January, 2015

LARA Presents 1

Upcoming Events and Contests 2

Presidential Prattle 3

New LARA Releases 4

Speaker Spotlight 6

The future, or how did it get to be 2015 already? 7

The Flip Side 10

Reasonable Goal Setting for Overwhelmed Writers 12

LARA Confidential

The Newsletter of the Los Angeles Romance Authors Chapter of RWA®

Promoting Excellence in Romantic Fiction through Education and Community

Join us on Sunday, January 18th, 2015 for our General Meeting at the Bridges Academy (south of Ventura Blvd.

and off Laurel Canyon).

Great First Pages

Courtney Miller-Callihan

January 18, 2015

LARA Presents...

To learn more about of this month’s guest speaker, check

out our Speaker Spotlight on page 6.

LARA Confidential 2

Upcoming...

February 15, 2015 General Meeting will feature LARA’s own Lynne Marshall; presenting “Creating Likable Characters.”

SPEW: Don’t forget that SPEW (Stop Procrastinating Everybody Write) starts the Monday after our regular monthly meeting. To join, contact the SPEW Coordinator (SPEW@lararwa.com) to be invited, so you can join the "LARA-SPEWcrew" Yahoo list serve group, or request to join from Yahoo Groups.

Milestones: Are you a member who has a Milestone to share? We'd love to hear about it! Contact the Mile-stones Coordinators: milestones@lararwa.com

2015 California Dreamin’ Writer’s Conference!

Upcoming LARA Events

Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest

Sponsor: NEORWA (Northeast Ohio RWA) Fee: $20–25.00 Deadline: February 14, 2015 Entry: First chapter up to 5,000 words for all catego-ries except novella category (first chapter up to 2,000 words). Judges: Experienced published and unpublished au-thors. Final Judges: Three industry professionals. Top prize: Refund of entry fee, a winner certificate, and a contest winner logo graphic. FMI, visit http://www.neorwa.com/contest/.

2015 California Hooker Contest

Sponsors: OCC RWA, LA Romance Authors, San Diego

RWA, East Valley Authors

Fee: $10.00

Deadline: February 15, 2015

Entry: All electronic. Entry should consist of the first

three pages of an unpublished manuscript.

Judges: PAN and PRO members.

Final judges: Editors attending the 2015 California

Dreamin’ Writers Conference.

FMI, entry form, and official rules, visit http://

www.caldreaminwritersconf.org.

Upcoming RWA Contests

Sponsors: OCC RWA, LA Romance Authors, San

Diego RWA, East Valley Authors

Location: Embassy Suites, Brea, California

Fee: $285–325.00

Date: March 27–29, 2015

Featured Speakers: Sylvia Day, Vicky Dreiling.

Conference features: agent & editor appoint-

ments, critique groups, workshops on craft, in-

dustry, and self-publishing track; 2015 California

Hooker Contest awards, add-on Book Camp with

April Kihlstrom, raffle baskets, door prizes, book

fair and author signing.

FMI, and to register visit http://

www.caldreaminwritersconf.org.

mailto:milestones@lararwa.comhttp://www.neorwa.com/contest/http://www.caldreaminwritersconf.org/http://www.caldreaminwritersconf.org/http://www.caldreaminwritersconf.org/http://www.caldreaminwritersconf.org/

January 2015 3

Presidential Prattle By: Maggie Marr, LARA President

Happy New Year! I admit I love the New Year. There is a freshness, an all-things-are-possible joie de vivre that the start of a new year brings. I still use a hand-written calendar on our kitchen counter and all those new and fresh boxes epitomize to me all the opportunity for things both planned and unplanned that will take place over the next 12 months. The year never goes as I predict. There are always odd twists and turns. Unexpected jaunts and side roads. Events, both excellent and challenging, that pop up as the year progresses. After this many years circling the sun, I know that every year, at the end, was nev-er what I predicted at the beginning. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that my life, this existence that I've created for myself, my own personal tomorrow-land, is nothing, nothing like I predicted. The number one prediction for my life, well into my twenties was this: I would be an attorney, living in Chicago who worked as a prosecutor and then be-came a judge. I would not marry and I would not have children. Yep...this prediction maintained all the way to age 26. I was well on my way. I was beginning my second year of law school, living in Chicago, and loving my life. When fate, in the form of a 6 foot tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, funny, athletic man stepped into my path. Damn fate. I had everything figured out until August 11, 1995. My reality at age forty-*cough*, is that I am an au-thor and attorney, living in Sherman Oaks, California with an entertainment practice, who writes books, is married, and has two very active children.

