biancadarc.com Blog

Checking in from the Get Together

I’m sitting here, having lunch with fellow authors Gia Dawn and Jacquelyn Frank at the Lori Foster Get Together in West Chester, Ohio. We’re doing a big book signing later this afternoon, so if you’re in the area, drop by and see us!

The event has been awesome, with lots of laughter and chatter. I’ve been hanging with Eliza Gayle, the Samhain office folks including Marty , Crissy and Angie. Jambrea and Valerie Tibbs are here – traveling as a set. LOL! (They’re going to get me for that! hee hee)

And lots of others! A fun time is being had by all! Will report in from the road as my trip progresses.

Lori Foster’s Get Together This Weekend!

I’m heading for a fun weekend in Ohio with readers and authors at Lori Foster’s annual Get Together. I hope if you plan to be there, you’ll look me up. And if you’re in the area, the book signing on Saturday is open to the public! It’s from 2-4 pm at the Mariott at 6189 Mulhauser Road, West Chester, OH. Hope to see you there!

Signing This Saturday!

May 16, 2009

Signing – Borders Books in Middletown, NY
2-6 p.m.

I’ll be there, along with my friends, New York Times Best Seller Jacquelyn Frank, Cat Johnson, Tilly Greene, Stella Price, Allie Boniface and Philippa Grey-Gerou. We’ll be at the Borders in the Crystal Run Mall from 2-6. Hope to see you there!

On The Radio…

Catch me on the radio on Monday night, May 4th at 9:30pm Eastern Time. Here’s the link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Whats-Hot-In-Romance

That’s the All Romance Ebooks radio show, which was recorded live at RT last week in Orlando, FL. I’ll try to be in the chat room that is attached to the internet radio site to answer questions, but because it was recorded in FL, I don’t think the call-in features will be working.

Tune in! (I already forgot what I said, so I’ll be listening too – just to find out what I talked about!)

Almost Home

I’m on my way back from RT. Yes, I drove. It’s just over 1000 miles from my house to FL, so I took it in stages, visiting family all along the way. Whenever I go southward, I like to drive and mix the drive with visits to people I otherwise wouldn’t see. I’m almost home now – just a few hundred miles to go – but I stopped to recover a bit and visit with my folks for a bit.

RT was stupendous! Although I really didn’t enjoy the hot sun of Florida, I did enjoy seeing everyone and meeting new people. My presentations, both to the booksellers, and my moderating duties on the “Demons Unplugged” panel went really well. Larissa Ione’s one-word answers notwithstanding, that panel was a very big big success and even Larissa got a lot of laughs with her reluctance to talk in public.

Hanging with Samhain people, other authors and meeting all kinds of great new people really made the week fly by. I also was on a mission to try to find an agent, but I’m not entirely certain that will pan out. I met with a few agents at RT, but I like to surround myself with positive people – not silly/happy people, but people with a positive outlook on the world, on their business and on life in general. I’m not sure I encountered that kind of attitude in any of the agents I spoke to and in fact, was incredibly depressed after talking to some of them. :-O I know that’s kind of weird criteria to go by, but having spent most of my life in the corporate world, I know how important it is to find the right fit with people you intend to work with long-term.

So the week was full of ups and downs. I encountered an editor or two who were very enthusiastic about my work. Those were the highest points of the convention, of course. Then there were the parties and events, which are always fun. The usual hotel hassle was slightly different this year – no messing with elevators, but very long walks between buildings. The grounds of the hotel were gorgeously manicured, so the walks weren’t even that bad, except in the heat of the day. The little lizards all over the place made me jump, of course, having never encountered that before. The ducks and other wildlife were enchanting.

I’ll tell you more later, when I finally get home.

Off to the Races!

Today is by far my busiest day at RT this year and I’ll be spending most of it giving a 2-hour workshop (split down the middle with a break for lunch, so it’s more like 3 hours) for booksellers. I can’t wait! I had a great time with this group last year and I anticipate and even better time this year!

Then the authors of Samhain are hosting a small party for the same group (hopefully by then, they won’t be sick of me!). I’m not exactly sure what’s planned for the party, but with all the authors there, it should be fun times.

Later this afternoon is the ebook expo. I hate to be critical, but I don’t think it’s any secret that last year’s first attempt at this was a total disaster as far as the authors go. Hopefully this year will be better. If you plan to be there, I’ll have a few copies of my 3 new vampire novellas available for sale, goody bags to give away and things to sign.

I’m then supposed to be interviewed for the ARe radio show by my friend, Cat Johnson. If we don’t giggle too much, it should be interesting actually seeing her face to face while recording this thing for their radio show. In the past, when I’ve been a guest, I’ve phoned in and it’s always somewhat awkward. Cat and I often do booksignings together since we both live in the NY Metro area, so hopefully that easy camaraderie will come through in the interview.

And then I hear there’s an Ellora’s Cave party scheduled. If I’m still awake by that point and able to work up the energy to go, I might check it out.

If you’re at RT, look me up! If you’re not, rest assured I’m gathering goodies to give away once I return home, so stay tuned! I’ll try to report in tomorrow if I can get online and let you know how it all went.

On My Way…

To all those of you who are attending the RT Conference in Florida, look me up when you get there! I have a very full agenda planned for the days I’ll be there that looks something like this:

Wednesday

11:45-4:30: Bookseller Workshop & Party

4:30-6:30: eBook Fair (at which I’ll be “signing”/selling copies of One & Only, Rare Vintage & Phantom Desires)

8:00-8:30: I’m being interviewed by ARe for their radio show

Thursday

10:15-11:15: Demons Unplugged Panel – I’m moderating (you know I don’t write demons!) what promises to be a lively discussion between folks like Jacki Frank, Larissa Ione, Stella Price and Jenna Black. Should be a fun group! (And we have giveaways!)

