Atlantis Booty!

So I guess you've all been waiting to find out the winners of the Alyssa Day book giveaways, right? Well here it is!

Lori T, RKCharron, Estella, Di R, and joder...

Prepare yourselves to be UNLEASHED!

You're the big winners of Alyssa Day's book giveaway! Please contact Alyssa at: authoralyssaday @ aol.com (no spaces, of course!) and mention the Romance Bandits blog so she can send your copy of Atlantis Unleashed!

And thanks for giving Alyssa such a warm welcome!

-Kirsten

The New Reality for Writers

By KJ Howe

I've had the pleasure of attending two conferences back to back the last month—Thrillerfest in NYC and RWA in Washington D.C. with the fabulous Banditas! Being surrounded by writers for two weeks was incredible. It also made me consider another aspect of life as an author and I'd love to hear your opinion:

Most writers enjoy studying people (we're all looking for character traits for our heroes/heroines/villains!) and watching everyone at the conferences, I started realizing how the public life of a writer has changed dramatically with the advent of new technologies.

Back in the day, authors rarely had their photos included on their book jackets—now the entire back cover often features the writer in a scholarly pose (deep in thought, perhaps dreaming of the next method to kill off a character!).

Before the internet shrunk the world, authors didn't have much opportunity to meet fans from different countries. Now writers and fans can mingle no matter where they live. Just look at the Banditas…we're from a variety of countries that circle the globe.

Also, given the advent of Book television, Book radio, and the fact that writers are regular guests on talk shows and news programs, publishers are looking for authors who are comfortable promoting their novels in a public forum.

What happened to being able to write in seclusion? Are the days of the solitary author toiling away in front of the typewriter in obscurity over? Do authors need to accept that the world wants to know who is behind their book? Publishers are actively looking for authors who can both promote and be promotable. The new media encourages writers to do more to reach out to readers. Now fans are given unprecedented access to their favorite authors.

This has caused a near tectonic shift in the personality required to be a successful author. If you're more of an introverted personality type, do you feel overwhelmed by this change?

Have you ever read a novel, then met the author and had your opinion change or vice versa?

Do you think this change in the level of author/reader contact has been good for the industry?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! KJ

Literary Pick up Lines

by Donna MacMeans

A good book is a bit like a date. You browse the bookshelf, looking for those attributes that speak to your inner passions. If you like the look of the book, you might sample a few pages to see if you can invest a couple of hours with this guy...er...story. Does it interest you? Stimulate, maybe? Makes you linger over your latte to slip in a few more pages?

Following my dating analogy, the first couple of lines would be the pick up lines - engineered to spark your interest, engage your attention, encourage you to take the book home to curl up with between the sheets. (And they wonder why the sale of romance novels is booming (grin)).

Writers (and lounge lizards) know that first lines are really important. Authors tend to rewrite them, trying to get just the right cadence, the right tone to hook your interest. My first line for The Seduction of a Duke inspired the rest of the story. Unusual for me, but true. I'm been to Newport Beach in Rhode Island and could vividly see this scene. Here's what I wrote for the beginning of Chapter 1 - the prologue came later:

"With all the malice she could muster, Francesca Winthrop whacked the wooden croquet ball beneath her foot, sending her mother's ball careening across the manicured lawn, over the edge of the Newport cliffs, and possibly into the blue gray waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Pity, it wasn't her mother's head."

Can you tell I was going for a chuckle, a smile, a bit of curiosity as to why Francesca was ticked?

Here's another first line - not mine - but one of my favorites.

"Thursday, March 17, I spent the morning in anxiety, the afternoon in ecstasy, and the evening unconscious." Dick Francis, Risk (1977)

How about this one? "It was understood throughout the great Northern Continent of Zantalia that assassins were invariably male. Clutching
the marriage contract in one hand, Kalena stood on the wide threshold of the Traders' Guild Hall and considered what it meant to be an exception to that rule." Jayne Anne Krentz, Crystal Flame (1994)

One more - this from fellow bandita Kate Carlisle :

"My teacher always told me that in order to save a patient you'd have to kill him first." Homicide in Harcover (2009)

About ten years ago, I asked other authors to send me their favorite first lines in books they had read. Being the basically anal accountant that I am, I kept track of how many first lines opened with humor, suspense, dialogue, description etc. and kept that information duly filed. I'd like to revisit that study and see if times and first lines have changed. I'm thinking I can incorporate this into other statistics I've accumulated about well-written books. So I'm asking for your help.