Oh, so different than what I envisioned and yet, I love my life, my reality, my unpredicted tomorrow-land. What I take away from my reality being similar and yet so very different from my prediction is three things: 1. The older I become, I know fewer things with ulti-mate certainty. 2. The tomorrowland I picture may or may not form. 3. That which is unpredicted can be AWESOME! I won't try to predict 2015. I've made a rough outline of how I'd like the next year to go with regards to my publication schedule and work, but I also know that I need to allow space for all the challenging and won-derful things that will come into my life this next year, because it is in that open-space where often the most wonderful things arise. Happy New Year and Happy Writing! xoMaggie — Maggie Marr is an author, an attorney, and the 2015 President of LARA. Once upon a time she was a mo-tion picture literary and subsidiary rights agent. She is the author of The Hollywood Girls Club Se-ries, The Eligible Billion-aires Series, The Glamour Series, and The Powder Springs Series. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest and always by email at maggie-marrbooks@gmail.com.

mailto:maggiemarrbooks@gmail.commailto:maggiemarrbooks@gmail.com

LARA Confidential 4

New Releases

By LARA Members

January 2015 5

January 2015 6

Speaker Spotlight Courtney Miller-Callihan Courtney’s topic will be “Great Open-ings.” She’s generously agreed to re-view the first five pages from five different LARA authors.

Courtney began her career in publish-ing at Random House, where she spent a number of years in subsidiary rights sales and in contracts before joining Sanford J. Greenburger Associ-ates in 2005. A member of the Ro-mance Writers of America, she works closely with authors to help them reach their full creative and commer-cial potential.

Courtney holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of California, San-ta Cruz and a M.A. in English from The Johns Hopkins University. She lives with her family in Southern California and travels frequently for meetings and conferences. She strongly prefers to receive submissions via e-mail at cmiller@sjga.com. For fiction: please include a brief synopsis (no more than five pages) and the first three chap-ters of your manuscript with your

query. For nonfiction: please attach a book proposal and a C.V. or author bio to your query.

Courtney is currently seeking wom-en’s fiction, romance, and historical novels, as well as nonfiction projects on unusual topics, humor, pop culture and lifestyle books. For nonfiction, a strong platform and excellent creden-tials are a must.

LARA Confidential 7

The future, or how did it get to

be 2015 already?

(Continued on next page…)

By: Claire Davon

I was crushed when I realized it was unlikely we would ever have flying cars, at least as a method of common commuter transportation. As a kid I had loved Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the thrill I got when the car unfurled its wings and sailed out into the sky. Who hasn’t wanted to do that? Lift their car out and over the crawling traffic and wing free to their next location? The only problem with that was, that it is one car, one lucky person (me) flying over the rest. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of cars clogging the roads every day and it becomes something more like the opening scene of Revenge of the Sith with dizzying lanes of air vehicles speeding to-ward their destination. You would take your life in your hands even more than you do now. You would have to be watching not only what is in front, back and to the sides of you, but above and below as well. Thinking in 3D while driving is a chal-lenge I don’t want to try. I will leave that to The Jetsons. Visionaries like Isaac Asi-mov, Philip K. Dick, John W. Campbell and others were limited only by the power of

their imagining and the technology of their time. Even with that, they did an incredible job envi-sioning what could have been. On the balance, their predictions were right, in some form, and amazingly future forward. When you look at Star Trek, at the giant computers on the bridge and realize that microprocessors and other ad-vances in technology have rendered that obso-lete does not take away from what Gene Rod-denberry created. The only difference is that these days our personal computers could calcu-late the value of pi while still performing its oth-er tasks. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the early drafts of my contemporary stories. These range

in age anywhere from twenty-five years ago to seven. In starting the re-write process with modern sensibilities, it’s easy to see the rapid change. My first characters did not have cell phones, nobody had heard of tablets and the work many of them did has lost its shine in the digital age. There was little or no social media, and people didn’t IM and text the way they do now. My writing reflected older thinking and needed to be brought into today. I thought that by the year

Photo by Victor Habbick; freedigitalphotos.net

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

January 2015 8

(Continued on next page…)

Continued...

