“Selling the Hard Sell” at RWA conference

Our workshop “Selling the Hard Sell” was approved for the RWA national conference in July. I’ll be speaking with partner in crime, Kristina McMorris, debut author and fellow Golden Heart® finalist.

We came up with the idea because, as new authors, we may not have tips to offer in regards to long-term career and craft, but we know how it feels when no one wants that book of your heart because the writing is good, but it’s a “hard sell”. Kristina’s background is in marketing and her WWII set debut novel, Letters from Home, is scheduled to be released in February 2011 after a long journey through contests and queries similar to Butterfly Swords.

After some discussion,  we reflected on how we had kept a keen eye on the market, despite having “unmarketable” proposals. The workshop will outline our query and submission process and the very specific approach we each took. Beyond the tips and tricks, Kristina and I might have some war stories under our belts that writers in the query war might find heartening as well. It’s going to be an exciting conference.

I hope I don’t forget my lines. I hope the room isn’t empty. *crickets chirping* I also hope we get to speak early so I can get the butterflies over with and breathe easy!

Workshop approved!

I found out a workshop workshop proposal I’d submitted for a writer’s conference in New England was approved! This is so exciting. I’ll be speaking about tips for constructing a compelling partial submission through page 1, page 5 and page 50.

It’s a little nerve-wracking to do a craft workshop since I’m so new at this, but I have spent a lot of time learning how to put together the opening chapters, how to make them stand out and what pitfalls to avoid. It’s been over two years since I stood in front of a class to teach. At least I have a couple months to smooth out the presentation since the conference isn’t until March.

I’m using some of the material for the workshop in my post for Tuesday at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood blog which is titled, “The First Five Pages…and the Red Line of Death”. Hope you can come by! Maybe the comments from the post to help me prepare for the workshop.