Tell me your favorite first lines from any book. Be sure to include the title and author. If you don't have any favorite first lines from books, pick up lines will do (grin) but I'd really prefer lines of a more literary nature. I'll compile the lines submitted and report back about 11:00 PM EST the results for any interested participants. Of course, prizes (yes - that's plural) will be awarded.

So hit me with your best literary pick up.

Dealing with Disappointment

by Anna Sugden

No, not writing disappointment ... not another rejection ... at least, not yet *g*.

I'm talking today about reading disappointment. Last week should have been a great reading week. Lots of travel, so plenty of uninterrupted time to focus on books. I'd deliberately saved up the new books by some of my absolute favourite authors. You know how it is, you've snapped up the latest in their series, are desperate to get stuck in, but common sense prevails and you decide to hold on until you can read the book from cover to cover.

So, what went wrong?

I didn't enjoy the books.

Reading a disappointing book is hard enough - these days, with so many books to read and so little spare time, I discard disappointing books quite quickly. If they're by new authors, I'm loathe to try them again.

But, when the book is by someone whose writing you normally love - it's a real blow. I'm deliberately not naming names, as I don't think that's fair (after all, it's only my humble opinion). I am going to share with you what didn't work. And a dilemma I have.

The first author is one who normally writes great contemporary romances with fabulous characters. She always gives them real depth, so you can empathise with them and their conflicts. This latest book, though, her characters were unappealing and seemed 2-dimensional. Honestly, I didn't really care if their conflict was resolved.

The second is an awesome romantic suspense writer, who always keeps me on the edge of my seat and who manages to surprise me with her plot twists. This book had an unappealing premise to start with, but because I loved the rest of the series, I soldiered on. Sadly, this plot was a real let-down. A lot of information dumped and repeated and no clever twists. The villain was obvious from the first mention and the denouement was weak.

Similarly, a normally entertaining writer of an amateur sleuth series slipped up in her latest. I'd actually ignored the damning reviews on this one. I have to say - sadly - the reviews were right.

The fourth was a paranormal writer whose last book was one of the best I've ever read. Great characters, atmospheric writing, wonderful descriptions and very clever adaptation of well-known themes. I'd hunted around to get this latest book as, for some reason, it was hard to find. Sadly, I wish I hadn't bothered as everything that had been so great about the last book was decidely missing in this one.

Finally, a historical author who writes entertaining stories which are incredibly satisfying, as the emotional journeys her characters take are compelling. Not this time. The ending of a satisfactory book (not bad, just not outstanding) was a total and utter cop-out! It was like she'd realised she had five more pages to go and rushed to finish the book.

The last time this happened, I was extremely grateful to the talented Rhonda Nelson and her book, The Future Widows Club, for saving me.

This time, thank goodness, my faith was restored by the next three books I read - Into The Fire by Suzanne Brockmann, Tempting Evil by Allison Brennan and The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner - thank you, thank you, Suz, Allison and Lisa!!

Now, on to my dilemma. What do I do when the next book comes out by these favoured authors? Do I rush out and buy it, hoping that this last one was an unfortunate blip? After all, you can't expect every book to be brilliant ... Or can you? Do I wait, read the reviews and talk to pals about it? Or do I give up?

What would you do?

Have you read any disappointing books, lately? Please don't name names, just tell me what you found disappointing. And what you plan to do about reading more by that author. What about the wonderful author who rescued you and whose book restored your happiness?!

My Fellow Writers....

by Jeanne Adams

It's a weird week for me. I don't mean Post-Conference-the Banditas-have-gone-home-Lonliness, I mean general universal weirdness.

Walter Cronkite died.

Its the anniversary of a moon landing.

My Dad turns 90. (Yes, he IS a much older Dad...)

Weird, I tell you. I began looking at famous events and happenings in 1919, in preparation for the big nine-oh birthday celebrations and I am amazed at what's happened in a mere 90 years. I started by looking at what's happened in history in this week in July.

