BRCWC – Day 3

Shocker today. The training at the Blue Ridge Christian Writers Conference has been stellar. The faculty outstanding. The count is now up to 6 people who have asked me why I’m not on faculty (wait for it…).  🙂

So yesterday I’m pitching my mom’s book, Lindy’s Gluten-Free Goodies & More!, to Debbie Marrie, acquiring editor for Strang Book Group (Siloam health imprint). There was just something I like about her. Besides that she’s fun and exciting, she had a genuine interest in the book and asked about future titles, of which she loves the title of the next book! So I’m thrilled she’s genuinely interested, and thrilled about acting as an “agent” for mom, who will surely pay me 15% of her advance in cookies if a deal ever went through. 🙂 That was yesterday.

Today mom and dad stopped by for a visit to bring me books and food (I totally feel like I’m at camp!) and to meet Debbie in person. They walk up, and Debbie screams, “I know you!” Turns out, Debbie was in a church youth choir mom directed when she was in 7th/8th grade! You can start singing now, “It’s a small world after all…”

Long story short, we discovered the way to an editor’s heart is through amazingly tasty gluten-free chocolate donuts, old memories never die, and later Debbie told me those years were her happiest musical years ever. Wow. So we’ll see what happens! I’m already asking mom for a 5% raise in cookies. And I’m sure Debbie won’t argue!

At the conference, we get to have lunch and dinner with faculty members and get to know them better. So I hung out with Todd Starnes from Fox News, who is an absolutely hilarious guy. I’m amazed at how down to earth the “famous” folks here are (yeah, he’ll be laughing at me when he reads this) and how willing they are to just talk with us. Naturally, the dinner conversation revolved around food, and later on he was our evening keynote and talked to us about white water rafting and crazy country song lyrics. You probably had to be here, so just take my word for it that it was hysterical and meaningful all at the same time. (You can see from the picture he’s a pretty fun guy.)

Which brings me to the last bit… Steven James, thriller novelist. My new favorite author even though I haven’t read any of his books yet. He literally rewrites every scene 60-100 times. Talk about perfectionism… I told him he and my hubby have a lot they could talk about. The best part is, he told us the story of Rindercella… which was absolutely nuts. It should take me about one week to read all of his books (except the one he won’t let me read because it’s so scary it scared him and he had to finish writing something else before he could finish that book), so I’m going to hop to it and begin with the recommended The Rook – as soon as I finish Rooms by James Rubart, our marketing workshop guru extraordinaire.

So many books, so little time…

Photo courtesy Shutterstock, GaudiLab