R is for Romance Trading Cards - A to Z Challenge

People collect all kinds of cards, from baseball cards, to Magic the Gathering, to Pokemon. But have you heard of Romance Trading Cards? Here’s the scoop, direct from their website:

Romance Trading Cards is a spur of the moment collaboration that started with a few conversations on Twitter (#romancetradingcards) and has grown from there. To participate, each author creates and prints their own card featuring a character from their book, hero, heroine, villain, one or more–it’s ALL up to you. Bring the cards to signings and conferences for readers to collect and trade.

Pretty cool, right? I was inspired to create a set of them for my first book, Magick Charm. I’ll be bringing these with me when I attend the NECRWA conference (next week – wow!). Check them out:

Card Back

C is for Conference - A to Z Challenge

NEC RWA Conference

At the end of this month, I’ll be attending a writer’s conference in Salem, MA. It’s an annual conference held by the New England Chapter Romance Writers of America.

I’ve only been to one other writer’s conference, the RWA national conference in New York City several years ago. I hadn’t been published yet and was looking for a home for my historical romance novel, Pandora’s Legacy. While I didn’t find a publisher at that conference, it was well worth it. I learned a lot of writing, plotting, and marketing tips.

Most importantly, the conference made me feel like a real writer, not just a crazy person talking to the people in her head and scribbling sex scenes in the back room. Writing can be a very solitary occupation, and getting to talk shop with others made the whole thing feel much more real. The idea of writing something that would then be turned into a physical book… well, of course that’s the goal, but here’s a whole building full of people who did it! If they can do it, I told myself, with enough hard work, I could do it too.

So I’m totally psyched for the Salem conference! It’s my first one as a published author and the first time I get to meet the owners of Crescent Moon Press in person!

If you’ll be at the conference, let me know and I’ll look for you while I’m there.