RWA Conference Oh-Nine, Oh, Yes!

Every year, I carefully weigh the decision of whether or not to attend RWA's annual national conference. On the minus side, it's expensive, exhausting, and time-consuming. But there are so many pluses, I keep coming back for more. Here are just a few of the reasons.

1. Seeing old friends and making new ones.

It's wonderful meeting people whose eyes light up, rather than glazing over, when the conversation turns to books and writing. From my old friends, many of whom have gone on to great success, I not only derive great pleasure but hard-won wisdom. From those struggling toward publication, I gain an appreciation for the drive, energy, and raw hope needed for the effort. From the newest of the newbies, I smile with the memory of how amazing, terrifying, and exciting this gathering of 2,000 writers and publishing professionals was to me ten years before. (I nearly passed out the first time I rode in the elevator with Nora Roberts. Ten years later, I'm still such a fan girl around superstars like Linda Howard, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and Sharon Sala, though Sharon's become a very good friend.)

2. Connecting with publishing pros.

There's nothing like a face-to-face meeting with your agent or editor to make sure everyone's on the same page. If you don't have an agent or editor, this is a great place to see them in action and/or ask those working with them for their impressions. Just remember, one author's dream agent/editor/publishing house is another's nightmare (and vice versa), so take each person's experience as a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.

3. Learning something new.

Whether it's getting a feeling for the latest emerging trend, improving your craft, or honing your business skills and knowledge of the industry, there's always something new to learn. RWA national strives to select a broad range of workshops from the best of the best presenters, but frankly, I've learned as much or more from networking with other conference attendees as in any presentation.

4. Soaking up creative juices.

The cloud of creativity floating above 2,000 writers and publishing pros is so charged with hopeful excitement that it's hard not to be struck by powerful new ideas. I can't tell you how many books I've written have come to pass because an idea has caught fire at a conference -- ignited by some workshop, meeting, or passing comment.

5. Glamming it up for a change.

Since I spend 99% of my summer in denim capris, tees, and Birkenstocks (I make no claims as to fashion sense), it's fun to dress in grown-up clothes and even glam it up now and then. And the Golden Heart and Rita award celebration is as good of an excuse as any. Besides, I *love* seeing my pals dressed up.

Pictured, fellow Rita finalist and pal Terri Brisbin and me just before the awards ceremony. Neither of us went home with golden ladies this year (congrats to the talented NYT bestselling Cindy Gerard, who won in my category, Romantic Suspense!) but we left there smiling nonetheless. (That line about it being an honor to be nominated in such company... I really mean that!)

6. Partying with pals.

I am soooo not a party animal, it's pathetic. But even I was rocking at my very first Harlequin party. Most of the publishers host some sort of dinner or reception, and it's a great chance to connect with fellow authors and the publishing pros in a fun, social setting. And since you automatically have someting in common with these people, there's none of the awkward standing around that dominates so many of my non-writing social forays.

Not pictured, now or ever (I pray): me dancing!

All in all, conference was a great time. But it may take me 12 months to rest up for next summer in Nashville!

Go with God, Frank McCourt

Birthday books for Malachi (What do you get for the guy who knows everything?)

My son Malachi turned 22 last week. He celebrated a super cool birthday (starting with the fact that it was 07/08/09) in Israel with his sister. So yeah, I did the mom thing and sent him cash and clothes for the trip, but I wanted to give him something that showed him how much I love and respect the way his brain works.

The two books I ordered have the right balance of testosterone, hippitude, art, and politics:

The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld
In a style that's been called "part Puzo, part Kerouac," author Tom Folsom tells the story of the lovable thug immortalized in a Bob Dylan ballad, "a charismatic beatnik gangster whose forays into Greenwich Village in the 1960s inspired his bloody revolution against the Mafia establishment." I ordered it the day it came out, and I wish I'd had time to read it before sending it off in the birthday box. (Click here to watch the cool trailer.)

