Over the weekend I attended a banquet at the OWFI writer’s conference. The Saturday night banquet ends the conference, and that is also the night they announce the winners in the annual contest. The last time I won anything was 1st Honorable Mention for a confession story, of all things, in 2000, and I wasn’t even there to receive my certificate. I don’t enter every year—I’d say I’ve entered maybe three times since. No winners.

The good thing about entering the contest is getting feedback from the professionals who volunteer to judge. I’d forgotten to put postage on the return envelopes, so that meant I’d have to pick up my entries in person. Which meant I might as well lay down $40 for the banquet.

Well, I’m glad I went, because I actually won something. My first novel, Ea’s Gift—the one that landed my former agent—took 3rd place in the fantasy novel category!

I’d entered it five years ago, before it was completely finished (they only need the synopsis and 1st 30 pages) and the judge slammed it, but apparently he slammed all of them, because on his blog he lamented the terribleness of the entries. Yes. Publicly. He’s a fairly well-known writer now, of novels and screenplays, though he wasn’t big then.

So anyway, a finished, polished Ea’s Gift got much more helpful comments. I think it helps when the judge enjoys your sub-genre, too, since Fantasy is such a large umbrella with too many different styles under it. Go visit Ty Drago. He’s got taste. Also, he’s a Quaker. I like Quakers.

I got good comments on Black Veil Angel as well, but the judge felt it shouldn’t have been entered in the YA category. That hurt the score. You know what’s funny? I had just put this judge at the top of my new agent query list for BVA, but I didn’t realize she was the judge for my category. I guess I don’t need to bother now.

My short story, Mon Petit Ami, didn’t get any comments but the score was in the 80–89 range, out of a hundred. She had a huge number of entries, so I don’t hold it against her.

I feel validated, which I really needed, but I still don’t know what to do with these stories. I’ve been looking at small presses and at self e-publishing and at agents. I’m feeling pretty creative, so maybe I’ll just write for a while.

They picked a few before the bus came, and then had to rush to make it to the street in time. “Have a wonderful day,” I called as I do every morning. They chorused, “We will!” They sat in the front seat of the bus with their heads together and forgot to wave at me out the window, as they do more and more. That’s all right.

Oklahoma is a great place to live. Really fantastically awesome. It has it’s challenges, as every state does, but I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

A.C. Crispin of Writer Beware liked it when she came to the OWFI conference a couple of weeks ago. In the linked post she compares the Nebula Awards banquet with ours, the professional writer and the amateur. She talks about the enthusiasm and joy of writers who attended the conference, and through our example realized that once you’re a pro it’s easy to forget to enjoy writing.

I’m enjoying it, that’s for sure. I finished my longer synopsis, which ended up being 2 1/2 pages. I know this is weird, given the general feeling floating around cyberspace about them, but I love writing synopses. It is a unique challenge, word-for-word taking about quadruple the time it takes to write the book itself, but when all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, it is immensely satisfying.

So now the synopsis is finished, and while I wait for proofreaders to get back to me (anybody else who wants to volunteer, I’ll love you forever) I’ll insert the changes in the first three chapters that somehow didn’t get saved the first time I did it. Then my proposal package will be complete, and I can focus on editing the rest of the book. IF I can stay inside during the lovely summer evenings and get it done.

I think the next topic I post about will be a fatherless follow-up.

I also learned that I’m pretty good company, especially after a glass of wine. And that underneath my shyness is a craving for face-to-face conversation. Also that people forgive most faux pas, probably because they remember their own. Who hasn’t flipped a crouton across the room?

Thursday night we had a storm with up to baseball-sized hail. The biggest hail I’d ever seen, which punched holes in my mom’s rain gutter and ruined the roof on the house across the street. I saw many cars with shattered rear windshields over the weekend, the first being in the hotel parking lot. I got video of a tight little pre-tornadic cloud rotation right over my mom’s house in Midwest City, but for some reason I can’t get it uploaded here. Maybe later.

My brother kindly gave up his bed to me to save hotel fees, and my mom gave up her SUV for the weekend so I could drive back for meals. I appreciate it so much, because staying in the hotel was out of the question this year. The gas factor was negligible, since the hotel was literally five minutes away.

My pitch session was first thing Friday morning with James Minz, senior editor at Baen. He made me feel right at home during my session, as well as the couple of times I spoke to him over the weekend. A very easygoing and knowledgeable guy, an interesting speaker, eager to help the newbies.

Minz has edited some really big-name authors, including some of my faves: Lawrence Watt-Evans, Elizabeth Haydon, and especially Catherine Asaro. We actually talked about the Skolian books a little, and he told me a funny story about the cover of Skyfall, which I may relate later. Somebody remind me.

I guess I’m skirting the real news about my pitch session, which is that he asked to see Ea’s Gift. I’d gone in pitching BVA, the newest project, but when he asked about other projects and I told him about EG, he said, “Well, I’d actually be more interested in that,” and to tell my agent to send it to him. Is that as exciting as I think it is? I’m really trying to be cool about the whole thing, but I did have a dream in which he bought EG. Of course, then he morphed into James Carvill and we got married, so I’m dubious about the prophetic nature of the dream.

Here I am right after the pitch, before the adrenaline crashed and left me limp and headachey:

So the pitch was the big event on Friday. I was wiped out but managed to go to a few more sessions (including the Minz session pictured above) before I called it a day. I skipped the evening’s activities, a cash bar reception and the J.A. Jance speech at the banquet, and my bro and I went to Borders instead and picked up some novels. I bought a Lois McMaster Bujold (how did I go so long without reading her?) and a Laurell K. Hamilton.

Saturday was actually the better day, the productive pitch session on Friday notwithstanding. I came out of my shell on Saturday, though it took a few hours. I finally figured out that most of the sessions were geared toward writers with less experience than I have, so I didn’t worry about getting to every one. I hit the high points, hung out in the central meeting area, and went home to rest when I felt like it. Met a lot of interesting people, including William (a WWII vet and electronic engineer) and Rachel (the prettiest girl in the world and an artist I could see doing my future book covers), and Wayne Wyrick (Director of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium), who made me feel right at home when I was shy and nervous. Writers are such a great group of people.

As a result of my go-with-the-flow attitude, I had plenty of energy to dress up for the reception and banquet. I ordered my first glass of wine in probably ten years with help from the lovely bartender. I chose the red Zinfandel. I felt like a real grown up rubbing elbows with editors and authors in my silver high-heels with a glass of wine in my hand. So cool.

At the banquet I hooked up with some ladies I know on the internet. Although a Jenny McCarthy look– and act-alike at the next table eclipsed us with her group’s contest wins, Jen Nipps (left) managed to pull some eyes our way with her two wins. The rest of us were wishing we’d entered something so we could be included in the excitement.

I’m in the purple, paranormal romance author Gloria Harchar and her daughter, Audrey, are to my immediate right, and Harlequin author Tessa McDermid there on the right.

Believe it or not, it was my first girl’s night out in probably ten years, perhaps the last time I had wine, and I was so jazzed to be talking to these ladies about agent issues and editor changes in such a matter-of-fact way.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell. A very large nut’s shell, to be sure, but there was much more I wanted to say. The rest will come out in bits and pieces over the week, probably, along with links and possibly more pictures, though a lot of them are blurry for some reason. I’ll have to see.

Whew.