2:30-3:00: Club RT – The Authors After Dark take over Club RT! Come by for free goody bags and fun times!

Friday

8:30-9:45: Jacki Frank’s Morning Mixer – I have a fun little goody in Jacki’s giveaway bags.

10:30-11:00: Club RT

Saturday

11:00-2:00: Book Fair – I’ll be signing copies of Sweeter Than Wine, FireDrake and Davin’s Quest, plus any of my books that you might bring with you. Look for me!

I hope to see a bunch of you there!

New Interview

My friend and fellow author, Susan Hanniford Crowley, interviewed me on her blog. Check it out BY CLICKING HERE.

Con Lag

I had the most amazing weekend at Lunacon! But I’m definitely feeling the effects of too little sleep today. It’s 11:30 here in NY and I just woke up. Oh, boy. In short, I feel like a zombie.

But to get back to the fun of the weekend, it was beyond my expectations. It had been about 15 years since I last saw Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon. I met them through a mutual friend in NJ, when they were newly married and full of the joy of being newlyweds. We spent a memorable day playing guitars and singing some of the great songs Misty has written to go with her books as well as some shared favorites by British musician, Chris de Burgh. (“The Tower”, “Crusader”, “The Girl With April in Her Eyes”, etc. If all you’ve heard is his old hit “Lady in Red”, you’re missing the real de Burgh!)

That one day from all those years ago is still a highlight of my college years. I loved her Valdemar books then and still do. Every once in a while I’ll go back and reread certain volumes of those books and they transport me back to those halcyon days in my mind. My college years were truly excellent. They were followed by the hardest work I’ve ever done – working full-time in a lab while attending grad school at night, building up a huge debt in student loans that I felt compelled to repay as quickly as possible. As a result, I worked like a dawg for years after, still going to grad school for another degree, totally burning out in an attempt to become debt free. Those were not such good times, although I achieved great success in the eyes of the world. In my heart, I was never as happy as those carefree days in undergrad. (See how melancholy and introspective sleep deprivation makes me? Sorry.)

Anyway… if you’d asked me last week what I would have experienced at this con, I would have thought it would be all about seeing Misty and Larry again – from a fangirl point of view. Sure, there was that, but I guess I forgot that I’ve changed a lot since those early days. I was unprepared for the welcome I received as a (fledgling) author in my own right. They’d set me up for a “signing” time and I fully expected to sit there, all alone, looking pathetic. In fact, when I arrived a little early at the table in the hallway where I was supposed to sit for an hour, there were three guys sitting there already, chatting. I was glad. They stuck around and kept me company for a bit and it turned out we had a really interesting conversation.

But then people started arriving, looking for my books. What a great feeling! Romance readers at a sci fi con! Then someone walked up, already carrying a big stack of my titles, wanting them signed. I almost blubbered like a baby. Seriously, it was really nice to know that some folks in the SF&F community “get” my work, even if it is marketed and directed in large part toward the romance audience.

Then there were the panels. I think the best of the bunch was the last. We talked about epublishing and ebooks with a great panel of people with experience covering the spectrum of the epublishing world. It was moderated by my friend, Michele Lang, who later said it was like herding cats to keep us all in line. LOL! She was right – we grabbed the topic and away the discussion went! It was a great discussion in which I learned quite a bit and was able to gauge the SF&F community’s reaction to the idea of ebooks, which is surprisingly guarded.

That fact continues to amaze me. As a former lab geek, I was absolutely THRILLED when my friend (who used to work at the Sci Fi Channel) gave me a copy of The Lord of the Rings to read on my Palm Pilot. This was way before there were ebook readers. It was before the movies came out. In fact, I was re-reading LOTR in preparation for the movies because I hadn’t read it since I was a teen. After reading the entire trilogy on my PDA, I was hooked! I looked around the Palm store and found these weird vampire books by someone named Feehan. I had no clue who she was, but I sure liked those sexy vamps. LOL. Then I branched out, looking for more ebooks and found Ellora’s Cave and the super sexy futuristics and paranormals they had to offer. I was a happy camper!

I’ve gone e in a big way, and will likely never go back to schlepping around piles and pounds of paper books. I prefer to buy e and will only buy print if I must. I figured the SF&F community would be like me, but I was SO WRONG. They’re just starting to see the advantages of ebooks and it’s still a hard sell to get many of them to even try. Wow. That’s totally not what I expected, but I guess it will catch on as people learn the advantages of being able to carry around your entire library on a USB drive.

So it was a great weekend, filled with good conversations with interesting people and a surprising feeling of being “worthy” to share my opinions on books, the changing state of the publishing world as seen from a relatively new author’s point of view and life, the universe and everything! I definitely have con lag. I barely slept in the toxic hotel that was undergoing renovation and caused allergies to arise the likes of which I have never experienced. But it was all cool and I can’t wait for next year’s Lunacon! If you’re in the area, you should definitely plan on it. It was great!!!

Getting Ready for Lunacon

I’m packing my bags (I just know I’m going to forget something important!) for Lunacon this weekend in Rye, NY. I’ll try to check in from the road, but I’m uncertain about internet connection in the hotel. (Hotels are always hit or miss for internet in my experience.)

So if you’re in the neighborhood, please drop in and say hello! Get more information here: http://2009.lunacon.org/