This day long workshop sounds great. I signed up all ready. Wanna join me?
The Southern Louisiana Romance Writers invite writers of all genres to join them for a day long workshop with Mary Buckham on October 29th, 2011. Take your THOUGHT TO PLOT with this award-winning author.
When: October 29, 2011
Time: 8am-4pm, lunch included
Place: Hilton Garden Inn, 4535 Williams, Blvd, Kenner, LA
Cost: $75 SOLA members, $80 all others.
Registration Deadline: September 30, 2011
FROM THOUGHT TO PLOT
In the full-day THOUGHT TO PLOT writing craft workshop, national writing instructor, Mary Buckham will show you how to develop a budding idea BEFORE you begin to plot. This is a brainstorming workshop where she will show you where a story and characters break down before you get to the point of plotting. The backbone of a strong story begins with developing these critical points in the early stages of brainstorming so that you aren’t trying to “shore” up your story later.
Most stories fall apart because once a writer has invested a significant amount of work in a story it’s much harder to back up and make changes so they press ahead, shoving support wherever they can. For this reason, come to this workshop with a “NEW” idea you have not fully developed to the point where the idea of making any change is stressful. This workshop is to show you how to take ideas and spin them to be fresh and different, yet with a strong plot infrastructure.
We are a chapter of RWA, but this workshop is suitable for all genres.
Mary Buckham
Mary Buckham is an award-winning romantic-suspense author who, before becoming published in book-length fiction was a freelance article writer, selling hundreds of articles to local, regional, and national publications. In addition, she’s been an editor of a regional magazine. She is also co-author of Break Into Fiction™: 11 Steps to Building a Story That Sells. Mary is a sought-after speaker and writing craft teacher for both online and in live presentations throughout the United States and Canada. For more on Mary go to www.MaryBuckham.com or www.BreakIntoFiction.com
To sign up go to WWW.SOLAWRITERS.COM Find the workshop register button on the right side.
I'll see you in October!
Dawn Chartier
Friday, May 13, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
More advice on How to Hook An Agent w/ Sara Megibow
ON MY MIND by Sara Megibow
Whether you are looking for an agent to sell your book or planning to self publish a book, the ability to pitch your story is vitally important!
I'm in the middle of a whirlwind three-conference tour, so pitching is on my mind. Knowing how to condense your story into an engaging one-sentence pitch is a skill. It's an important skill and it's a difficult one! Here are five times this skill comes into play in publishing and, not to scare you, but each one of these times can be a career-influencing moment.
1) The best query letters include an engaging, unique, powerful pitch sentence. For example, "the kingdom's hero is tricked into drinking poison just days before the queen is kidnapped" is a more powerful pitch than "the kingdom's hero must go on many adventures to save the kidnapped queen." We would ask for sample pages for the first example and pass on reading sample pages for the second example.
2) A one-sentence pitch is how you would communicate to an agent, editor or fellow writer what your story is about. Meeting someone in person? Attending a pitch session at a conference? It's super important to be able to answer the question, "so what do you write?"
3) You may or may not know this, but as an agent I may take that pitch right out of your query and send it to editors when I put a book on submission. (Often I tweak it but the core of the pitch is from the query.) The editor reads your pitch and takes it to the sales meeting to decide if they will make an offer; the sales director takes that pitch to the sales team to decide how they will market the book to book buyers. The book buyers read the pitch and decide how many (if any) copies they want to acquire for their stores. Last but not least, the reader reads your pitch (aka the back cover copy) and decides whether or not to buy and read your book. This is, of course, a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the idea. Publishing is not about putting books on shelves; it's about readers buying books and reading them. Your pitch is the hook that ultimately results in readers.
4) We are seeing tremendous amounts of press right now regarding self-publishing. This explosive publishing model has its pros and cons (as does the traditional publishing model, to be fair). Writers excited to pursue self-publishing will need to know how to pitch! In fact, it will rest even more heavily on the writer to craft a compelling hook. The term "discoverability" is vital to standing out in the crowd, and learning how to communicate convincingly about your work is key.
5) Finally (maybe because I've been yapping about pitching so much on twitter recently), I've been invited to teach an online webinar for Writer's Digest this month. The workshop is called "How to Hook an Agent with your Query Letter" and will be taught on Thursday, May 26 at 1:00 EST (yes, you can still access the workshop even if you are unavailable at that particular time). For those writers interested in attending, I am looking forward to this webinar very much! I will have lots of juicy details to help those interested in pursuing traditional publishing and those interested in self-publishing. See details here:
http://www.writersdigestshop.com/product/how-to-hook-an-agent-with-your-query-letter/?r=sara
Master the pitch as this skill is the key to so many aspects of publishing!
