And I'm Back!

Hey guys! I know it has been quite some time without some sort of regular postings from me - sometime like mid April!  That is the longest hiatus I have ever had from this blog, but it ended up being MUCH needed.  I was starting to feel burned out and really I wasn't excited about anything I was reading.  And that wasn't the fault of the books I was reading - I just had too much going on and by the time evening rolled around, all I wanted to do was go to bed.  And so I did - and I didn't feel one bit guilty about it.  Sometimes you just need a break and to get yourself back mentally.  And one of those things that did that was the Historical Novel Society Conference this past weekend in Denver.  Honestly, in the weeks leading up to the conference, I was excited to see some friends, but I wasn't in the blogging mood.  I thought that it might be the last conference I attended, didn't really know what direction I wanted to take.  But I knew it would be a fun weekend anyway. 

My husband and I headed out to Denver at the beginning of the week - we decided to make it a week long vacation - he had vacation days to use and it was right after our wedding anniversary, so we thought we could get some mileage out of this conference trip.  We made some day trips to: Rocky Mountain National Park (Bear Lake), the Denver Zoo, the Molly Brown House (I was insistent on getting some history in - more on this stop later), the Denver Art Museum, and ate at some AMAZING restaurants!  I highly recommend Fruition Restaurant if you happen to be in the mood for a creative meal.  They had such good food and amazing customer service - we celebrated our anniversary in style there.  We also had a not-so-fun tornado scare while there.  For those of you that don't know, I was directly involved in a tornado in 2011 that hit Massachusetts, so I get a tiny bit freaked out by warnings - and there did end up being a tornado touch down in east Denver that day.

Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park

Then Thursday rolled around and people started trickling in for the conference.  We had just walked in the door to our hotel room following dinner when I got a text from Amy from Passages to the Past/Historical Fiction Virtual Books Tours.  She had arrived at the hotel and did I want to hang out? Ummm, Yeah!  So I went over and hung out in her room until Erin from Flashlight Commentary showed up and the 3 of us stayed up late into the evening talking about everything!  My HF mojo was back, at that very minute! 

Amy and I

Friday evening was the start of the conference - the meet and greet, opening speech, and dinner.  There were over 400 people there, so there were a lot of people to see!  I was thrilled to finally meet Stephanie from Layered Pages and Jenny Q from Historical Editorial and catch up with Meg from A Bookish Affair and Sarah Johnson from Reading the Past again.  Love all of these ladies!!  And caught up with some of my author friends as well!  C.C. Humphreys gave the opening speech and was WONDERFUL! He has such a stage presence.  If you want to read his opening poem, he put it online based on the many requests.  So far, his speech and that of C.W. Gortner in previous years, have topped my list of conference speeches.  During and after dinner I got to catch up with Marci Jefferson (SO looking forward to Enchantress of Paris!), C.W. Gortner, Amalia Carosella (we actually chatted thru much of the conference! Love me Herc butt magnet!), Leslie Carroll, and some I know I'm forgetting (the conference is a total blur of activity)!  Following dinner I hung out with the "blogging girls" at the bar where it was hopping with conference attendees.  So much fun.

Bloggers!
Top Photo: (L to R) Me, Amy, Jenny Q, Erin, Meg, Stephanie
Bottom Photo (L to R) Nick (my husband), Erin, Me, Amy, Sarah, and Meg

Saturday was the day of panels.  I attended some fascinating ones and among my favorite was the discussion on the gender divide in the genre.  From the topics that are perceived to be of interest to women vs men, the types of covers that draw certain attention, and the topics pitched by authors for books that have been shot down that we as readers in the room would LOVE to see!  Honestly, I would love to see something set in a court other than England or France and would LOVE some male protagonists - regardless of what agents/publishers/etc think! 

The Gender Divide Panel: (L to R) Vicky Alvear Shecter, C.W. Gortner,
C.C. Humphreys, Stephanie Dray, and David Blixt

The lunch speaker was Karen Cushman, whose book Catherine, Called Birdy, was among the very first historical fiction books I have read.  I was excited to see her in person, just for nostalgia sake.  Just before dinner was the author signing - and it was like slightly organized chaos.  I would have loved to have been able to purchase a few more books at the book shop, but they had a minor (read that as major!) ordering snafu.  There was a HUGE line for Diana Gabaldon, so my husband was wonderful and waited in that line for me while I scurried around collecting signatures and chatting with authors.  I picked up another copy of Day of Fire and had all of the authors of the book (minus Ben Kane, who wasn't there) sign it.  That was a special treat.  Then I also got Anne Girard (Diane Haeger) to sign Madame Picasso (another book I loved) and Sharon Kay Penman signed A King's Ransom.  This was also the time I finally caught up with Donna Russo Morin - and we got to chatting about setting up a local HNS chapter for the New England area (which I am in progress of doing).  During the dinner, Diana Gabaldon gave a short speech about what we all wanted to know, the Outlander show of course!!  Then there were the evening festivities - awards, historical fashion show, sex-scene readings and then it was off to an early bedtime because we had to catch a flight VERY early Sunday morning.

Diana Gabaldon signing my book - and I didn't faint!

Thanks to some awesome recommendations from Erin, Amy, and Stephanie, I purchased and dove into The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah on my flight home and am LOVING it so far.  I so much love attending these conferences and sharing some delightful conversations with book-minded people (and we talked about so many other things too!).  My husband even picked up a couple HF books for himself and got one signed too!  Thank you to the conference planners for putting on this conference and I look forward to the next one!  And I'm looking forward to getting back into a more regular blogging pattern.  I appreciate you all!!!

