1) Conference is not Sectionals, Regionals or even Nationals. It is not a competition no matter what the big-haired barracuda across the luncheon table tells you. Let the mean girls have their club. We all know who they are and really, do you want to be in Sue Sylvester’s clique? Here is the best advice I can give you–find your friends and hold onto them. Laugh, sing your own song and enjoy the friendship that is at the heart of RWA. This will let your light shine through–don’t let others put a shade over it. Believe me, after twenty years of going, the mean girls usually end up as back up singers for a reason.

2) Don’t Listen to Gossip. Not so much listen, because, heck as writers we are practically given a license to eavesdrop and gather information on the human condition all in the name of research, but if you must listen, don’t take it to heart. Learn to step back and measure what is being said around you with an air of detached reason. Because writers love to sing out loud even when we can’t hold a note. We love the spotlight. I’m not saying we are all a bunch of liars trying to get our solo, but we do get caught up in the competition that seems to take on a life of its own every year about this time. I’ve seen good writers literally melt down and let themselves be derailed by gossip or even, believe it or not, another’s good fortune. Stay focused on your dreams and goals, like Rachel does episode after episode. Even with a slushy in her face, she is remains a star in the making.

3) Pack Light. Really, you don’t need a sparkling new outfit for every event of every day. You are not Lady GaGa. You don’t see the editors and agents wearing outfits to dazzle. They wear comfortable clothes and sensible shoes. Take a cue from them. Having a small, well coordinated suitcase of clothes takes away the stress of what to wear. At least it does for me. Besides, that saves more room for bringing home goodies. And like Rachel, bring a nice cardigan. You can never go wrong with a good cardigan.

4) Pitching. If you disregard everything I’ve said, hear this. If you have a chance to pitch, but are shaking like a sapling in a Florida hurrican, remember this:  that junior editor across the table is sweating bullets that someone is going to cry if she refuses their pitch, so she’ll most likely say yes to everything. So go in and think of yourself as a sure thing. If you have issues with being easy, then cry. Your choice.

5) You are not there to sell a book. Yeah, you heard me correctly, you are not there to sell a book. So why go? To grow as an artist. To learn, to listen, to make new connections, to take the pulse of what is happening in the industry. If you go like my barracuda friend above, prowling the corridors in your perfectly coordinated suit and heels, and shooting down the competition by throwing slushies at other people’s dreams, you will miss opportunity after opportunity to meet some really great people, to gain priceless advice in workshops, to gather around you the energy that will carry you back home ready and excited to get writing again. Besides, no one likes the slushy tossers.

Meanwhile, I’ll be home, watching Glee reruns and missing all my good friends. Now, did I miss anything? What is your best advice, Glee inspired or not?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

But the main problem is that I dither about what I am going to wear. What I should pack. Which shoes. And then there is all the promo stuff that needs to have its spot in the suitcase. Bookmarks or notecards or both. How many people are going to be at the event. Do I have to bring a “giveaway”? Okay, I just sort of dither. I make lists, thinking that will help ease the indecision. Then I change my mind. I am sure there is some subconscious sort of denial about leaving home or some other nonsense that my Jungian psychologist grandmother would have gleefully offered to explore.

Some trips are easier to pack for than others–a reader’s luncheon. Easy. One nice outfit, travel clothes, jammies, etc. But when it is something like RomCon this week, with multiple events then I really just throw up my hands and want to give up. Then I consider Anna Campbell who is coming all the way from Australia and who is going to RomCon and the RWA National conference, and plus a bunch of stops in between. Shudder.

Then again I could just wear my jammies, and be that writer. You know, I think I might be comfortable with that. Sure would save on the extra suitcase fees.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

1) They don’t call it the Rose City for nothing. And last week the roses were in bloom. Everywhere. It was just heavenly and lovely.

2) This is a city with lots to do, especially when you have kids. From the zoo, to OMSI, to the walkway that runs along the river, to just riding the Tri-Met train, there is plenty to do with kids. And Portland is a very walkable city–at one time or another we all took long walks along the river, through the downtown streets and around the neighborhood where we stayed. If walking isn’t your cup of tea, the kids loved this–the aerial tram that runs from one part of a hospital to another up on a hill. So we jumped on for a ride and a spectacular view. Word of warning, if you don’t like heights, don’t get on. Yikes.

3) Powells. I’ve always loved this place, and I took my book loving eleven year old there, just because that was all he wanted to see in Portland. And when we went into the cafe, he said, “Hey, mom, there you are!” I thought I was going to find one of those unflattering security camera monitors where you get to see yourself from above–shudder–but no, there was the cover for How I Met My Countess larger than life and right where everyone was going to see it when they came into the cafe for a latte. Oh, Powells, I “heart” you as well.

So tell me, what is your favorite city to visit and why?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Yeah! It bloomed. Isn’t that the most delightful thing you’ve ever seen. Flowers growing out of nothing but cement and whatever else is up there. It made me smile and suddenly merging into the afternoon traffic wasn’t  such a chore, with that cheery image filling my thoughts.

