Welcome to the first Friday in June! My first order of business - June shout outs to my Backspace brethren with books coming out this month:
ONLY THE GOOD SPY YOUNG (6/29) by Ally Carter, THE TRUTH ABOUT DELILAH BLUE: A NOVEL (6/8) by Tish Cohen, JUBILEE by Eliza Graham, SILENCING SAM (6/22) by Julie Kramer, and FIRST THRILLS: HIGH OCTANE STORIES FROM THE HOTTEST THRILLER AUTHORS (6/22) which includes a story by Backspace’s very own Karen Dionne! Grab one of these at your local book store or at Amazon.com!
Now, let me tell you I’ve had a tough time getting back to the swing of things after five days of bliss that started in New York City at the Annual Backspace Conference and ended in York, Maine. In New York, I had such a blast meeting up with other authors, agents, and editors. There really is nothing like the excitement of a first book sale or being on your first panel. The only thing that tops that is meeting fans face to face and seeing that glimmer in their eyes usually reserved for someone special -- and then realizing it’s aimed at you. That my friend is the ultimate high!
I can now say I am no longer a conference panel virgin! Yay. I was terrified at the prospect of speaking in front of a room full of people - even in the panel format. You see, I have this habit of forgetting words when I get nervous and I’ve been known to freeze in front of the microphone before, but gladly, neither of those afflictions hit.
On Friday, May 28th, I had the pleasure of attending the annual Backspace Conference in New York City (www.bksp.org) and participating in a panel called “Writing From the Edge: Sin, Sex and Similar Taboos” with a great group of ladies including Rachel Kramer Bussel and M.J. Pearson with Randy Susan Meyers as moderator.
The discussion was lively with questions ranging from how to incorporate sex into a mainstream novel without jarring the reader to inquiries about any taboo that we wouldn’t tackle within our stories! Very fun indeed!
Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay for the Saturday panels which I heard were stellar - but then again Karen Dionne and Chris Graham know how to put on a killer conference! If you are a writer, especially a writer just starting out and looking for a great conference to attend where you have access to agents and editors, I’d highly suggest the Backspace Conferences. They have an agent/author conference in November and then their regular Annual confernce in May. This year they even had Donald Maass there! How can you beat that?
Anyhow, the panel I was on prompted an interesting question that I’m shooting out there for any writer and reader to weigh in on:
Writer: Have you ever written anything that you had a hard time showing to a family member or a friend? How did you handle that?
Readers: I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions: How would you feel if your spouse, or your siblings, or your children or parents wrote something racy? Would you want to read it? How would you handle it?
Thanks all!
Ciao.
JET
2 comments:
I'd hope I could separate how they are family members from their being writers and just read the story and not think about its origin (I hope!) -but since I'm the writer in the family, it would probably be them reading something of mine - lawd!
I don't really have a hang up with what I've written. I told my kids they couldn't read the Games series or some of my erotic shorts until they were 18. Everything else, they can read. It might scare the daylights out of them but that's the price they'll have to pay to get into mom's head. ;) LOL.
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