Happy writing,
Sara
(Thanks for allowing me to share, Sara.)
Dawn Chartier
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
WWW.DAWNCHARTIER.COM
Whether you are looking for an agent to sell your book or planning to self publish a book, the ability to pitch your story is vitally important!
I'm in the middle of a whirlwind three-conference tour, so pitching is on my mind. Knowing how to condense your story into an engaging one-sentence pitch is a skill. It's an important skill and it's a difficult one! Here are five times this skill comes into play in publishing and, not to scare you, but each one of these times can be a career-influencing moment.
1) The best query letters include an engaging, unique, powerful pitch sentence. For example, "the kingdom's hero is tricked into drinking poison just days before the queen is kidnapped" is a more powerful pitch than "the kingdom's hero must go on many adventures to save the kidnapped queen." We would ask for sample pages for the first example and pass on reading sample pages for the second example.
2) A one-sentence pitch is how you would communicate to an agent, editor or fellow writer what your story is about. Meeting someone in person? Attending a pitch session at a conference? It's super important to be able to answer the question, "so what do you write?"
3) You may or may not know this, but as an agent I may take that pitch right out of your query and send it to editors when I put a book on submission. (Often I tweak it but the core of the pitch is from the query.) The editor reads your pitch and takes it to the sales meeting to decide if they will make an offer; the sales director takes that pitch to the sales team to decide how they will market the book to book buyers. The book buyers read the pitch and decide how many (if any) copies they want to acquire for their stores. Last but not least, the reader reads your pitch (aka the back cover copy) and decides whether or not to buy and read your book. This is, of course, a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the idea. Publishing is not about putting books on shelves; it's about readers buying books and reading them. Your pitch is the hook that ultimately results in readers.
4) We are seeing tremendous amounts of press right now regarding self-publishing. This explosive publishing model has its pros and cons (as does the traditional publishing model, to be fair). Writers excited to pursue self-publishing will need to know how to pitch! In fact, it will rest even more heavily on the writer to craft a compelling hook. The term "discoverability" is vital to standing out in the crowd, and learning how to communicate convincingly about your work is key.
5) Finally (maybe because I've been yapping about pitching so much on twitter recently), I've been invited to teach an online webinar for Writer's Digest this month. The workshop is called "How to Hook an Agent with your Query Letter" and will be taught on Thursday, May 26 at 1:00 EST (yes, you can still access the workshop even if you are unavailable at that particular time). For those writers interested in attending, I am looking forward to this webinar very much! I will have lots of juicy details to help those interested in pursuing traditional publishing and those interested in self-publishing. See details here:
http://www.writersdigestshop.com/product/how-to-hook-an-agent-with-your-query-letter/?r=sara
Master the pitch as this skill is the key to so many aspects of publishing!
Happy writing,
Sara
(Thanks for allowing me to share, Sara.)
Dawn Chartier
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
WWW.DAWNCHARTIER.COM
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Writing a series....and what you like or don't like when you read them.
Do you enjoy series? I do too. I love them, but sometimes I find that after book 6 or maybe 7 I stop reading them. Am I the only reader out there that feels this way?
I don't blame the author. I think it's just because I'm bored with the character and their world. Okay, maybe it's the author. Don't know. Maybe it's my mood. I might want to read something fresh and new. I do get bored easily.
Usually this happens when it's a series surrounding one main character. (like I said around the 6th or 7th book) However, if the series has different main characters for each book, then I can usually read them all. Usually.
So, now that I'm planning my Vieux Carre' witch series, I want to make sure each book stand on their own, and have threads that are completely different, but they will still keep the same theme, and you will see each sister in all the books. But only the main character will have the camera on them, and their journey.
I can't wait until Saturday. I'll be taking notes on Barbara's, Candace's and Pam's advice. I want to know what to watch out for, like writing yourself into a corner and not being able to change things in the next book or getting stuck with something maybe you would have done differently - like not killing someone off. lol
Happy reading y'all!
Dawn
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Sola's April meeting presenters are - Candice Proctor (C S Harris), Agent Pam Ahearn & Barbara Colley
When our regular speaker had to cancel due to a conflict in her schedule, my co-program partner, Pamela Kopfler went to work right away and found a wonderful speaker or shall I say speaker(s) for Sola's April meeting. It's going to be fab!
