RomCon Report 3

One thing there's a lot of at reading/writing conferences is swag, or all those free giveaways. RomCon was no different. Everything from business cards to bookmarks to notepads to pens to postcards to excerpt booklets. Plus the slightly more unusual: a tape measure, luggage tag, and a gizmo I had to Google to discover it's actual use.

And of course, there are books

Sunday morning, I opted to go to a discussion group run the by The Book Reading Gals. Although it was designed as a place where readers could discuss their favorite books, authors, genres (and pet peeves), authors were allowed to attend. After all, we probably read a lot more books than we write.

Dealing with Feedback

What I'm reading: Stand-In Groom, by Suzanne Brockmann

Someone once said, a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

As readers, we all have different tastes. There's no such thing as a universal "great" book. I'm seeing that now that hubby is home all the time. He's asking for book recommendations. His preference would be mystery over romance, so I've suggested authors. He's sampling them, and likes and doesn't like them for entirely different reasons. He's not into relationships between characters. That's one of the things that keeps me coming back to a series. He doesn't consider the books "bad" or even "not good." They're just not what he enjoys reading. Or, as he puts it, "too much mushy stuff."

Recently I entered a writing contest for an unpublished manuscript. Most contests in the romance realm are run by local RWA chapters, and most separate unpublished authors who submit pages from non-contracted manuscripts from published authors, who submit books. I've done both, and my results have varied, but hadn't entered any contests recently. So when I found a contest that didn't differentiate between published and unpublished authors, I was interested. Everyone submitted about 40 pages from a non-contracted manuscript, and the judging was blind. I had a sequel to When Danger Calls sitting around, and thought some feedback might be interesting.