I wasn’t able to get online at the Hyatt in Indianapolis, and it’s taken me a week to recover from jet lag and such, but now that I have, here are some highlights from the American Christian Fiction Writer’s annual conference.
I met up with agent Terry Burns at the airport in Denver. A true gentleman, Terry loaded my bag (filled with books) into the overhead bin for me. (Thanks, Terry!) We sat together on the plane and had a nice time talking.
My good friend and critique partner, Diana Sharples, picked me up at the airport and drove me to the hotel. I was starving, since I’d been up since 12:30am that morning. Seventeen-year-old Chris Kolmorgen and his parents arrived and we had a nice time eating dinner in the food court and getting to know each other face to face.
The next morning we started the day with James Scott Bell’s early bird session. The conference took off running from there, and I never stopped to rest until it was over. I enjoyed Tim Downs’ keynote addresses, Chip MacGregor and Jim Rubart’s marketing class, Thomas Nelson’s workshops that included a fascinating mock pub board meeting, Colleen Coble and Ami McConnell’s course on branding, my own class on storyworld building where I found two people who spoke some Klingon (!), and the awards banquet where Marcher Lord Press author Kirk Outerbridge won the Carol Award for his novel Eternity Falls. (Way to go, Kirk!)
- My C-YAR critique group. From left to right, Diana Sharples, Chris Kolmorgen, Claire Talbot, and Susan Lyttek.
I had the pleasure of meeting many people: critique partners I’ve only ever known online (Diana, Chris, Claire, Susan, and April), authors whose books I love (John Olson and Conlan Brown), my editor, Jeff Gerke, and I got to spend some time laughing with my agent Amanda Luedeke, which is always a good time.If you want to be a published author, I highly recommend writer’s conferences. And ACFW is one of the best. Next year’s conference will be in St. Louis, Missouri, so start saving now! Maybe I’ll see you there.
That’s awesome, Jill. Looks like great fun. Wish I could have been there to meet the crit group. I had so much fun with Diana at last year’s ACFW conference.
And yeah, I did save for a whole year to go to last years! Great times! Learned a lot and loved meeting all the people.
Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks, Lynn. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to start saving to go again next year. What conferences are you looking into these days? Have you ever gone to RWA?
Hey, Jill!
I had an awesome time hanging out with you and our other crit partners! What fun! Can’t wait to do it again sometime… maybe with our own CYAW retreat!
Yesterday my family and I attended the opening celebration of a new conference center in Cartersville, Georgia (my daughter was dancing as part of the day-long entertainment), and as I walked around the facility I thought, What a great place for a writers conference! Oh, no… scary thoughts!
Anyway, I love conferences. They’re always so encouraging and enlightening. And I will definitely be going to ACFW next year! I have lots of relatives in St. Louis, so my mom will probably be riding up with me so she can visit while I’m “conferring.”
Cheers,
Diana
It was a lot of fun, Diana. I’ll start saving for next year, but who knows. It’s a long way away… both in distance and time. It is a great conference, though. It would be fun to do our own someday. But, ooh. A lot of work! 🙂