Writer Interrupted

It's a flat-out myth that everything slows down in the summer

As you may have noticed, this writer off the leash has been a little sporadic with her blog posts lately. Trust me, as much as I'd like to be, I am not lazing around on a pool deck slugging back drinks with tiny umbrellas and flirting with the cabana boys. Nope. I've got way too many things on my plate. Hate to break it to you, but Ella Fitzgerald was lying when she said the livin' is easy in the summertime. Here are some of the things I've been up to…

Attending Writers Conferences

The first ever Northwestern Christian Writers Conference was a raging success. Poor little writers were unfortunately turned away at the door because the thing was sold out. I manned the Minnesota Christian Writers Guild table, spreading the word far and wide that writers of any ilk can attend. The keynote speaker for the event was Liz Curtis Higgs, an awesome tale teller and a pretty dang good smiler, don't you think?

Awesome author and smiler Liz Curtis Higgs and moi.

Schmoozing With Authors

Summer is also prime time to meet up with old friends and hang out with new. Debut author Jaime Jo Wright is a fellow coffee and chocolate aficionado. I met up with her and heard all about her new release, The House on Foster Hill. I can't wait to get my hands on it! Here's a blurb:

Kaine Prescott is no stranger to death. When her husband died two years ago, her pleas for further investigation into his suspicious death fell on deaf ears. In desperate need of a fresh start, Kaine purchases an old house sight unseen in her grandfather's Wisconsin hometown. But one look at the eerie, abandoned house immediately leaves her questioning her rash decision. And when the house's dark history comes back with a vengeance, Kaine is forced to face the terrifying realization she has nowhere left to hide. 

A century earlier, the house on Foster Hill holds nothing but painful memories for Ivy Thorpe. When an unidentified woman is found dead on the property, Ivy is compelled to discover her identity. Ivy's search leads her into dangerous waters and, even as she works together with a man from her past, can she unravel the mystery before any other lives—including her own—are lost? 

Awesome author and coffee drinker Jaime Jo Wright and moi.

Catching Up on Publishing News

Keeping up with what's going on in the industry is also part of a writer's job. Agents Janet Kobobel Grant and Wendy Lawton, of Books and Such Literary Management, came to visit at the ACFW Minnesota Nice chapter meeting. A few takeaway values were:

• The Amish genre is saturated, meaning there are enough established authors penning these stories. If you're a newbie writer, you might want to knock on a different door.
• Gilead Publishing is back on track. This opens up a whole new venue for Christian fiction authors. Now that's worth cheering about!
• Despite the economy, people are still reading. And, in fact, with the cost of entertainment skyrocketing, people are turning more and more to books, especially audiobooks.
• Their best piece of advice was don't try to jump on the trends and write what you think will sell. Write what you love and write your best.

Agents Janet Kobobel Grant and Wendy Lawton.

Attending Book Signings

A girl's got to have a little fun, eh? I attended fellow author Todd Johnson's book reading/signing at Barnes and Nobles' new flagship store in Edina. Here's a blurb for his book, Fatal Trust:

Ian Wells is a young criminal defense attorney struggling to build a Minneapolis law practice he inherited from his father while caring for a mother with Alzheimer's. Nearly at the breaking point, everything changes for Ian when a new client offers a simple case: determine whether three men qualify for over nine million dollars of trust funds. To qualify, none can have been involved in criminal activity for the past twenty years. Ian's fee for a week's work: the unbelievable sum of two hundred thousand dollars. 

Ian warily accepts the job—but is quickly dragged deep into a mystery linking the trust with a decades-old criminal enterprise and the greatest unsolved art theft in Minnesota history. As stolen money from the art theft surfaces, Ian finds himself the target of a criminal investigation by Brook Daniels, a prosecutor who is also his closest law school friend. He realizes too late that this simple investigation has spun out of control and now threatens his career, his future, and his life.

Awesome author and lawyer Todd Johnson.

Besides all this galavanting, I've also been diligently working on:

• a French & Indian War story titled The Captive Bride (cover reveal soon to come)
• just handed in a finished manuscript for The Innkeeper's Daughter
• am doing a final galley proof for a novella coming out in a collection this November titled The Gentleman Smuggler's Lady
• need to turn in cover direction for the second Once Upon a Dicken's Christmas book
• must start planning blog posts/promos for 12 Days at Bleakly Manor which comes out September 1
• doing what I can to spread the word about my July release, Of Rags and Riches Romance Collection

Whew! And all that's just my writing life, which of course is only a portion of the whole. See now why I've been a bit lax on blog posts?

Can someone please come over and shove a cold glass of iced tea into my hand? I think I need a drink.