Heart of the West Conference 2010

This October I was fortunate to attend the annual Heart of the West Conference held at the Canyons in Park City, UT. The conference was held close to our rooms and were perfect for our needs. The food, networking and companionship was excellent. The setting outside was spectacular with fall colors at peak season. Saturday morning, I was looking out my hotel room window, and I saw three moose; two adults and one baby. They were just meandering along a path like they had all the time in the world. What a great day to start out the day. Our time was filled with workshops, HOW award luncheon, and hearty Scottsmen wearing kilts and playing their instruments for our entertainment. Those handsome Scottsmen were so appropriate for our Romance Writers group. Our guest author and speaker, New York Times bestseller Christine Feehan spoke in a down to earth way about her writing career. A couple tips she gave were - know your character's so well from the time they were born to present. - Know who you are as a writer. Know your shortcomings as well as your strengths and put tools in place to accomodate them. Example, If you are always rewriting where you can't finish the book, then make a point of not doing any rewriting until the book is finished. If you think of something to add to your story, instead of going back to put in, jot down notes and save them until the book is done. (I for one will try that method) She managed to give us encouragment to keep writing even in these tough financial times with publishing houses not buying as many books. Bottom line. Keep writing and improving our craft. * Our guest agent Laurie Mcclean from Larsen Pomada Literary Agency advised us when we contact an agent to mention something personal, like - we met at URWA Conference, and to make our query brief, powerful and personal. I loved how fun and approachable she was too! The marketing gals, Buzzbuster.com Nash and Shahar were very informative also. They told us how easy it is to market our books through the internet, facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.