Asterios Polyp
I was powerless to resist the starred review in Publisher's Weekly that starts: "For decades, Mazzucchelli has been a master without a masterpiece. Now he has one." Asterios Polyp is a celebrated architect who's never actually built anything. Way too smart for his own comfort (one of the reasons I thought of my son), he's in the grip of a spiritual crisis. Philosophy, satire, thinky thoughts, arty art. Think Fountainhead meets Sin City.

Mazzecchelli is an American comic book artist who's also done covers and interior work for The New Yorker. The PW review goes on to call his much anticipated graphic novel "a huge, knotty marvel." (The reviewer also calls the book "the comics equivalent of a Pynchon or Gaddis novel," but I'm not holding that against it.)

I also sent the freshly released DVD, Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a slightly suck-up but tremendously entertaining documentary about one of my favorite writers. You've seen his infamous "Pay the Writer Rant" in this space, and that's a pretty good taste of what you get in the rest of the show. Tons of excellent writing advice, huge laughs, and lots of in your face Ellison wisdom. ("The trick isn't becoming a writer; the trick is staying a writer.")

Take a look at the trailer:

If we've lost Cronkite...

Is it too much to hope that the passing of Walter Cronkite will tweak the conscience of modern journalists? Or is this the dying of an era in which "fair and balanced" actually meant "with unbiased integrity"?

From the obit in the NY Times:

“I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor — not a commentator or analyst,” he said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. “I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.”

But when he did pronounce judgment, the impact was large.

In 1968, he visited Vietnam and returned to do a rare special program on the war. He called the conflict a stalemate and advocated a negotiated peace. President Lyndon B. Johnson watched the broadcast, Mr. Cronkite wrote in his 1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life,” quoting a description of the scene by Bill Moyers, then a Johnson aide.

“The president flipped off the set,” Mr. Moyers recalled, “and said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.’ ”

Go with God, Walter Cronkite

My most vivid childhood memory of the Most Trusted Man in America.

Cheno gets another Emmy nom! (Go, homegirl, go!)

Oh, I am a proud book nanny. Kristin Chenoweth scored a second well-deserved Emmy nomination yesterday for her singing, dancing, adorable role as Olive Snook in Pushing Daisies.

No one was surprised to see this hyper-creative show get canceled earlier this year. It was frankly too good to last -- all about rich writing, quirky characters, an elaborately choreographed premise, and more living color than we've ever seen on TV. I got to hang out on the set a bit while I was working on Kristin's book, and everyone in the cast and crew was so proud of this really good art they were making. Happily, the work will live on on DVD -- it's one of those shows destined to have a cult following -- and we'll catch a last loving glance of Olive on Emmy night.

Meanwhile, Kristin's going to be on an upcoming ep of Jerusha's new favorite show, Glee, doing her symphony gigs here and there, and back on Broadway with Tyne Daly, Katie Finneran, Rosie O'Donnell, Mary Louise Wilson, and Rita Wilson in Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Nora and Delia Ephron's adaptation of Ilene Beckerman's 1995 book, about clothes and the memories they trigger.

This week on Mylene Dressler's AMN: The Stunt Man

I've been quietly enjoying Mylene Dressler's "American Stories NOW" blog, a series of beautifully true moments observed and reported with the grace and skill of a novelist.

This week she tells about sitting next to stunt man Harry Madsen on an airplane...

Harry had worked for years in Hollywood, as a stunt man on tv series like Kojak and McCloud, and for Burt Lancaster in his films ("except I was a little too short--he was nice about it though, a great guy"). He threw himself around in comedies like Ghostbusters and, once, for Helen Hayes, wearing a pink blouse and a gray wig. I asked him how he'd found his way into stuntwork, and he waved his paw of a hand and said his father, who'd owned a ranch and silver mine in Oaxaca, Mexico had wanted him to become an educated man--but that four years of college had been nothing but boring, so Harry decided to join the rodeo circuit instead, working up and down the East Coast. One thing led to another, and one summer he found he was stunting in New York on the original The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.

"I love that movie!" I say, delighted. "Were you down on the train tracks with the electric rail? Did you bite it?"

"That was me, all right."

Check out the whole story here and watch for "American Stories NOW" updates on our FEED ME sidebar.

Happy Rembrandt's Birthday!