Last week we went down to Portland with Matthew for Bike First, and after four days of camp, he had yet to ride a bike. We drove over to Concordia University the last morning, Friday, with heavy hearts, because we all wanted him to succeed and I didn’t want to think that I had invested so much time and money and effort for nothing. Sometimes it is so hard when you have a child with disabilities, making those decisions on what to invest in for his future.

Stopping at Starbucks, I went to get a coffee, a little fortification, and inside was an older man who obviously had disabilities. And he’d come in with his bike and was telling one and all about how much he loved to ride and how he loved his bike.The sight of him brought tears to my eyes, because I felt it was like a giant hand came down and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “See! See that! You made the right choice.”

Then the barista asked the man if he wanted “his usual.” Apparently this fellow with his bike is a regular, and he laughed and said “yes.” Then came the unexpected. You see, the universe wasn’t done with me yet.

The man pulled out a packet of Swiss Miss, and the barista mixed it up for him. This man rides his bike to Starbucks every day so he can have his Swiss Miss. The barista laughed, the pair shared a corny joke and the man sat down with his bike to enjoy his cocoa.

Because you see the unexpected also comes in gentle compassion, understanding and faith.

As for Matthew, about an hour and a half later, he was riding on his own all around the tennis courts of Concordia University. And when the morning was done, he got his picture taken with the Bike First graduates, along with the wonderful volunteers who share that same beautiful generosity I’d witnessed over a cup of cocoa.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

There’s nothing like living in a place to really know it intimately, and thus to write about it authentically. Since actually visiting Regency London is out of the question, the next best thing is living in London. I was lucky to get to do that.

Thanks to my graduate school program, I was able to spend 8 weeks in London on an independent research project. Topic: romance fiction, of course. As I was reading early 1800’s gothic romances and other novels, along with conduct guides and things like “letters from a duchess to a young lady.” I was, as a writer is wont to do, making up stories that incorporated everything I was learning and experiencing.

The books became my Writing Girl Series, featuring women that write for the Regency London’s most popular and gossipy newspaper, The London Weekly. The heroes are the dukes and earls we know and love. Being a writing girl living in London, I incorporated some of my experiences into the novels. For example…

1. Walking, everywhere! The tube is expensive, so are cabs, and I was a grad student/romance author, two notoriously impoverished categories. Walking was the way to go. It seemed like I nearly got hit by a vehicle every time I tried to cross the street (they drive on the wrong side over there). This also happens to my heroine Miss Sophie Harlow, but then she is saved by The Duke of Hamilton and Brandon.

2. Gold, everywhere. Everywhere! The gold chandeliers, the massive ornately carved, gold leaf picture frames hanging on damask wallpaper, which then has gold detailing on the moldings and then on the ceiling! And then all the silver just to liven things up, and more gold on the furniture and in the fabrics and for lord’s sake I never thought I would be sick of gold but it happened. I think I was too traumatized by this for it to make an appearance in the book.

3. Newspapers. I did live across the street from the offices of The Guardian, but it’s the gossipy, frivolous, decidedly not serious newspapers I’m interested in. Whether I needed to or not, I always went out at the end of the workday and walked down to the subway to pick up my free copy of the totally trashy newspapers handed out free.

I also spent a lot of time at the Colindale Newspaper Library reading actual newspapers from the 1820’s. Some lasted for decades, others for a month. They had titles like Town Talk, The Age, John Bull, Cobbit’s Weekly Register and they were all delightful. The sheets are long, totally flat, yellow with age, the print is tiny and they have that faint musty book smell.

4. British men. I’m marrying one, which I think is all I need to say on that. A Groom Of My Own—funny, that!

Thanks to Maya for sharing! Her new book, A Groom of My Own, comes out June 29th.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Just to get you started:

1) Do you use your local library for your romance reading habit and why? What do you love, what do you wish librarians would do to make their collections better?

2) If you don’t, why? What keeps you from using those free shelves? What might entice you into a library–programs, events, you tell me?

3) Have you gone to programs/events at your local library? What have you loved? Hated? Want more of?

4) Would you read a blog from your local library or follow them on Facebook?

5) Anything else you want me to share with them?

I now turn the soapbox over to all of you.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Look at these wonderful renditions of This Rake of Mine:

This Rake of Mine, Japanese Edition

This Rake of Mine, Dutch edition

I have to admit that when I opened the package yesterday with this Dutch version, I thought for a moment they’d inserted a vampire into the book. Just kidding!

This Rake of Mine, Czech edition

Actually I love how each edition reflects a different aspect of the plot. In the Japanese edition, it gets that Jane Eyre treatment, with the lonely house on the hill, which is very much the shadowy sort of look I had in mind as I conjured up Jack’s house, Thistledown Park. Then in the Dutch version, they capture the lonely sea cliffs and the pirate/smuggler aspect of the plot–love this clinch on the cliffs, vampire notions aside. And then the Czechs go for that wonderful detailed gown, that I love so much, as well as the flowers–a nice touch from the end when the girls gather them for Malcolm. Very interesting how with one book, three translations, each can go in such diverse directions.

