Jessica Scott

Today, it’s my extreme pleasure to welcome New York Times Bestselling author Julia London back to the blog. She’s here today to talk about the RWA National Conference and her latest bestselling novel One Season of Sunshine, out now.

Adopted as an infant, Jane Aaron longs to know the identity of her birth mother and why she gave her up. Her only clue is the name of the small Texas town where she was born, so she’s come to Cedar Springs for answers. Handsome ad executive Asher Price lost his wife, the beautiful, mysterious Susanna, in a terrible car crash eighteen months ago. When he hires Jane as the nanny for his two children, sparks fly. Jane finds herself falling in love with both Asher and his children, but begins to suspect that Susanna was not the perfect mother and wife the family portrays her to have been. As Jane gets closer and closer to finding out the truth about both her own and Susanna’s past, devastating secrets begin to emerge that may be more than anyone can bear. Will the truth bring Jane and Asher closer together or tear them apart forever?

What was the first RWA National Conference you went to? What was the one thing you wished you’d known that first time and would it have made a difference if you’d been published or unpublished?

The first one I attended was in Chicago, I think in 2000. I really didn’t know what RWA was at the time. I’d never heard of it before I was published, and my editor told me it was a conference where other romance writers went. So I went, expecting…what, I don’t know. I didn’t know about all the workshops and opportunities to network until I was there. So I guess I would say that I wish I would have known what the conference was really about, what its goals for members were, and how I could have made better use of it than I did. That’s not to say it wasn’t beneficial, because it certainly was. But it could have been more so had I known what to expect.

What are some of the things that writers, at any stage in their career can get out of going to Nationals?

I think first and foremost is the opportunity to meet and network with industry professionals whom you would never meet sitting in your office or at home. That’s where this conference is really unique, I think, in bringing industry professionals to the writers. Second, the chance to meet people with similar goals and experiences, at any level. And third, the various workshops for any stage of your career. Craft, promotion, business—it seems like they cover the full gamut.

What are some things as a published writer that are on your “must do” list at Nationals?

Gossip ☺. Okay, seriously, taking the opportunity to meet with people who can help further my career. For me, that includes my publisher, editor, agent, as well as the people who help me promote my work, such as Writerspace and Fresh Fiction. I try to meet with booksellers and buyers, and of course, readers. It’s a chance to meet face-to-face with everyone who helps make my business a success.

What’s the thing you don’t see people doing at Nationals that they should be doing?

Breaking out of their cliques and meeting new people. It is great to go off and hang with your friends, and I do that every year. But I also make sure, since I go to the trouble and expense of going, to reach out to new people. For me, that is readers and librarians and booksellers. For any one, at any stage of his or her career, reaching out will serve you when you are published.

What are some of the common pitfalls you see folks fall into regarding interacting with other writers/agents/editors?

A couple of things: Remember that people have busy schedules and have taken the time to set them up to see who they need to see. I know some people try to schedule things on the fly, or worse, will come and “join” you when you are having your meeting with your editor/agent/writer. It is best to try and schedule ahead of time. But having said that, knowing that not everyone can plan ahead for whatever reason, it is just polite to ask if it is a good time to interrupt, or better yet, inquire if there is another time the person can meet. I can’t tell you how many times I have been with an editor when someone stops and needs to chat right then, with no respect for my time or the editor’s time.
The second thing is alcohol. Hey, we all love a good party, but loose lips sink ships. I’m just saying ☺. I’ve known of more than one author or industry professional whose drinking reputation precedes her book reputation. Just remember that it’s fun, but it’s also a business conference.

If you were going to give one piece of advice to unpublished authors about attending Nationals, what would it be? What about for published authors?

Take advantage of all the conference has to offer, but don’t be a slave to it. Make it the best use of YOUR time, not theirs. I would say the same for published authors. There are some really good workshops, but there are some really good conversations happening everywhere. If you are a published author, I would highly recommend catching the Madeline Hunter and Sabrina Jeffries PAN workshop on numbers if you get the chance. It’s really enlightening.

We hear a lot about having an ‘elevator pitch’ ready to go at a moment’s notice. What are some things you think are good or bad about the pitch and do you recommend it?

I think you must have a killer pitch that you know will grab the person you are pitching. Remember that these people are getting pitched left and right, they have a million things going on, and the odds of them remembering are pretty slim in the best of circumstances. The pitch cannot sound like any other book out there. You really must have the right grab-you hook. So my advice sounds simple, but it’s really hard: Have the right pitch. To make sure you do, pitch it to friends and acquaintances who will tell you the truth about it. You need the truth, the bold, untarnished truth. And even then, you have to keep in mind that it is all subjective. The perfect pitch to one editor may be the snooze button to the next.

