Moonlight and Magnolia Awesomeness

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This past weekend I went to the Moonlight and Magnolias Conference, put on by the Georgia Romance Writers. It was fabulous. Amazing. Wonderful. In other words, I had a great time.

I wanted to share a few highlights with you while it was still fresh in my mind.

1. I met Julia Quinn. 

 I cannot tell you awesome this was to me.

Even though I write inspirational fiction and Julia doesn't, her writing style is probably what got me into writing in the first place. The inner kid in me jumped up and down all weekend screaming, "It's Julia Quinn!" Fortunately my outer adult had a little more control.

If I ever "make it" I hope I'm like her. A couple dozen books, New York Times Bestseller, RWA Hall of Fame, and she still is comfortable in a Wizard of Oz T-Shirt. Awesome.

2. I won third place in the Maggies. 

Receiving my certificate from the amazing Debby Giusti. 

I'll be honest, had I won first this would have ranked over meeting Julia Quinn, but I got third. Which is still pretty fabulous. As my dad pointed out, they even celebrate third place in the Olympics so it's a pretty good place to be. 

To have only been seriously pursuing my writing career for a year, it's an amazing place to be. I'm still a little awed. I mean, my name was on the big screen in front of 300 people, most of whom I didn't know. That's pretty cool. 

The hubby even came up and partied with me. It was a rather interesting look into the world of romance writers for him. He's heard me talk a lot about my inspirational writing buddies, but this was an all genre conference. The theme was "Corsets, Crime, and Craft". I'll let you figure out where it went from there.

Me and the hubs. Isn't he handsome? :) 

3. I learned A LOT. 

I don't have pictures and I can't even begin to remember the names of all the workshop people, but I learned so much this weekend. When it comes right down to it, that's what these conferences are for. I learned about period dress and fabrics (important to know when you write historicals!) and setting tones and layering meaning into my story.

Two workshops had big "A-Ha!" moments for me.

One was Lindi Peterson's workshop on sweet passion. I don't care what genre you write, if you have the opportunity to take her class, you should. It's a working workshop (I started to say "hands on", but given the title of the class, someone might get the wrong idea...) and I walked out of it with an amazing scene for my book. I wasn't the only one saying that either.

Here I am with Lindi at the book signing. I'm short, but not THAT short.
There's a table between us that I had to lean over. 

The other was the craft intensive with Jeffrey Stepakoff. I don't know how often he does workshops outside of the college where he works, but if he's ever in your area, check him out.

4. I actually won something!

I never win anything, so I was very excited when I won a critique from Missy Tippens. She's a friend so I probably could have gotten her to look at my stuff anyway, but now I don't have to feel guilty about it. ;)

A huge shout out to the conference committee that worked so hard to make this year's M&M amazing. Next year's will be a bit smaller, because RWA Nationals is in Atlanta next year, but if you are looking for a small conference to put on your annual radar, you can't do better than the M&M.

Were you at M&M? What did you think? What small conference have you been to that you would recommend?

Life Lessons from GRW Conference - Part 2

We've all heard the seemingly farfetched stories of churches splitting over what color to paint the sanctuary. When we hear these stories we think, "There's no way... this is the body of Christ. there's no way we could be that petty." But we are! We so are! How many times have you asked someone why they don't go to church and their answer has something to do with not liking the style of music or someone at the church is too different from them? It would seem that human nature is the biggest obstacle in the church. We are too selfish, too comfortable, too whatever to actually get along with each other.

That's a load of bunk.

During the banquet Saturday night it occurred to me that I had been spending the weekend with a startling variety of individuals. There, in a wild dancing crowd of women (well, it was a romance writers' convention) were tattoos, short skirts, and wild hair rubbing shoulders with diamonds, gowns, and sleek chignons. A group of people with interests running from inspirational influence to vampires and werewolves, erotica to super squeaky no-shirts-off clean and we were all focused on the same thing: becoming better writers.

We all love what we do so much that we put aside everything we do differently to improve the things we do the same. So is that it? As a church do we just not love Jesus enough to say the rest of it is details? Maybe there's too many options. If we don't like this church we can go find another one. Whatever it is, I had to wonder why, for that moment in time I saw more unity in a hotel ballroom than I see most weeks in a church sanctuary.

What are your thoughts? Why can't we, as a body of believers, unite on the one thing we have in common and move past the differences?

Life Lessons from GRW Conference

I know you were all expecting to see the first post in a wonderful series about prioritizing your time today. Well, maybe not that specifically, but you were looking forward to a post about saving time and money.

I was, too.

But then I went to conference. I had an AMAZING weekend. I had some fun, made some friends, and most importantly learned a lot. All week (and possibly into next depending on how much I have to say) I'll be sharing some of what I learned from M&M (Moonlight and Magnolias - the Georgia Romance Writers Conference).

Lesson #1 - Listen to God


It is amazing how many times in my life I have had to relearn this lesson. I went to the conference because God told me to. It took me a while to hear Him, because I didn't think it was something we could do financially or practically. God made it happen.

So I took some time and listened to God. After turning over .... again... the book I want to sell so desperately,  I asked Him what he wanted for my blog. I know, I know, I should have done that the first time, but... oops.

So if you read that Coming Attractions post a couple of weeks ago scrap it. It's incorrect. Instead this blog is going to focus on lessons learned from things around us, like conferences and MarioKart. So pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea, and tell me about a time when God said, "You didn't listen to me, and now you have to go do it all over again."

And that series about prioritizing and managing time? I'll pull it out eventually. But not until God tells me to.