Enjoy a fat nude moment with "Danae"...

Okay. Get your clothes on and get back to work.

Fresh Pick of the Day: Beneath Bone Lake

Received an e-mail letting me know that my new book, Beneath Bone Lake, is Fresh Fiction's Fresh Pick of the Day. Tres cool!

Check it out!

Hook 'em and Shut Up: Thoughts on Pitching

I'm gearing up to go to RWA's annual national conference in D.C., so I'm reminded of a moment from last year's (in blessedly cool San Francisco, where I'd vote to go every year). One afternoon, I skipped out of the sessions and wandering around to see if I could find any of the hundreds of authors I know to hang around and shoot the breeze with. (What was called hooky in high school is networking here, and it's usually where I get my best intelligence on what's happening in the industry.) As I strolled along a corridor, I saw a lady whose name tag designated her as a first-timer to the conference and a fellow Texan, an unpublished member who was on her own and looking so nervous and miserable, I couldn't help but stop and say hi, then ask her how she was enjoying her first time as nationals.

She wasn't at that moment, she said. On her way to her very first editor appointment, she was tying her intestines into knots trying to recall her memorized spiel. Since she still had some time and I wasn't doing anything productive, I gave her a "We Texans have to stick together" line and asked her to come over to the chairs that lined the corridor and practice her pitch with me.

So she did, vomiting out this confusing mass of information designed to fill every second of her allotted ten minute appointment time. There was no stopping her to ask a question, no interrupting to clarify a point, and as motivated as I was to listen, I had a hard time figuring out what the marketing hooks might be, what kind of book this was (both genre and subgenre), what the length was and whether it was complete.) If I had been an editor, I would've given up, let her run her course, and sent her on her way, none the wiser as to how I might sell her story.

After she finished, I asked her a few questions, then looked for how it best fit this particular editor's interests. (She was pitching to an editor I know from my own publishing house. A lucky break, but a basic awareness of each house's lines and authors is critical. And not at all hard to find out.) So we pulled the marketing hooks that might possibly be relevant to and published by that house and crafted a sort of teaser line or two around them, along with the crucial info.

Here's a brief example (something I just made up) of the sort of thing you might lead with.

"Hi, I'm (give your name - your real name), and I've completed a 90,000 (or what have you) word light paranormal romance (or what have you) about a misunderstood (or name your own adjective) demoness (name your own noun) who wants to go straight and play for the other team (name your own intriguing goal.) Only centuries of prior bad acts and the handsome demon-slayer (another adj-noun combo) who's been pursuing her as long (obstacle) conspire to send her to Hell on Earth -- an eternity as a "performer" for a Chuck E Cheese-like party spot for kids. (Remember, this is a "light" paranormal, so I've set up a possibility with humorous potential.)"

Delivered calmly and in a friendly manner (sometimes after a moment of small talk and a handshake, depending on the pub pro), this spiel should take no more than a minute or two to deliver. Once you've finished stating your case (you might add, say, any publishing/significant contest credentials if you have them or that your book might appeal to, for example, readers of Angie Fox, Kerrelyn Sparks, and Mary Janice Davidson), then it's time to simply sit back and shut your mouth.

Let the agent take the lead from here, asking you questions about your story. Sometimes you'll actually see the spark of excitement ignite as the pro's imagination takes your concept and runs with it. And if what you've pitched is actually something this house publishes, you'll generally get a request to see either the partial or a manuscript.

So what if there's time left? Try asking some questions of your own about the publishing house and/or how the editor works. Or try asking (I ask this all the time of agents and editors) what the person's working on that he/she's particularly excited about right now. It's a wonderful snapshot of what may be up and coming in the market.

If you get into a give and take conversation with the editor or agent, you'll be much less likely to be nervous. Which is a very good thing, since I've never heard of anyone buying a project from an author who's just thrown up on her shoes!

By the way, I received an excited thank you note from the Texas woman I'd helped. She'd gotten a request from the editor, and she was absolutely thrilled about it. So was I, since once we figured out what she was actually selling, it sounded terrific.

Best of luck to those of you pitching at Nationals this year!