I had a wonderful time at the Romance Writers of Australia conference two weeks or so ago, and enjoyed every minute of it. I learned from my experience last year, when I overdid things with two conferences one after the other, packed full, and instead took things easy this time. The Published Author Day on the Thursday was a first for the RWA conference, and had some great sessions. The three I found particularly interesting were psychologist John Barletta, media/PR professional Jennifer St George, and the woman (who’s name I have temporarily forgotten, but if I go searching for my notes I might never finish this blog post!) who co-wrote the scripts for the Underbelly TV series, about organised crime in Australia. I found it fascinating hearing about the decisions they had to take to turn complex, real-life crimes and criminals into a cohesive TV program. There were definitely lessons in there about choosing what to focus on for dramatic cohesion and effect!

My take-it-easy strategy meant that I didn’t register for the workshop on Friday, and I was glad of that decision! Instead, I went into Newtown (an inner Sydney suburb) and met up with my good friend, librarian Vassiliki, for morning tea, in one of Newtown’s many cafés. Then a stroll down King Street, and short visits to an amazing button shop, a bead shop, and A Coffee and a Yarn. I managed to resist the temptation of pretty things, however, and didn’t buy anything.

Friday afternoon was the booksigning, organised by the Australian romance Readers Association in conjunction with RWA. It was great fun! We authors were seated alphabetically – so I was between my good friend, Valerie Parv, and fellow Outback Romances author Fiona Palmer.

After the booksigning came the cocktail party. There’s always a fancy dress theme, although no requirement to dress up. I had originally planned not to wear a costume, but then had an idea that fell in to the Fantasy theme, and was easy to execute. I fast-forwarded to 2012, and wrote up a series of frontpage newspaper articles, announcing major literary prize wins for various romance authors. I stuck them onto two sheets of cardboard, which I wore as a sandwich board. It was a fun bit of fantasy, and gave a few people a good laugh.

Highlights of the rest of the conference included, of course, the awards dinner on Saturday night. It’s always a lovely night, friendly and buzzing with positivity, and this year was no exception. I didn’t win the R*BY award in my category, but huge congrats to my good friend Tracey O’Hara, who did! The winners in the short romance categories were the lovely Sharon Archer, and wonderful Madam Res of RWA, Amy Andrews. The long romance category went to historical author Sophia James, who I haven’t met, but I’m sure she’s fantastic, too!

The workshops on Sunday included a very interesting, if somewhat unsettling one, by a Forensic Pathologist. A lot of very valuable information, sensitively delivered, about investigating the cause of death. After lunch, I attended quite a different workshop, delivered by a martial arts expert who trains the military, police, journalists going abroad, and airline staff, in fighting techniques. Not only did he know his stuff, he was a great performer, too, with expert comic timing. I guess it was less serious because we’re fiction writers, and not frequently confronting potentially dangerous situations in real life ourselves. But I learned heaps, both of relevance to writing fight scenes, and to real life. Hopefully I’ll never have to use any in real life, but at least I have more knowledge than I did!

Another part of my take-it-easy strategy was to stay on in Sydney on Sunday night, instead of racing home Sunday afternoon. I am SO glad I did. It was so much more relaxed, and I enjoyed the winding-down with friends, having a cocktail in the bar with a few others, then going out to dinner with a small crowd.

On Monday, I drove home with the wonderful Kelly Hunter, and we had a great trip. She drove, and I took notes while we brainstormed ideas for her next book series. It was a heap of fun, bouncing ideas and possibilities around, and now I can’t wait for her to write the series!

Since getting home, life has continued on, quietly busy. I’m still waiting on word about my next surgery, but it may be some weeks yet before I know the date. In the meantime, I finished putting together a photo album for Gordon’s mother’s 80th birthday, and posted it off – only a day or two late! (She didn’t seem to mind!)

Yesterday was another pleasant trip ‘down the hill’ to Bellingen, two hours drive away, for a meeting of the north coast 4 Points Author Network group of RWA. It’s a a great group of women, and a lovely drive amongst the peaks and ridges of the Great Dividing Range to the Dorrigo Plateau, and then down the escarpment to Bellingen, nestled into the river valley at the foot of the hills.

I’ll leave you with a couple of views from the road to Dorrigo:

I had a lovely brunch today with fellow RITA finalist Kelly Hunter, her husband, and Gordon, in a sunny café in town. Good food, good company, lively conversation… and Gordon’s iPad, on which we all watched the Twitter feed for announcements about the Golden Heart and RITA finalists. Kelly and I may have forgotten to breathe occasionally, but it was a lovely way to experience the excitement, since neither of us could make it to Orlando. (And we didn’t have to put on high heels and makeup, or face conference chicken dinner…!) Technology is wonderful

Neither of us won our categories, but that’s okay – we had a lovely morning, and it’s such a huge honour just to final in the RITA’s!

I’d like to congratulate ALL the winners in the Golden Heart and RITAs – with a special shout-out to Laura Griffin, who won the RITA for the romantic suspense category, AND won our category in the Daphne du Maurier Award on Thursday; and an extra-big, happy-dancing shout-out to Australia’s own Kylie Griffin, who won a Golden Heart Award in the paranormal romance category for her manuscript, Bloodborn.

Huge congrats, Kylie! I couldn’t be happier for you!!

Whoosh! July is zipping past, and almost done. I’ve been quietly busy with assorted things – a sick dog, who is now back to her normal Princess self again; writing; knitting; paperwork; reading blogs and following happenings at the RWAmerica conference on Orlando, and generally getting through winter days. I had a lovely trip ‘down the hill’ to Bellingen this week to meet with some of the ladies from the North Coast RWAus group – it’s a 2 hour drive each way, winding through the tablelands and then down the escarpment. The scenery is very pretty, although on Wednesday it was muted through misty rain/clouds/fog most of the way there and back.