Any final thoughts on Nationals?

It’s a great conference! Have fun and enjoy it!

Thanks so much for being here today. I’ve got my copy of One Season of Sunshine in my TBR pile and I can’t wait to get to it!

Thanks for having me here. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to your followers and invite anyone who is interested to visit http://www.julialondon.com to read more about me, an excerpt, and about upcoming books.

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Please join me in welcoming Laura Kinsale to my blog. She’s the author of 12 novels and a career that has spanned more than twenty years. What’s truly spectacular about her career is the impression she’s made on both the romance industry and the writers who are part of it. Nearly every romance author will name at least one Kinsale book as having a profound impact on them.

Today, Laura joins us celebrating her return to romance after a five year break between Shadowheart and Lessons in French. Lessons in French is a fantastic story and though she specifically mentions that it’s a lighter fare than usual, her characters are no less intense or lovable. What makes Laura’s books so memorable are her strengths in characterization and Callie and Trev are notable additions to an already memorable cast.

While Lessons in French was lighter in it’s tone, I found myself just as engaged with characters as much as Jervaulx and Maddie in Flower From the Storm. One reader from Austin’s RWA (where your books are used as examples in many classes): “I’ve always been amazed by her characters. She takes these wounded or deeply flawed people and makes them so sympathetic you just ache for them. They are so memorable.” So how do you create such memorable characters?

I’ll admit that my characters are very real to me while I’m writing them. This may make me a crazy lady, but I seem to be able to put myself into their heads with ease. I don’t have conversations with them, which is a technique some authors use–I just sort of slide into their point of view in my mind as I’m writing each scene. If I can’t do this, things aren’t going well.

Since I spend so much time in their heads, they have to be interesting to me or I’d get bored pretty fast! So while writing I am thinking, as the character, what I’d do next, and at the same time observing it. I’m curious about them. I like them. But I don’t mind putting them through hell, either, just to see what they do and how it feels.

This is one reason I don’t start with the plot (and why my plots spin out of control.) I start with a character, or both characters, and a situation, and then I think about it all a lot, and talk about it with my small circle of trusted readers, and inch forward, discovering the characters along the way.

I also draw on books I’ve read, and my research. Sometimes it helps to fill out a character fact sheet–at least to get the basics, hair color, etc–and even those basics can suggest things about the person. For instance, Callie’s red hair and skin that easily turns pink in the wind fit with the strong emotions she keeps hidden inside. I do have a blank “character sheet” which has questions like “What is X most ashamed of?” and going back to that can help if I get stuck.

It is the most fun part of writing for me, learning about these imaginary people. If they are memorable to readers, that’s even better.

I don’t want to give away anything to spoil Lessons in French for your eager readers, but how did you come up with the idea of Hubert and the adventure he causes?

In stages. First, I always know I will have a particular animal in my books, so I was looking for an animal I hadn’t done yet. Second, I knew I was writing a “romp,” and if you’ve ever been to the stock barn at a rodeo or fair, you know that tame bulls are pretty amusing just standing there chewing their cud. (Sort of like some heroes, big dumb and cute). Given all that, I’m also highly aware of the destructive capacity of a large animal. I once stood by helplessly while a loose steer chased my horse across a pasture and over the fence. Then the steer went right over after him! If you are handling an animal like Hubert, taller than many women, nearly 12 feet long and weighing almost a ton, you’d better know what you’re doing.

I won’t say I put myself in Hubert’s point of view, but I can certainly hear the floorboards thudding and creaking perilously as Callie and Trev led him out of the kitchen.

In both The Shadow and The Star and Lessons in French, you bring up the French as less than savory to the English. While they are held up as somewhat deplorable to the people around them, as a reader, it only endears them to me further. What is it about the French that draws you into creating them and us into your characters?

I think the English have a love-hate relationship with the French. Maybe we Americans do too (there must be something about them!) In both Lessons in French and The Shadow and the Star I was drawing on the cliches about how romantic and “in love with love” the French are. In fact I’ve only been to France for a couple of brief visits, but I certainly thought the people were elegant and seemed to truly enjoy life. On a weekend evening in Avignon, whole families were eating out at sidewalk cafes, or just sipping wine while the kids ran about the square. We don’t do that much, do we? Just sit and enjoy the time passing.

In addition to your stunning characterization, many readers want to know about how you manage to convey emotions so precisely. I know when I read one of your books, I’m going to get characters that I deeply care about so that when things hurt them, I ache. The only times I’ve cried this year at the end of a book (other than Black Hawk Down), was at the end of Flowers from the Storm and Seize the Fire. How do you bring your readers so deeply into your stories?