Candace Proctor (w/a C.S. Harris), Agent Pam Ahearn, and Barbara Colley all agreed to be on a panel to discuss, WRITING A SERIES. This couldn't be better timing for me because I'm about to dive into my second book in my Vieux Carre' Witch Series. (which I'm already plotting) So thank you, Pamela!
Show up early because space is limited. April 16th @ 10:00am
For more info, click on this link: Solawriters.org
I hope to see you there,
Dawn Chartier
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
Candace Proctor (w/a C.S. Harris), Agent Pam Ahearn, and Barbara Colley all agreed to be on a panel to discuss, WRITING A SERIES. This couldn't be better timing for me because I'm about to dive into my second book in my Vieux Carre' Witch Series. (which I'm already plotting) So thank you, Pamela!
Show up early because space is limited. April 16th @ 10:00am
For more info, click on this link: Solawriters.org
I hope to see you there,
Dawn Chartier
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Today I'm pimping a reader's blog...
An avid reader of paranormal romance is hosting Author Month in April over at Were Vamps Romance blog. A “few” of her guests for April are - Gena Showalter, Cynthia Eden, Dianna Love, Carly Phillips, Sherriyln Kenyon, Nicole Peeler, etc. and then there is little ole’ me. (I’m up today. Yay!) lol. Other than author interviews, prizes, and reviews – Melissa is just super sweet and refreshing. (I made her sound like a soft drink. lol) Come on by and comment.
http://werevampsromance.blogspot.com/
See y'all there,
Dawn Chartier
www.dawnchartier.com
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
Visit: The Wild Rose Press. com
http://werevampsromance.blogspot.com/
See y'all there,
Dawn Chartier
www.dawnchartier.com
NOT AN ANGEL, OUT NOW!
Visit: The Wild Rose Press. com
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
New publisher in town - Entangled Publishing
Just wanted to spread the word about a new publisher in town. Entangled Publishing.
If you made the rounds submitting or not - don't give up. Check out Entangled.
Good luck!
Dawn
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sola's Guest Speaker ~ Agent, Laura Bradford
On March 19th SOLA-RWA'S (New Orleans Romance Writers Group) Guest Speaker is agent, Laura Bradford. Ms. Bradford will give the presentation, "How To Catch Flies: On Professionalism & Choosing Your Own Business Reputation." (See her bio below.)
Laura Bradford established the Bradford Literary Agency in 2001. She considers herself an editorial-focused agent and takes a hands-on approach to developing proposals and manuscripts with her authors for the most appropriate markets. The mission of Bradford Literary Agency is to form true partnerships with their clients and build long-term relationships that extend from writing the first draft through the length of the author’s career. Her recent sales include books placed with Berkley, Grand Central, Harlequin/Silhouette, Kensington, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Sourcebooks, Hyperion, Flux, Macmillan, Adams Media and Mira Books.
She continues to actively build her client list and is currently seeking work in the following genres: Romance (historical, romantic suspense, paranormal, category, contemporary, erotic), urban fantasy, women’s fiction, mystery, thrillers and young adult as well as some select non-fiction.
She is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) and Romance Writers of America and she is an RWA-recognized agent.
This is going to be a great presentation and I hope you can attend.
For more information on time and place, please visit www.solawriters.org
Dawn
www.dawnchartier.com
Laura Bradford established the Bradford Literary Agency in 2001. She considers herself an editorial-focused agent and takes a hands-on approach to developing proposals and manuscripts with her authors for the most appropriate markets. The mission of Bradford Literary Agency is to form true partnerships with their clients and build long-term relationships that extend from writing the first draft through the length of the author’s career. Her recent sales include books placed with Berkley, Grand Central, Harlequin/Silhouette, Kensington, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Sourcebooks, Hyperion, Flux, Macmillan, Adams Media and Mira Books.
She continues to actively build her client list and is currently seeking work in the following genres: Romance (historical, romantic suspense, paranormal, category, contemporary, erotic), urban fantasy, women’s fiction, mystery, thrillers and young adult as well as some select non-fiction.
She is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) and Romance Writers of America and she is an RWA-recognized agent.
This is going to be a great presentation and I hope you can attend.
For more information on time and place, please visit www.solawriters.org
Dawn
www.dawnchartier.com
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