Janet Reid is Awesome!

Hello Literati!

I have returned from my Backspace Writer’s Conference with newfound knowledge and inspiration!  For those of you who are aspiring authors, you must go to this conference!  It should not even be a question, start saving for it now!  It will change your life!

I met some fabulous people at the conference: a critique group of YA writers, editors, agents, and especially Karen Dionne and Chris Graham.  Karen and Chris are the founders of Backspace and are both published writers.  They are amazing people and I feel a real privilege to have met them.

So, if you are a writer, first, get a membership to Backspace.  Do it now, we will wait here for you.

Next, you’re going to start saving for the conference, trust me when I say you will not regret it!

So who is Janet Reid?  She’s known in literary circles as The Shark.  She eats writers for breakfast.  I scheduled a one-on-one with her and everyone at the conference thought I was either a) crazy, or b) a masochist.   But I went to the conference for honest opinions and she is bursting with them!  Of course I was super anxious for the meeting.  All morning knots welled in my stomach, trapping butterflies in their grasps.  Now, I hope I don’t ruin her image, but Janet “The Shark” Reid is awesome.  She was super nice and she even gave me a book, Swamplandia!.  That’s right; it has an exclamation at the end, which makes it look weird in that sentence.  Has anyone ever read it?

There will be more to come about what knowledge I can pass on to fellow writers.  In the meantime, this Friday will be the second installation from the Real Evil Genius series...and it’s a good one!

What are you reading right now?  Care to give it a quick review in the comments?

Happy reading and writing!