Yes, when these packages arrive, I just shake my head in wonder. Copies of my books all over the world, and wonderful readers as well! I know this because I look at my website statistics to see where my visitors are coming from–and in the last month, readers, the curious, the diehard fans have dropped by from 95 different countries and territories. 95?! In just the last 30 days?! It blows me away. I never imagined, ever, when I started writing that my books would have such a reach. I just hoped my local Barnes & Noble would carry them.

Actually, I’m still hoping for that one. They have a shelf for local authors, but I don’t rise to being local enough–despite living only five minutes from the store. Terry Brooks, yes. Susan Anderson, yes. (Apparently, according to the snooty manager, Susan Anderson doesn’t write romance–and don’t forget to hold your nose up a bit when you say that horrid word. Romance.) That used to bug the pants off me, but now I don’t care. I’ve got readers in Benin, Belarus, and the Maldives. Take that, you lowly local shelf.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

What Colin Firth was describing was the excitement and passion that an actor (or in my case, a writer) can put into projects, because the work we do is so finite. You start a film, you finish a film, you go to the next project. You sell a book idea, you write the book, the book is published. But while you are on that project, it takes all your attention and passion. And you love it, embrace it and revel in it, because it won’t last forever and there is a shiny new project always glimmering on the horizon. And the best part is that sometimes you have no idea what that next project will be, but you know that it will fill you with a brand new excitement and a new joy.

Someone asked me recently how it felt to have written 17 books. Wasn’t I afraid of running out of ideas? Wasn’t I worried about doing the same old, same old. Well, yes sometimes, and definitely no.

Every book is like meeting a brand new lover, my own secret creative promiscuity. It really is why I love the work I do–every book has its own challenges, ones I create and ones that are unanticipated. I love getting to know the characters in the stories and I adore the secondary characters who can be as quirky and devilish as they want. I love the surprises that writing brings, the “aha” moments, the days when the words sing in my ears as if they are being whispered from on high. When Colin Firth talked how he loves acting because it is a distraction from life, I knew exactly what he meant and I grinned. My writing, like his acting, is a place to escape. For me and hopefully, for those who read my stories.

I suppose this got me grinning because right now I am between projects. I am in that small, rare (hopefully rare, because I do like working) black hole in a writer’s life where you have turned in a book, the proposal for the next one and am in a holding pattern until all the answers get shaken down from on high, ie, my beloved editor. And while it is a mini-vacation, I find it disconcerting not to be knee deep in a book.

Of course, the first two days I totally played around. Got a pedicure and went to the movies. But I am too practical to live like that for long, and my “vacation” since has been organizing my taxes, cleaning out files and basically getting the decks cleared for the work to come. Honestly? I am lonely. I want to get on with getting to know Minerva and Lord Langley. I want their love story to fill my heart with smiles, and I look forward to the secrets that I have yet to unearth about these two characters. In other words, I am ready for a new affair.

What is your passion?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

So you’ll want to stop over at Romantic Crush Junkies and Book Talk with J & J if you want to be part of the action.

So now, I am off to bake a cake for someone’s birthday. I baked one for a funeral yesterday, so today I think I need to make one to celebrate another year of living. And thank you to all of you for making it so very heartwarmingly worthwhile to get up each day and do the one thing I’ve always wanted–write. As for me, I am taking today off. Twenty years ago today I met my husband. He was the best birthday present I ever got. So we are shipping the kids off to school and make a day of it. I tried to talk him into dueling manicures/pedicures, but he nixed that idea.

So, what would you do if you and your DH/SI/Partner-in-Crime had an entire day to go out and play hooky? And that’s hooky, not nooky. Gads, I can’t turn my back on you people for a second!

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Oh, and to top it all off, my beloved Alphasmart had a bit of a heart attack yesterday. Lost everything I’d written in the morning and nearly put me in the ER. Envision me, standing over it, User Book in hand, trying to give it life support to find those freaking pages, sobbing and calling out, “Stay with me, Alphie. Don’t go near the light. Not just yet.” I got everything back but a few paragraphs–yes there is an emergency salvage code for it–but my heart was still pounding when I went to bed hours later.

I know we all have piles to do this time of year, everyone bites off more than they can chew, and so I send my love and sympathies to my fellow frantic friends. Here is what I did last night: I began delegating. Laundry to the husband, as well as all the wrapping and shipping duties for his family. Promo work went to the eldest. 10 year olds are wiz’s at stuffing envelopes. I mean this is why we had them, right?  Also, it keeps them both out of my hair. Just a suggestion if you have spare hands around.

If I am a bit scarce in the next few weeks, my apologies, but mostly Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I know I can’t wait for 2010.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.