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I've always had a soft spot for romance writers and romance novels were always in our house when I was growing up. But to be perfectly honest it was only in last couple of years that I started to think about romance novels as an industry and about the writers themselves. It started when I picked up a book from the library called The merchants of Venus : inside Harlequin and the empire of romance by Paul Grescoe. It fascinated me. I had no idea that Harlequin was a Canadian company or that it was one of the largest publishing companies in the world. From there I went on to the Harlequin website which I have to say, I found very interesting. I may have even applied for a job or two (ok fine, I applied for six and no I never did hear back). It's only been in the last year that I've learned about the Romance Writers of America and their annual conference. The RWA conference is big and sounds delightfully fun. At least, that is, if I can believe what I read on blogs.
Sally MacKenzie posted on the blog 2 B Read today with her top six favourite things from the conference, including the thrill of seeing her own out of print book available for sale.
The literacy book signing. Wow, what energy! So many authors, so many readers. And I arrived to find all three of my books there!!! My first book, The Naked Duke, was released in February 2005 and has been out of print for a while, selling for ridiculous prices in the used book market, so I was in seventh heaven when I saw the box with Dukes.
Writing and Life also contains some favourites things from the conference (hmm Julie Andrews is starting to sing in my head) and ended with the following:
I love RWA conferences. The energy there is always amazing and I always meet wonderful people. Thank you to everyone who was kind to me, forgave me when I was brain dead and forgot or misspoke a name, shared with me stories of their first sales, and let me be part of THEIR conference experience.
Margaret Daley snagged an award. She also gave me some food for thought on writing fiction (not that I do write fiction but sometimes it's fun to pretend).
Secondary characters add a richness to a book. Often a reader will want that character to have his/her own story. I think having fully developed secondary characters round out your story and will cause it to stick in your readers' minds even more. The only caution I would give when you develop a compelling secondary character is to make sure he/she doesn't totally overshadowed your hero and heroine.
Bookends, LLC learned a few things at the conference. Aphrodisia Authors loved the positive energy that flowed through the conference. Larissa Ione's trip to Dallas started badly (anyone thinking of taking magnets to BlogHer this year may want to read) but ended well.
And while I'm only touching the very tip of the iceberg of blog posts out there (after all, there were about 2200 people in attendance) I'm going to leave you with this quote from Gina Ardito at the RWU Community Blog. I think it's what we all know that BlogHer can be this year, both live in person and online through Second Life.
We share our hangups and quirks, our tricks for breaking writer’s block and getting our characters to do what we want, and our general passion for our genre and its many stars. We get to wrap our arms around friends we’ve only previously known online. We learn we’re not alone when we realize it’s 3 in the afternoon and we’re still in our pajamas. We clink glasses together to celebrate, pass the chocolate to commisserate.
Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.