2015 we would be in a far different place. It’s only by looking back that I realize what has been accomplished. We have no flying cars but we have technology leading us to self-driving cars. When I was a kid we never started out on a long drive without maps. Now GPS is free with any SmartPhone, and my car’s nav system would put the aforementioned Star Trek computer’s voice to shame. Does anyone re-member dialing the time and hearing “at the tone the time will be…?” I used to try and dial in when it was flipping to a new mi-nute so the time would be such and such “exactly.” I Googled this phrase, curious if it was still in existence. The “Time of Day” service, as it was called, was phased out in Southern California in 2007, so up until a short time ago, you could still call for the time. Nothing has changed my world more than the Internet. We have 24/7 access to more infor-mation than anyone my age would have dreamed possible. In my microcosm as a writer, what took days of research at the library can now be accessed within minutes. Before when I was researching a country I would pore over books and look for pictures to guide me. Now I can go to any number of sites and pull up an im-

age. For instance, I wanted to have a pretty lo-cation in Europe near the water for a story I was writing. It took very little time to come up with a suitable place in an area of France known as the Calanques. A month ago I had no idea this region existed. Of course nothing takes the place of visiting a spot – you can’t smell or touch websites, but it does a fine job of getting you

close. The industry I work in em-braces new technology. We are quickly replacing our so-called “physical” media with digital counterparts on com-puters/ tablets/phones, or stored online. I am old enough to remember 5 1/4 floppy disks, which became 3 ½ drives, then thumb/flash drives and now online stor-age. Consumers no longer necessarily have to own the DVD; they have it in their

cloud. Digital technology has profoundly changed entertainment, down to the way we distribute our books. I am currently self-published and I love the freedom and also the responsibility of that choice. It was not an op-tion when I was first writing, convinced Harle-quin would come calling at any moment. I have to be careful to use the past correctly. I had written a story in college that had a main character take the cross country train as a plot

“Reading the notebooks of my early writing, I am sur-prised at how far my sen-

sibilities have come. Women were rescued, not

rescuers and my casual sexism was a surprise

since I’d always thought of myself as enlightened. ”

(The Future continued...)

LARA Confidential 9

The Future...

Continued...

point at the end of the book. There was no way to communicate unless you intercepted the train. That would be unthinkable now, barring the per-son being offline by design. My characters are most often too young to recognize things from my childhood, such as the mimeograph machine. They don’t know that was the way teachers made copies when I was in grade school, nor have they ever smelled the unique scent it creates. Reading the notebooks of my early writing, I am surprised at how far my sensibilities have come. Women were rescued, not rescuers and my casual sexism was a surprise since I’d always thought of myself as enlightened. In looking back I can see how much I’ve changed along with the industry. Today we have strong heroines courtesy of such writers as Kim Harrison and Patricia Briggs, ones that re-mind us that women, too, can kick ass. These days the comments on my contest entries have been “make the woman stronger.” In the end, I fight a losing battle. As soon as I commit something to paper, it becomes out-of-date. It’s the same principle as how your brand new car loses value the minute you drive it off the

lot. I stay as current as I can, but technology will keep changing and I will always be behind the curve. Much like the futurists of the early part of the last century, the thrill is in the vision, not in the exactness of getting it right. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings, even if it won’t include flying cars. Claire Davon -- Claire now lives in Los Angeles, and many of her stories are set there, but she is originally from Brookline, Massachusetts. Claire started writing when she was a pre-teen, and today wishes she still had some of that Starsky & Hutch fan fic-tion! She spends her free time writing, doing ani-mal rescue, and enjoying the sunshine. She spe-cializes in writing romances of all kinds and never shies away from the “between the sheets” ele-ments! Claire's website is www.clairedavon.com People can reach her through the website. She also has a Facebook author page, which is www.facebook.com/clairedavonindieauthor

(The Future continued...)

http://www.facebook.com/clairedavonindieauthor

January 2015 10

By: Jane Ashford

Have new trends or technology created charac-ters, situations or storylines that would have never been possible in the pre-computer/cell phone age? I’m sure the answer is a resounding – Yes! How could they not? Here’s something to think about, though. With the way technology continually develops, this is going to keep hap-pening. So the tech-savvy romance you write today will most likely be outdated ten years from now.