That, I have to say, is almost an impossible question to answer. The best I can say is that I’m deeply into my stories as I’m writing. If I’m not, I don’t think the reader will be either. I think every aspect of a book, from the plot, to the word choice, to the characterization, to the pacing, work to bring the reader into the writer’s world. The reader has to care about what happens to the characters, and be curious enough to read on and find out. Making that happen is the essence of a writer’s job.

Laura, your fans are eager for any news so before we close, what are you working on next? What can we look for regarding your website’s future content and updates?

I’m writing! That’s all I can say at this point. I don’t plan to keep up a regular “blog” on my site, but in the Laura Makes Tea section, I’ll post some commentary and essays on things that pique my interest. I will keep readers more updated on what’s going on with my books than I was before I got the new website up. (The old site had simply become so out-dated that it seemed like a huge job every time I thought about dusting it off, so I quit doing it.) The best way to be sure of updates is to sign up for my extremely-rare-to-never-newsletters. Just type your email right into the box in the footer of any page, and click. Voila, you’re signed up!

Thank you for having me on your blog, Jessica. I hope Lessons in French gives readers a smile and takes them away from their troubles for a while.

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Maybe it’s just me. Maybe other writers poised with their toes on the ledge of their first book launch are able to do something besides study the horizon. I’ve tried, but I’m failing. Maybe I should say falling?

and Falling, Fly, my debut dark fantasy novel, pits the fallen angel of desire, now a vampire, against a self-medicating neuroscientist in the Irish, steampunk-inflected Hotel of the Damned. I started writing it three years ago, fairly confident it was too weird to sell, but, needing to wrestle with my relationship to desire, and who better to teach me than its angel?

It wasn’t an easy book to write. When I finished, I started working on a second manuscript that I intended as a more mainstream, hopefully more saleable endeavor. I entered and Falling, Fly in contests, because I’d learned so much from contest feedback on my first (and now properly buried) manuscript, and I watched with some concern as Deus Inversus (the working title for book two, now called In Dreams Begin) got progressively weirder.

Then, almost a year in, just as Ida Jameson – Irish whiskey heiress, member of the Golden Dawn, and my erstwhile heroine – began taking on a distinctly wicked sheen, a final-round contest judge called with an offer on and Falling, Fly. With barely an audible “click,” I dropped into the alternate, parallel space-time of publishing. Suddenly I had agents to call, extensions to plead for, decisions to make, and documents to sign. When I landed again in the so-slow-it-appears-motionless parallel, I had a savvy, hungry, clever agent (Holly Root) and a two-book deal with an incisive, smart and organized editor at Berkley (Leis Pederson). And I was a little out of breath.

Then nothing happened.

For almost a year.

There have been a few hops across into the ‘everything-at-once’ track since – editing deadlines, short-notice opportunities to create a PowerPoint deck for a cover conference, appeals to certain luminaries for advance blurbs – but for the most part, I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half happily plodding along the well-worn channels of ‘Publishing Slow-Time’, which all aspiring writers tread until some otherwise indistinguishable cog of an query letter or conference pitch session engages, and drops them into the whirlwind.

But now I’m listening to the gears. I know it’s coming. My book launches March 2. I can hear a hum revving up beside me. And I’ve completely lost my ability to keep marching along. I’m poking my head over the parapet – checking Amazon rankings, and Googling my book title in case Google Alerts misses something, and rechecking my inbox – trying to climb the walls and get a peek at what’s coming.

I have no idea what it will be like. I’ve never done anything like this before. The closest experience I have is back in my misspent youth, when I was part of an experimental theater company.

Opening night would come, and the cast I’d worked with for months would gather in the green room. As director, it was my job to give the actors a final “you’re ready for this, you are all amazing” speech. I loved doing it. We’d all hug, and they would all leave. My actors would all go on stage. And I’d pace underneath it, listening for the laughs, the applause at the act break, the lobby conversations at intermission, the length of curtain calls. Helpless to *do* anything anymore, trusting my actors, doubting myself, opening the after-show wine earlier than necessary to have it poured for toasts.

Except it took two hours, pep talk to curtain call; March 2 is thirty-five days away, and I can’t really pace and drink for that long. Publishing in general, and particularly right now, feels less like theater and more like a benign version of a description I once read of a soldier’s experience: days of boredom broken by seconds of terror; and I thought, “Who better to talk with about waiting than Jess?”

Any pointers, my friend? Anybody else?

I have one galley left (OK, actually two, but I’m keep the last one), and I’ll give away to the first person who can provide the (wonderfully apt) title to the Vietnam novel I paraphrased above.

Ready? Leap!

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