to soldier on? Do you 'catch' bugs at work? Do your children or spouse bring them home to you?