LOVE IS BREWING

The Wisconsin Romance Writers (WISRA) group holds a conference in a different city every year on the first weekend in June. The 2011 conference was in Milwaukee, so thus the name for the conference—Love is Brewing. If you are not familiar with Milwaukee they are quite famous for their beer breweries: Pabst, Schlitz, Miller, Blatz. WlSRA sponsors one of the better chapter conferences around. The price is reasonable and the location is close since Wisconsin is right next door to those of us residing in Minnesota. I think what I like best about the conference is they have editors and agents who take appointments with all of us writers who desperately want to become published authors. They also feature various speakers during the conference, so even if you aren’t interested in one you probably will be interested in one of the others. I guess you could say they don’t put all their eggs in one basket and only offer one speaker. Saturday’s speaker was Susan Wiggs who presented, “From Idea to Printed Page: The Evolution of a Book”. Author Brenda Novak, Harlequin editor Paula Eykelhof, and literary agent Kathleen Ortiz critiqued actual query letters from conference attendees. Each year WISRA sponsors the Fab Five Contest and announces the winners at the conference during the Awards Luncheon. YA (Young Adult) author Simone Elkeles presented, “The Secrets of a Marketing Queen” followed by Carina Press editor Angela James presenting, “Publishing Into the Digital Age”. Agent and editor appointments where we get a chance to pitch our stories in the hope of getting a request to send in our first few chapters or a full manuscript were held throughout the day. This is a big deal because it is our chance to get published. Of course getting published means we become rich, right? Not very likely, so probably keeping your day job, for a while anyway, is a good idea. Later in the day there is an opportunity to purchase books signed by the authors at the Literacy book signing in the hotel lobby. Sunday starts the morning with author Brenda Novak presenting, “Emotion: The Heart of the Novel”. Novelist Carrie Lofty follows teaching us how to write a 35 word pitch for our stories. Susan Wiggs finishes up the conference with, “How Not to Get Published”. This was the second year I was able to attend and I learned something useful from each speaker, had the opportunity to pitch my books and receive a request for my manuscripts, spent quality time with other authors and just plain had a great time. I even met another author who was writing a Viking Time Travel romance novel. As writing goes, it makes perfect sense that her story was totally different than my Viking Time Travel, “On a Midsummer’s Eve”. I unexpectedly sold a couple of my books, Real Norwegians Eat Lutefisk, to Wisconsin romance writers who were fellow Norwegians. So all in all, attending WISRA’s conference proved to be well worth the cost and time resulting in manuscript requests, learning new things to use in my writing, networking with other authors and having the opportunity to market myself as a writer along with my children’s book, “Real Norwegians Eat Lutefisk”!