I know whereof I speak. The contemporary ro-mances I wrote years ago sound positively quaint today. Nobody has a cell phone. Or a lap-top. I think one character even sends a telex. (Younger readers, check Wikipedia to discover a bygone messaging system.) The world has left them behind. Which is inevitable, right? Noth-ing to be done. Those books are past their sell-by date.

However… Technology never catches up with you if you write historical romances. They’re ageless, with new readers being born all the time.

For example, along with my new books coming out each year, Sourcebooks is re-issuing my backlist of Regency historicals, in both e-book and print formats. Audible, Inc. is releasing sound recordings, too. They’re doing well; a new audience is finding them. Readers are hap-py with the technology of sealing wax and high perch phaetons.

So I’m just saying – if you’re drawn to tell sto-ries of earlier times, it can be a good bet for ca-reer longevity. : )

—

Jane Ashford discovered Georgette Heyer in junior high school and was captivated by the glittering world and witty language of Regency England. That delight was part of what led her to study English literature and travel widely in Britain and Europe. She has written historical and contemporary romances, and her books have been published in Sweden, Italy, England, Denmark, France, Russia, Latvia, the Czech Re-public, and Spain, as well as the U.S. Jane has been nominated for a Career Achievement Award by RT Book Reviews. Born in Ohio, she now lives in LA.

The Flip Side

Photo by Stuart Miles; freedigitalphotos.net

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

LARA Confidential 11

Reasonable Goal Setting

for Overwhelmed Writers By: Dani Wade

The following article appeared in the February 2014 issue of The

Heart Monitor, the newsletter for Heart of Dixie, RWA Chapter

#51. Permission to share is granted with proper credit to the

author.

Every January, a whole slew of articles and blog posts inundate us with one message: Set Goals! They say setting goals will make you a happier, more productive writer. Um, not necessarily. Take it from this recovering perfectionist. Setting the Wrong Goals can be more detrimental than none at all. A tall stack of goals and commitments become stumbling blocks when you realize you aren’t meeting them. Then that panic in your chest grows, frustration leaks in, and before you know it—you feel like the big-gest failure in the world and your dream of getting that book written from scratch in a month is forever out of reach. Sound familiar? This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I bet not too awfully far off. Here are a few ideas for making goals reasonable and sane when your life is already crazy enough. Find the Percentage We would all love to write our first draft as a final draft, or write seventy thousand words in thirty days, but the fact of the matter is, we also have lives. Our time is not solely devoted to our craft. Authors have families, day jobs, homes to care for, volunteer efforts, etc. Big goals won’t get far if you only have two hours every weekday to write. So take those oth-er commitments into account when setting your sights on a finish line.

If you can only write 20% of your time, scale your goals back by 80%. Yes, you read that right. Match your ultimate goal to the reality of your life. If you ex-ceed what you set out to do, great. But at least you won’t face frustration on a daily basis because your schedule doesn’t leave time for you to meet unrealis-tic goals. Under Plan, Don’t Over Plan Perfectionists attempt to stuff the absolute most amount of work in the smallest amount of time. We truly believe we can bust out those 1666 words for Nano each day in an hour, hands down. Of course, we are deluding ourselves, but still... Remember that each task has set up and take down time. Sometimes words will stall or a character will rush off in a different direc-tion and we have to compensate. Rather than setting yourself up for failure, set your goals a step lower to leave some wiggle room. This leads to less negative frustration and more positive achievements. If you find yourself consistently overachieving your goal, then add to it. At that point, you’re basing your expectations on reality, not on fantasy. Baby Steps and the Almighty Calendar How do you know what you can achieve in an hour? A weeknight? A day? Laying out the baby steps that are needed to achieve your goals will help you to 1) feel a sense of accomplishment and 2) understand exactly how much work you truly need to complete. So break down writing that synopsis into: A. Identify your characters B. Write character goals/conflicts.