Did you know that today, in 1875, Mark Twain copyrighted The Adventure of Tom Sawyer? Neither did I. Then again, I also didn't know that in this week, in varying years, Penicillin was patented, Louis Pasteur patented a revolutionary process for making better beer, America the Beautiful was copyrighted, and the totally unknown and now long forgotten Emily Tasser patented a new device for raising sunken ships.

Taken all together, I guess it means that to celebrate, we should read Tom Sawyer while drinking a beer, get a pennicillin shot (or eat moldy bread!), sing a favorite American tune and contemplate raising the Titanic. Grins.

They didn't mention the Titanic in the retrospectives on Walter Cronkite, but in watching several of the programs on Cronkite's life, I was humbled by just how much CHANGE has happened. My father wrote his memoirs and reading them is a far better view into the path of global change than any dry history book.

In 1919, 99% of Americans did NOT have a car. A statistic now reversed.

It was the year the pop-up toaster was invented, but 70% of households still were unelectrified. There were only 48 States in the Union and New Mexico and Arizona were brand spanking new to Statehood.

The parachute was invented and successfully tested. Now...who thought this was a good idea in the first place and who was stupi...brave...enough to give it a go?

Prohibition passed, and World War I unofficially ended. Civil War General and President Ulysses S. Grant died.

In an important milestone for writers, the typewriter was invented.

The Senate and House passed the Women's Suffrage Bill, though the offical 19th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the vote didn't pass until 1920.

A plane crossed the Atlantic for the first time.

1919 is the first observation of National Book Week.

US-born Lady Astor became the first female member of the British Parliment.

Weird stuff happened too. A wall of molassas, a veritable "tidal wave" of sugar syrup oozed through Boston, killing 21 people. A dirigible crashed in Chicago. The Philadelphia Phillies beat the then-Brooklyn Dodgers nine-to-nothing, but it took 'em 20 innings to do it. (Before electrified lights on the field! Yikes!) There was plague (influenza, polio), famine, a wave of race riots, and a whole lot of war still going on.

Miracles happened too: postage actually DROPS from three cents to two cents. The Cincinnati reds go from ten and a half games back, to the World Series, and win.

That guy with the parachute actually survived.

When you look at 1919, you can already see the stage being set for the world to begin moving with digital speed. Planes. Lots of trains, mostly steam, but a rare few "new" diesel. And the beginning of the worldwide love of the automobile. And books. Books on life, books on hope, war, disease. In Flanders Fields hit the NYT list. So did Joseph Conrad's Arrows of Gold. Zane Grey hit the charts with Desert of Wheat. In the next decade, it became an almost fifty-fifty split, women to men on the "Chart Toppers" of the New York Times list.

Other than book rankings, it took a while for voting and college and Rosie the Riveter to bring women along with this progress, but in the main, the 20's, 30's and 40's were a blur of change. World War II brought more change and my Dad and Walter Cronkite were both there. Radio tunes everyone in to Korea, TV brings both entertainment and Vietnam into our homes, two Kennedy's assasinated and one wonderful minister named Martin Luther King, after another reformer, was killed as well.

They saw it all.

But good stuff happened too. We landed on the moon too. Global cooling was predicted, then global warming, then mass kill-offs of ocean going creatures but none of that happened, thank goodness.

The massive room-sized computer was invented. (My Dad then ran that silly contest I blogged about before!) Remember punch cards? Now we have pocket sized computers and text friends who live in Tomorrow - think time zones here, people - in real time.

At the end of the twentieth century, my Dad and Walter Cronkite faced a new era. BOTH of them get interested in computers, both men share a love of the new, the fascinating, the changing and improving of the world.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

It boggles my mind to think about it. My Dad rode to school on a horse. I drop my kids off in a mini-van. My Dad learned to read, write, and do math, my kids learn all that plus computing and world affairs brought to their living room every night by TV. My kids know about DNA sequencing, something barely dreamed of in 1919.

What an amazing life. What an amazing world.

In looking all this up, and thinking about what it was like for my grandmother and mother, I realized that if a woman in those days, a woman like Mary Roberts Reinhart for instance could pen - literally - a bestseller in 1919, coining the phrase "The Butler Did it!", then I'm not doing too badly in 2009. After all, she couldn't even VOTE and she hit the Times list!

It's a brave new world, guys and dolls. What on Earth (or space!) will it be like in 90 more years? Care to guess? Will it be Jetsons? Will we live on other planets? Will they finally find a cure for the common cold, or cancer?