Coming back from Bellingen, about 20 kms from home, I realised that the car was making a vibrating sound that it shouldn’t. So on Thursday I took it t the Toyota place, and one of the mechanics took it for a drive, and then put it up on the hoist for a quick look. The initial verdict is that there’s a problem in the gear box. Hopefully I’ll hear on Monday just how much of a problem, and the cost to fix it. In the meantime, since we’re regulars there for car services etc, they’ve very kindly lent me a car for the weekend – much newer than mine, but the particular shade of green is definitely not my taste! (I have described it as metallic, bright, radioactive-baby-poo green!)

As July disappears and August looms, I’m counting down to a few things: the Romance Writers of Australia conference starts in less than 2 weeks, and I’ll head down to Sydney on August 11th for 5 days. Dark Country is a finalist in the RWAus Romantic Book of the Year Awards, which will be announced on Saturday 14th. I’m also counting down to the Davitt Awards, coordinated by Sisters in Crime, which will be announced in Melbourne on August 28th. And I’ll soon be counting down to my next surgery – no date yet, but I’m expecting it will be late August/early September. I’m not looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to getting it over and done with, and getting back to a normal life!

But the BIG thing I’m counting down to – the one that’s really close – is the announcement of the winners of the RWAmerica RITA Awards – and that’s only about 15 hours away! Dark Country is a finalist in the romantic suspense category, along with some other wonderful books and authors, so the competition is stiff!

There are three Australian RITA finalists – Elizabeth Rolls, in the Regency Historical category with Lord Braybrook’s Penniless Bride; Kelly Hunter, in the contemporary series category, with Revealed: A Prince and a Pregnancy; and my book, Dark Country. Elizabeth was able to go to the RWAmerica conference in Orlando, so she’s over there now, and I’m hoping she’s having a fantastic time! The conference is a huge event, with 2100 attendees, and having been to a couple of them, I’m sure the buzz is building now towards the excitement of the gala awards night.

Kelly is a good friend and lives not far from me, and neither of us could go to Orlando this year. Saturday night Orlando time is Sunday morning here, so we’re getting together for brunch at a café in town tomorrow morning, where we’ll celebrate finalling, and follow the award announcements on Twitter and on the RWAmerica website. Wintry Sunday mornings in Armidale don’t call for evening dress, so we’ll be dressed rather more informally (and warmly!) than our fellow finalists, but I’m sure we’ll have fun, anyway And if either of us does happen to win, the café does have champagne for sale!

It’s my pleasure today to welcome Helene Young to my blog as a guest. Helene is a fellow Australian romantic suspense author, a wonderful person, and her fantastic debut novel, Border Watch, is one of the prizes in this week’s Fast Fiction contest here on my blog.

Well-chosen words.

Bron’s Fast Fiction got me thinking about the precise placement of words. I’m a writer who tends to produce too many, which then necessitates culling a large number in the editing process. I had fun attempting my 55-word story for Bron’s comp, but I spent an inordinate amount of time doing it. Heaven help me if I produced a 90,000-word book in the same manner – I’d have dodgy knees and a wheelie-walker by publication date

Over the last two weeks I’ve indulged in a reading frenzy. I’ve devoured everything, from Lee Childs, to Tara Moss, to Nora Roberts, Linda Howard and on to Katherine Howell. It’s been sensory heaven. All the books were crime/suspense genre. All were very different. Tension was paramount. What struck me was the change in sentence length when the action hotted up. Nary an ‘and’ in sight, minimal adjectives, blunt verbs. The stories rocketed along, dragging the reader with them, not leaving time to breathe.

The arc of the story could be traced by the rhythm of the words. It was an epiphany. In particular, Lee Childs stood out. If I needed any proof that well placed words are powerful he provided it. He summed up his hero, Jack Reacher, in a couple of sentences. I envied every single word. He wrote dialogue that scattered words across the page like Morse code. No tags, no names, but still it was clear who spoke.

I start editing Book 2 this weekend and hopefully some of that sparseness of writing will have rubbed off on me. If not, there’s always an editor waiting with a sharpened pencil and a keen eye.

I’d love to hear how you approach editing. What authors influence your writing? Whose well-chosen words stay with you long after you’ve put the book down?

Thanks, Helene, for these thoughtful words about words! I loved the opening of Border Watch – I remember thinking ‘Wow!’ as I read the first paragraphs. Readers who haven’t yet read Border Watch are in for a treat: there’s an excerpt available at Helene’s website.

And don’t forget that entering the Fast Fiction contest gives you a chance to win it!

High above the crystal-blue waters of North Queensland, Captain Morgan Pentland patrols the vast Australian coastline. When Customs Agent Rafe Daniels joins her crew, she is immediately suspicious. Why is he boarding her plane when she isn’t there? And why is he asking so many questions?

What Morgan doesn’t know is that Rafe has her under surveillance. Critical information about their Border Watch operations is being leaked and she is the main suspect. Morgan’s ex, elite police officer Carl Wiseman, is back on the scene after she finally found the courage to throw him out. Is he trying to regain Morgan’s affections of are his intentions more sinister?

When Morgan and Rafe are shot down in a tragic midair attack, they realise they have to start working together – and quickly. One of Australia’s most loved icons is the next target and they have only nine days to stop it. Will they uncover details of the plot in time, or will the tension that is growing between them jeopardise everything?

The Australian Romance Readers Awards dinner last night was a wonderful night – beautiful venue, great food, fantastic company, smooth organisation – I had a fantastic time!

And to top it all, I came away with this:

A huge thank you to the ARRA members who voted for Dark Country, to the ARRA committee who organised the awards, the award sponsors, and to everyone who was there to share a special night with!