Raffle Madness

A sampling of lovely raffle baskets

I have returned from my first-ever Reader Author Get Together. It’s Tuesday as I write this and only today have I felt like myself. It was an overwhelming experience that I’ll soon discuss with another post but first I want to talk about a wonderful part of it; the Raffle.

Every year, authors, readers, publishers, you name it, donate gifts to a raffle at this event. This year, there were over 250 items donated and they raised more than 13,000 dollars for a charity, One Way Farm Children’s Home, www.OneWayFarm.org.

Since I only have one book out at this time, and my second isn’t going to be available until fall, I spent some time trying to come up with something interesting. Since I don’t shop at Bath and Body Works, a basket of spa items was out, so I decided to offer up the chance to name a character in my next published book. I thought it would be a fun prize for someone and I would enjoy sharing the experience of submitting, editing, designing cover art, and finally release day with an interested person.

My prize was drawn in the final round Saturday night. I stuck around despite being very tired and was excited to meet the winner, Joyce Boyd (Hi Joyce!). Joyce and I are going to work through this process together and I’ll be sure to post updates as they occur.

Here’s the first one; I met with two editors at RAGT, both requested full manuscripts, and I have sent those and synopses out as of today. Whew! It’s stressful to prep a submission because you want to re-read the whole manuscript for the umpteenth time, you second guess yourself and your story, and when the panic really hits, you try to think of reasons NOT to send the thing to anyone because you fear rejection. But I have overcome all those obstacles, hit the send button twice, and plan to celebrate tomorrow with a nice lunch out. Then it will be weeks of waiting and checking my email constantly and when I do get a message, being afraid to open it because of the aforementioned fear of rejection.

Oh, in case you are wondering, I didn’t win anything. I never win anything.

my raffle prize...kinda cute

Oh the Pressure

Swag, get your free swag

 

 



I am busy prepping for the 2013 Lori Foster Reader and Author Get together. My preparations are not especially well-informed since I’ve never been to this event. I was informed I’d need giveaways and I have managed to accumulate some things, such as the candy bags pictured above. My son and I labored many hours (not really) on putting these together. I suspect he helped mostly because he wanted to sample the candies, but no matter, one hundred bags are filled with candy, a magnet, and are stickered with my info. I’m also bringing some stress balls, although they are more like stress cubes. I plan on giving those to people who buy copies of my book while I’m there. And there are more magnets to be included in the goody bags all attendees get.

Since I’ve never been to one of these, and I tend to be a stay-at-home introvert who suffers terribly when forced to make small talk, I’m trying not to get nervous ahead of time. Here’s what I’m worried about in no particular order.

1.       I will make some incredibly obvious new author faux pas and everyone in the vicinity will give me pitying looks

2.       I will sit at my book-signing table and no one will talk to me, let alone buy a book

3.       I will miss some important thing because I was distracted or lost or caught in a crowd

4.       I will have to bring home most of these give-aways because no one will be interested

5.       I won’t like the food and I’ll be hungry all the time

6.       I will make a fool of myself in pitches

7.       I will meet people and immediately forget their names

8.       I will feel like a dork during the ‘party’ portions of the event

9.       Someone will want to talk about paranormals, erotica, new adult, shapeshifters, whatever and since I don’t read those genres I will have a blank and ignorant look on my face the whole time

10.   No one will put a ticket in to try and win my raffle prize

Okay, so I just typed all that out and now I’m really nervous. I haven’t even packed yet. As I review the list, I can see there are some common themes such as meeting people and swag. In an effort to make myself feel more confident, if you are reading this and are going to RAGT this year, mention my insecurities to me and I will give you a bag of candy. Or a stress cube.

Sunshine On My Brain

Maybe because it finally feels like spring and the sunshine and warmer temperatures are mellowing my brain, or maybe because I wrote over 50,000 words on a new book last month for Camp NaNo, I haven’t paid attention to making a blog post in far too long. Let's blame it on all the plants emerging in my garden and distracting me terribly.

First off, the writing is going very, very well. I am so pleased with the SFR story I’m finishing up now, all the little connections and threads I needed are coming together at the end and that’s a great feeling. And I went through another story (one I wrote last November for NaNo)  and revised it in the last two weeks. This one I’m going to pitch to an editor at Lori Foster’s Reader and Author Get Together in June, so it’s very nice to have most of the heavy lifting done on it already. It’s a contemporary set in Ohio, the heroine is a small town school bus driver employed for the summer to drive around some movie actors on a location shoot in her home county. And our hero is one of those actors who decides he doesn’t want to be famous. So far, my favorite scenes to write were one at a garage sale, and another of a seduction in below zero weather in a drafty bedroom.

Still waiting to hear about the pitch I made three weeks ago. I kept myself busy and haven’t thought about it much other than wanting to know what the editor thought so I can enter it into our Central Ohio Fiction Writer's contest; Ignite the Flame. I might just enter my contemporary instead and not worry about it. I just want to find a publisher for my SFRs, I have written four and I’d love to find a home for them so I can get them out there.

I also managed to order my swag for the above mentioned RAGT. If you are attending, expect a magnet from me, and I’ll have some cover post cards to sign, stress balls, AND bags of Brach’s hard candies. Getting ready for this event has been hit or miss for me. I have no idea what to expect, so I’m kind of muddling through all the pre-planning. Although I have been getting great advice from a writer friend, Allyson Young http://www.allysonyoung.com/Home.html , who has attended before. This will be my first ‘appearance’ as Lynn Rae, author. It’s a little daunting. I have a not so secret fear that no one will have even heard of my book, let alone read it. Ah well, if that’s so, I’ll just mingle and fake it.