BTW, tell me too, who's the oldest person you ever met? My father remarried ten years ago. His mother in law lived five years after they married and died at nearly 105.

Weird, I tell ya!

Dream Chaser

by Beth

I'm back from DC and loved spending time with my fellow Banditas, BBs and other writing friends I only get to see once a year. I miss you all already! I especially enjoyed taking my niece Blaire with me to the RITA/GH awards ceremony. Blaire, sweetheart that she is, said afterwards that she wished she could've seen me accept my GH when I won two years ago which reminded me of how far of I'd come since my first National Conference.

I attended my first RWA National Conference in 2002 in Denver. Having never been to National before I was excited, nervous, and a bit overwhelmed. I’d completed one book and had attended a regional conference the year before but being at National, surrounded by so many aspiring authors, published authors and editors and agents was thrilling. I attended as many workshops as I could, taking copious notes and soaking up the information my fellow authors so generously shared. I met many new people, some of whom have since become dear friends. I saw some of my favorite authors in the hall and in the bar. I even got to sit in the reserved seats at the RITA/Golden Heart ceremony. Oh, not because I’d finaled in either contest--heck, at that time I didn’t even know what either award was about--but because the published author who’d generously sponsored the conference scholarship I’d won was up for a RITA. And since she couldn’t attend, who did she ask to accept on her behalf should her name be called?

Me.

For those who know me, the situation was laughable to say the least. I’m what you might call…unassuming. Quiet. Watchful. And definitely not someone who’s comfortable accepting an award in front of two thousand people. Unfortunately, my benefactor didn’t win that night so I didn’t have to leave my seat. A fact for which my nerves were mighty grateful, but by the end of the night, after watching so many talented, gracious women accept their awards, my viewpoint changed and I was certain of one very surprising fact:

I wanted to be up on that stage. And I wanted to be up there accepting my own award.

So, naturally, I did what anyone would do in my situation. I wrote a book (my second) and entered it in the next year’s Golden Heart contest. It didn’t final. Neither did either of my two entries a year later. Or the year after that. I wrote more. I revised. I entered chapter contests and seriously considered each and every comment given. I found some fabulous critique partners. Most important of all, I found my voice. And I entered the Golden Heart once again.

That year I was lucky enough to be a double finalist in the GH. I had a blast at the National conference in Atlanta, meeting my fellow finalists for the first time, proudly wearing my GH ribbons and buttons. I joined The Golden Network and attended their wonderful dessert reception and famed Boot-Out ceremony as well as their informative retreat. There was a champagne reception for both RITA and GH finalists, rehearsals and finally, awards night.

I honestly didn’t expect to win and therefore didn’t experience more than a twinge of disappointment when my name wasn’t called. After all, it was an honor just to final and I was determined not to be eligible for the GH again. I was ready to sell.

Yeah, I hear you all laughing out there.

I knew it didn’t really matter that I was ready to sell, what mattered was that an editor was ready to buy me (or in this case, my story). But I thought my story was good. Really good. Alas, while the editor I was working with agreed my story was good, it wasn’t good enough to buy.

Not one to let a bit of bad news get me down, I forged ahead, entered the 2007 GH, and hoped like the dickens that lightening really could strike the same place twice. It did.

With that third final came the same excitement as the year before, along with healthy doses of relief, gratitude and, to be honest, a sense of validation that perhaps I was going in the right direction after all. I truly thought that this story, a story I’d worked so hard on, a story I’d received an eight page revision letter for, a story that had been sent up to the senior editor with a recommendation to buy, was THE ONE.

And then, a week before this year‘s conference, I was rejected.

It hurt. Oh, did it hurt. But, since rejections are a part of this business, I didn’t let it get me down (the hot fudge sundae I had for supper that night helped too). Instead, I focused on making this conference the best ever. I was going to network and take workshops and enjoy being a finalist. Like the other year I'd finaled, I met my fellow finalists, enjoyed the retreats and receptions and even had a productive meeting with the editor I’ve been working with these past few years.

I was inspired by stories of authors who wrote for five, ten or even twenty years before selling. Awed by their persistence, determined to achieve my own success and unable to imagine doing anything else but writing, I vowed to work harder, write better and to never give up.