(Continued on next page…)

January 2015 12

C. Brainstorm opening conflict. D. Brainstorm 10 major plot points. E. Develop black moment and tie it into conflict. F. Compile notes into rough draft of synopsis. G. Revise synopsis. If you look over this list, you’ll realize that all of these things go into creating your synopsis, and they don’t all have to be done when you sit down in front of the computer. If you put together your material a piece at a time, when you sit down to write the syn-opsis you have everything you need already there. This takes a lot of pressure off. In order to keep up with all of this, you need some method of recording your goals, and the steps to your goals. I recommend a Day Planner, but then, I’m addicted to them, so I may be biased. Your mile-age may vary. But even a simple notebook where you keep lists, target dates, and deadlines will keep you from having to remember all this stuff. You’ll also get the satisfaction of checking off completed items, and being able to tell if you are on target for completion. Match Steps with Ideal Work Times I’ve learned not to work on anything really hard for me after 9pm. I’ll just fall asleep over it. And if its a highly complex or emotional scene, it needs to wait until the weekend, when I have longer periods of uninterrupted time. Trial and error have taught me when I can do certain things with less difficulty than others. I can brainstorm and take notes at work, but I can’t truly write there. Try to match what “writing” time you have with the steps you need to accomplish that day. This will help

the work go much more smoothly. If you attack it haphazardly, you may find yourself facing your hard-est task at the end of the day, and if you’re anything like me, it’s just too easy to pack it in. Not All Goals are About Writing Many times, we want to push, then push some more to reach those heights. But not all of our goals should be related to work. Part of creativity is refill-ing our wells. That means rest, reading, watching movies, exercise, and whatever else allows your cre-ativity to flow freely. It sounds really uptight, but I honestly have to schedule this stuff. Remind myself that every weekend I need to watch a movie, or read a book, or take a nap. Sad, but it works. So schedule in a break at regularly scheduled intervals. You’ll ac-tually be more productive for it. Remember, goals aren’t some unattainable dream. They are a tool that should help you set up manage-able steps that encourage you along your path. If you exceed them, good for you. But when faced with a challenge, meeting reasonable goals leads to extra confidence, steady progress, and a happy, produc-tive writer. — Dani Wade astonished her local librarians as a teen-ager when she carried home 10 books every week – and actually read them all. Now she writes her own characters who clamor for attention in the midst of the chaos that is her life. Her most recent book, His By Design, was an August 2013 release from Harle-quin Desire. She is also Indie published in romantic suspense. Her crazy life is chronicled at www.DaniWade.com.

Continued... (Reasonable Goal Setting continued...)

LARA Confidential welcomes input from all LARA members for requests, original or reprinted articles, ideas,

suggestions, and comments. All contributors retain copyright to their original works. This is your news-

letter, and it should meet your needs.

Please send comments, suggestions, article ideas, and reprinting permission requests to the Newsletter

Submissions Editor, Kay Copeland, at: LARAConfidential@LARARWA.com

If you wish to receive LARA Confidential in hard copy instead of accessing it online, please send your name

and mailing address to the Editor.

LARA Confidential is published monthly by Los Angeles Romance Authors, Chapter 25 of RWA®.

http://www.cafepress.com/lararwa

2015 BOARD President:

Maggie Marr

Executive Vice President: Maria Powers

VOTING OFFICERS

VP of Communications: Rebekah R. Ganiere

Secretary: Kady Winter

Treasurer:

Beverly Diehl

Executive Team

Programming: Christine Ashworth

PAN Liaison: Debbie Decker

PRO Liaison: Caro Kinkead

Finance Team

Ways & Means Director: Chandra Years

Milestones: Julia Blake & Deborah Glik

Administrative Team

Membership: Claire Davon

Library: Chellesie B. Dancer

Hospitality: Lynne Marshall & Kate Willoughby

Communications Team

Public Relations: Kara Winters

Webmaster: Cami Brite

Newsletter Editors: Christine Leo (Layout) Roxann Breazile (Content) Kay Copeland (Submissions)

SPEW Coordinators: Alison Diem & Scarlett Llewel-lyn

http://www.cafepress.com/lararwahttp://www.cafepress.com/lararwa