Dealing With It

A year and a half ago I attended my first writers conference. It was an amazing experience I have discussed here many times. There are so many parts of the weekend that stick out in my mind. Everything from trying to stay awake on the drive from Vegas to San Diego to the social event Friday night. I loved every one of the break-out sessions and keynote speeches and wouldn't have traded my one on one meetings with the agents for anything. There is one part I rare talk about because it wasn't the focus of any part of the weekend but recently the networking dinner and follow-up at the hotel bar afterward has been on my mind.

Saturday was our one full day. It started with breakfast and the morning keynote address delivered by one of my idols, and the reason I attended in the first place, R.L. Stine. We then broke off into our chosen break-out sessions. I had two meetings with agents to discuss pages from books I wrote in order to get feedback. When my time came to go to my meetings I quietly exited whatever session I was in the snuck back in when finished. One of the agents I submitted to had been a flip of the coin for me. There were only two agents accepting pages to critique in that genre. I picked one but did a break-out session run by the other and enjoyed speaking with him. During lunch I got the opportunity to talk to him again and he invited me to join his table during the networking dinner that evening.

He gave me his card and we discussed the two books I presented while at the conference. He was interested in my thriller series once I finished all four books. There was even a more personal interest because some of the books are set in London and he is British as well. We talked about it at length and he asked me to send him the manuscript of the first book once the series is done. Once we talked about that series he asked about my other book, Sharing Strength. the group at our table got to hear all about PTSD and the documentary that inspired me to write the book in the first place.

Understandably PTSD is not a happy subject and the party took on a heavy tone as we sat at the bar. In order to cheer people back up I began telling funny stories from my life in the casino world. Everyone eventually laughed along and shared interesting things from their day jobs, assuming they weren't full time writers. At the end of the evening one of the agents offered me his card and said he wanted to get first look at the humor book I was pitching. I tried explaining I wasn't pitching anything, I just wanted to make people laugh. We went around a few times before I took the card and said I would see what I could do.

There have been some bumps along the way but I am writing the book now called Just Deal With It. The first book (fingers crossed there will be more) is set right in my beautiful Las Vegas. It is essentially Vegas from the dealer's point of view. The cover is designed, the stories are written. I am about to begin editing and then it will be off to my beta before being released at the end of August.