But by Saturday, the combination of too little down time and way too little sleep caught up with me. Mid-afternoon, I sat down waiting for a friend when the doubts hit. What if I was fooling myself? What if I never sold? How many times will I be able to push on after the door’s been slammed in my face again?

It was pitiful. I was pitiful. And I hate being pitiful.

That night at the award’s ceremony, I had no hopes of winning. So when the presenter announced my title and my name, I was shocked, humbled, and a bit breathless from the bear hug Tawny gave me. I learned I can speak in front of 2,000 people and not make a total fool of myself. A partial fool, maybe, but not a total fool. Back at my seat, staring down at my shiny new Golden Heart necklace, I knew I would defeat those pesky doubts that had invaded my brain earlier in the day. Not because being a GH finalist or winner guarantees I’ll get published, but because I realized that no matter how hard this career might be, no matter how disappointing, I don’t want to do anything else.

My GH win gave me a boost, an ego stroke if you will, and the realization that while I was still anxious, maybe even a bit impatient to sell, I needed to take the time to appreciate the steps along the way.

A month later, I received The Call for that GH winning book. And the rest, as they say, is history :-)

But I learned to celebrate my successes and mourn my failures (for short amounts of time). And I’ll never stop writing, believing or dreaming.

How about you? What dreams have you achieved?

The Vision Thing

by Nancy

An article in the newspaper reminded me that tomorrow, July 20, is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. I remember seeing Neil Armstrong step down onto the surface of our planet's nearest neighbor. Even then, with my scifi geekdom in the budding stage, I thought this was way cool. And what took us there was vision. Imagination. The ability to see beyond "can't" to "could" and then "is." A wonderful book about the power of vision to transform one's life is October Sky by Homer Hickam, which became the moving film Rocket Boys, starring Jake Gillenhaal and Chris Cooper. The New York Times quoted Frank Borman as saying that if the moon landing had been more about vision and less about rocks, the space program might've made great strides in the interim. That's probably debatable, but for me, it was always about the vision thing.


Last night, RWA honored its RITA and GH finalists, writers whose visions touched the hearts of judges. They saw what characters "could" be and do, who mined the human potential for love and turned the ore into stories of triumph over emotional pain. As I write this, a week before you'll read it, I don't know who the winners are (will be? were?). On behalf of all the banditas, however, I congratulate them and the finalists. Not everyone can win, but everyone can sell and ascend the bestseller lists, and I wish all of you the best of luck.

The space program and the awards ceremony each resulted from careful planning and a lot of effort, albeit of different types. Sometimes, though, "stuff happens," as the saying goes, and leads to amazing results.




One example of such serendipity is the career of Greg Mortenson. His memoir, Three Cups of Tea, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for two and a half years. I attribute this success to the vision of positive change the book offers.


An experienced mountaineer, Mortenson set out to climb K2 in the Himalayas as a memorial to his deceased sister. His climb ended prematurely when a companion developed altitude sickness. Mortenson and another man carried him down the mountain, a trek that left Mortenson in rough shape as well. Disoriented and sick, he wandered away from his group and stumbled into a remote village in Pakistan. The people there took him in, fed him, and put him to bed. When he recovered, they showed him around their village. One of the things he saw was a circle of village children in a field, doing their lessons together--outside because they had no school and together because they had no teacher. And he realized building a school for these children would be a much better memorial to his sister than climbing a mountain.

Getting the school built did turn out to be a steep climb. No one with influence had ever heard of him, and raising money proved to be very difficult. But he did succeed in building the school, for girls as well as boys. As the building neared completion, people from a neighboring village arrived to ask if he'd build a school for them, too. One school led to another and another until building schools in that part of the world became his life's work. A failed effort to climb a mountain led to a vision of what could be and a step forward for some of the world's poorest people.

Two hundred thirty-three years ago, a handful of men in Philadelphia dared to challenge the world's greatest empire and most powerful navy. As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, they "brought forth a new nation, one founded in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." As a society, we don't always live up to that ideal, but it's out there as a model, something for us to strive toward. A vision. Granted, those early patriots had help from France, which never missed a chance to bedevil England in those days, but the vision was theirs, and it was so powerful that a French marquis (Lafayette), a German baron (von Steuben), and a Polish count (Pulaski) sailed over to help lead the army. It remains so powerful that Independence Hall is a World Heritage site and people from all over the planet come to see it.



Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the other women at Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848 had a vision of women controlling their own earnings, making their own decisions as to whether to work outside the home and, most important, helping to choose their nation's leaders. That same vision propelled Martin Luther King's efforts for racial equality and shaped his stirring "I Have a Dream" speech, one of the jewels of American rhetoric. As a result, African Americans count as "whole" people instead of 2/3 in the census, and all Americans of legal age can vote.





Vision doesn't just apply to national affairs but to entertainment and daily life as well. Imagination and science together gave us refrigerators and vacuum cleaners and artificial joints, among other things. An electronics salesman from Germany, Hugo Gernsbeck, was among the first to imagine television. Gernsbeck believed science would produce a utopian world. In his 1920s electronics catalogues, he featured various products and wrote commentaries on their potential. He coined the term "scienti-fiction," which became "science fiction," and helped create fandom via his magazine Amazing Stories. The SFWA Hugo award is named for him. Amazing Stories was most popular among geeky boys, possibly including two kids from Cleveland, Ohio, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. And if you're a true geek, you know that Siegel and Shuster created Superman and spawned a comic book genre beloved by millions around the globe.

Walt Disney looked at the potential for electronics differently, applying it to sound recording and animated movies. He believed in it so strongly that he sold his car to pay for re-recording the sound on his landmark cartoon, Steamboat Willie. A visit to Coney Island, which was then declining in popularity, convinced him there was an appetite for rides and imaginative entertainment, especially if delivered by cheerful staff in a clean environment, and he shared Gernsbeck's belief in technology as a way to deliver a better life. Exhibits in Tomorrowland still explore that possibility.

Those exhibits rely on computer technology, which owes many of its advances to two geeky kids who rose from obscurity to become gurus of the computer world--Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple. We can argue about evil empires and overpriced gadgets, but vision carried both of these men to the top of their field and provides convenience (along with occasional bewilderment and frustration) to millions of people.

Another business icon frequently mocked is Martha Stewart. We the homemaking-challenged don't relate very well to Martha but can still admire her talent. She realized there was a market for ways to make life easier or prettier or tastier and built an empire showing people how to create gorgeous lifestyles. She offered a vision of a nicer, more comfortable life that many people loved. Everyone now marketing homemaking product lines, magazines, and cookbooks is following in Martha's footsteps.

Also mocked despite booming business is romance fiction. If you've watched some of the YouTube videos about romance succeeding in the economic downturn, you may have shared my desire to send a really muscular, well-armed hero or kick-ass heroine to have a word or two with the TV people. But not everyone sees romance as something to apologize for. In 1980, 37 writers shared a vision about romance and came together to form an organization supporting a genre the world at large dissed. And still does. In Houston, Texas, Romance Writers of America was born. And here we all are, as the saying goes, in or trying to be in the business of romance.

Two business owners from Ohio achieved something that changed the way people travel. At Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright doggedly pursued a vision dating back to Da Vinci and beyond, the idea that human beings might fly. One December day in 1903, their glider "slipped the surly bonds of Earth," as RCAF Flight Officer James Gillespie Magee expressed it, for 12 seconds. Aviation was born. Climbing the hill to the Wright Brothers memorial requires fighting high winds all the way. Sand blows from the beach and the dunes, a stinging bombardment at times. The National Park Service site is a great place to fly a kite if the opportunity arises, just FYI. Dealing with that wind demonstrates why the Wrights found Kitty Hawk so suitable for gliders.

North Carolina and Ohio battle over who can legitimately claim to be "first in flight" and "birthplace of aviation," as our license plates state, with Ohioans noting that the flight took place at Kitty Hawk but a lot of the groundwork was done in Dayton, at the Wrights' bicycle shop. There's a replica of the 1903 glider at Kitty Hawk, but the original is in the Smithsonian. I hope to see it between the time I write this and you read it. Pieces of wood and fabric from the original plane went to the moon with the Apollo 11 astronauts.

And that little factoid brings this blog full circle. What visionaries do you admire? Who looked beyond "don't" and "can't" to "could" and then to "is?"

I'm traveling today and hope to be home mid-to-late afternoon. So be please don't think I'm ignoring your comments. I promise I'll respond as soon as I can. I'm giving away a package of books, which I can't name because I don't have them at the time I'm writing this, from RWA to one commenter today.

