Thursday, May 13, 2010

Awesome Author Day (Round 2) and More Cool Stuff

Like last year, I invited several authors to come talk at my school. This year in particular, since I teach creative writing, the idea seemed fitting.

The magnificent agent/author Lucienne Diver took me up on my invitation. She's the author of VAMPED, a YA humorous vampire novel, and REVAMPED due to release on Sept. 1st of this year. She spent the entire day with my classes, talking about writing, her books, and being a literary agent. Though I've known Lucienne for years, even I picked up a few new choice bits of information. She's a wonderful speaker. The students were enthralled, and the glow-in-the-dark fangs she gave out didn't hurt their attention spans, either. In addition, many of my students had purchased the book ahead of time, and still more bought copies from her, and she signed and personalized them all.

Then, by sheer good fortune, it turned out that one of my other favorite authors, Laura Anne Gilman, was meeting up with Lucienne after her visit, right outside my school! My husband rushed home to pick up the novels I had by Ms. Gilman, and when she arrived, she was kind enough to autograph all of them for me. It was a thrill to meet her. She lives up north, so it was a rare opportunity, but she was in Florida attending the Nebula awards for which she's been nominated this year.

In other news, I'm finished with the revisions on ASSASSIN'S NIGHTMARE requested by my fantastic agent, Colleen Lindsay, and I truly believe it is a much better book thanks to her insights. This is a good thing, because I must admit, I've developed a real love/hate relationship with that novel. I know that once it sells there will be more revisions to complete, but for now, I'm quite happy to not look at it for awhile. ASSASSIN'S NIGHTMARE goes out on submission next month. I can't even begin to convey how excited that makes me. One step closer to my dream of publication.