People Who "Get It"

posted by Loucinda McGary aka Aunty Cindy

I'm not really here. I'm in Washington D.C. at the RWA conference eagerly awaiting tonight's big Rita/Golden Heart awards ceremony. Here's hoping I'm not hung-over from being wined and dined along with the other CasaBabes by our publisher and editor last night! But I digress...

So here I am at the National conference and I have no doubt I'm having THE BEST TIME EVER!

Yes, they are expensive and often the timing is terrible, but I know there are lots of reasons to attend writing conferences.

• the chance to meet editors and agents face-to-face
• great workshops to improve your knowledge and craft
• the latest and greatest info on what the publishers are buying and selling
• rubbing elbows with 'famous' authors and being inspired by their speeches

But for me, BY FAR the best thing about attending any writing conference, but especially National is being with other people who "get it."

I remember my first RWA National, 2005 in Reno. I was utterly overwhelmed by all the crowds, books, general buzz of excitement. But the best thing was when I realized that everyone at the conference "got it" about romance writing and reading.

Because many of them had been there, they understood about pouring heart and soul into the writing of a book only to have a form rejection slapped on it. Heck, they understood about rejection in general and how it was hard not to personalize even the "good"ones.

They understood about sitting day after day in front of a keyboard and monitor pecking out a few words here and there, or typing in a frenzy to get the thought down before it escaped. They knew about forcing "the muse" to produce pages whether it or you wanted to or not.

Just like me, they had walked up and down the aisles of a store staring blankly at the shelves and seeing nothing, because characters were 'talking' inside their heads. And the readers "got it" too! They knew that the characters we writers create are very real and considered and discussed them that way!

Discovering people who "get it" has been a revelation and a life-saver for me! People who "get it" have kept me going in spite of all the rejections and doubt demons. Both the readers and writers have boosted my confidence in my writing when it was at the lowest possible ebb. They have invested themselves in my characters and stories as much as I have (I met one of my CPs and several good writing buddies at conferences).

Knowing and being with people who "get it" truly makes all the hassles and aggravation and frustrations of the writing life worthwhile! So please accept my most humble THANK YOU for all you do and for "getting it!" I absolutely do not know what I'd do without you!

What about you? Who are some of the people in your life who "get it?" Be they DH, CP, family or friends, how did you find them?

And what have you been doing while the rest of us are whooping it up in DC?

The Do’s and Don’ts of Conferences

by Most of the Banditas

You’ve all heard the do's and don’ts of conferences, like don’t slip the manuscript under the toilet stall to an agent or editor. We decided to give you our own list of do's and don'ts:

Don’t meet your publisher with a riding crop in your hand.

Don’t mess with AC when she’s holding the riding crop in her hand.

If you must stand on someone’s foot, try to make sure it’s not the Director of Publicity at your publisher.

Don’t believe your friends when they tell you you really don’t need to wear the Spanx with those pants.

Try not to laugh out loud when some asks “Who’s Nora?”

Don’t dress in costume. Not even if you’re promoting a book. Just…don’t. Okay?

Dressing in costume does not include Victorian riding hats, corset purses or rooster puppets. That’s TOTALLY different.

Don’t forget your camera so that you too can have potential blackmail material.

Don’t lose track of the GR…he gets totally out of control.

Now the do’s:

Do break out the bling for your publisher party. Especially if they’re sending the limo for you.

Do check the rear view before you leave the room: hair, pantylines, the whole shebang. Everyone will thank you.

Do call all your Banditas who are not at conference (AHEM! Jo, Tawny, Kirsten, Cassondra) and leave loud, semi-intelligible messages on their phones.

If you are a missing Bandita, answer your darned phone when we call!

Do cause a scene as sixteen rowdy Banditas all try to shout into the same cell phone at the bar.

Do pile into a bed with the Golden Rooster at every opportunity. Especially if someone is taking pictures. (Right Michelle B.?)

Do accept chocolates from whomever offers them. Even strangers.

Do eat all of PJ’s chocolates, especially the turtles.

Eating half your body weight in chocolate or GR cake is a perfectly acceptable substitute for dinner.

Yes, we are definitely having too much fun! Anyone else have any conference do’s and don’ts?

**sniff** **sniff** Is that…prairie dog? Hmmmmmmm.