 

Copyright © 2015 by The Maiden’s Court

Suddenly Sunday–HNS 2013 Summary

Good-morning everyone! Hope you are all having a great weekend. Mine started out with an absolutely miserable Friday (with nothing going right). Saturday we went to Lake Compounce (a smaller Six-Flags type theme park) and baked out in the hot sun. I’m so glad that they have free fountain soda and water all day because we needed it. Today we will be having out with my parents whom I haven’t seen in forever while my dad does some maintenance on my car. All in all not a bad weekend.

I thought today would as good of a time as any to recount my experience at the Historical Novel Society Conference (over 2 weeks ago now! Where has the time gone?).

I left Hartford, CT around noon on Friday, June 21^st and the flight was uneventful – just the way I like them. I arrive at Tampa around 3:30ish and caught my shuttle to the beautiful Hotel Vinoy in St. Petersburg. I had several other ladies going to the conference on my shuttle and we immediately started talking books. It was funny, as I was getting checked in for the shuttle, the lady behind the desk asked if I was going to the book conference, because she had so many people coming through who were and she wished me a fun time (which it was of course!).

As stated above, the Hotel Vinoy is gorgeous! Very Florida in every way- from the colors, the blown glass, veranda, etc. I was very pleased with the choice of venue for the conference. I had a large room all to myself that looked out the front entrance toward the bay – loved it!

Upon arrival at the hotel I quickly rushed up dropped off my stuff and changed because it was time for the meet and greet – and something to drink. It was great seeing old friends again, meeting new ones, and finally meeting people I feel like I have known forever! For the first time I met in person Audra from Unabridged Chick and Amy from Passages to the Past, although I have known these wonderful ladies virtually basically since I started blogging. We hit it off immediately and they are so awesome in person. Buffet dinner followed (I was STARVING by that point) and we had our first guest speaker – Anne Perry. I have to say that I know absolutely nothing about what she writes and I really couldn’t hear anything she said (I was sitting near the back and was having a horrible time with my ears still being pressurized from my flight) – but from what I have heard from others, she was great. After hanging out for a little while it was off to sleep sort of early because I was just exhausted.

Christy English, Myself, and Donna Russo Morin
Photo Credit: Amy @ Passages to the Past

Saturday was the day of panels – including my own, which due to my arrival time I hadn’t had a chance to go over with everyone, but received a quick rundown. I attended the following sessions: Depicting Religion in Historical Fiction; Writing about Women in History; and To Trump or Trumpet the History Police all before lunch. They were all fabulous – however I think I most enjoyed the History Police one. Lunch brought us C.W. Gortner as the guest speaker and he stole the show. For me, he was the best speaker of the bunch. He brought his witty nature to give a little insight and inspiration to up-and-coming authors.

After lunch it was my panel (eek!) – and of course I’m now in a panic! It got even worse when we went into our room and there was no table – just a projector, which wasn’t going to help us any. I started seeing visions of having to stand up like in high school to give a presentation. They hotel staff got us a table so we were able to start on time and we could all be nervous while sitting down. Oh, I forgot to mention that our panel was Virtual Salon: The Historical Fiction Blog. My co-panelists were Julianne Douglas from Writing the Renaissance; Deborah Swift, author and blogger at several blogs including The Riddle of Writing; Heather Webb from Between the Sheets, and Amy Bruno from Passages to the Past. We first covered the “triangle of blogging” – author, blog reader, and reviewer/blogger – then discussed some of the mechanics of blogging. My specific topics were: How to Measure Success of Your Blog and Blogging Etiquette (I will try to summarize my points in an upcoming post). We had a lot of good questions and received great feedback after the panel. I even heard that ours was a favorite! Yay!

From Left to Right: Julianne Douglas, Deborah Swift, Amy Bruno, Me, Heather Webb
Photo Credit: Audra @ Unabridged Chick

After our panel I attended Off the Beaten Path: Reading and Writing Outside the HF Mainstream. Audra was a panelist on this one and of course had to stay to support her! Their panel was great and they gave us a list of great books “off the beaten path” and they are keeping the list updated online. Following the last panel of the day was an author book signing and I was good in that I only bought 3 additional books (to the 3 I received in the swag bag). I had the chance to talk with author Stella Duffy during this time (and then later on Sunday) and she is just so nice.

Dinner followed (the food all weekend was quite good) and another guest speaker – this time Steve Berry. I have to be honest – this was my least favorite guest speaker – by a long shot – and I think many others felt this way too. While the other speakers had been very inspirational and really knew their audience, Berry used his time more like a book talk at a library about his new book. Oh and don’t forget, he even states that he doesn’t write historical fiction – he writes modern thrillers that have some small historical thread. This time he chose to ply us with the: Queen Elizabeth died as a young woman and a man replaced her on the throne – which you can imagine went over well with this crowd. Following that, was the costume pageant hosted by the indomitable Gillian Bagwell as Lady Rivers (the fashion critic). Everyone went out of their way with the costumes and were all fabulous – but the best was the very pregnant Vestal Virgin (Teralyn Pilgrim) and the comedy that ensued was just hilarious. I stayed for some of the Late Night Sex Scenes readings but by 11 I was again exhausted and went off to bed.

Winning Costume: Pregnant Vestal Virgin
Photo Credit: Heather Webb

Sunday was a quick breakfast and two more panels (there were three, but I skipped out on the last one to get packed and check out). I attended Historical Fiction: The American Experience (which I very much enjoyed since it is one of my favorite sub-genres and met author Jodi Daynard who chatted with me about her book and our mutual appreciation of Abigail Adams) as well as Foreign Language, Slang, and Dialect in Historical Fiction which I found boring but aspiring writers might have found some useful information. I think my problem was that the panelists all seemed to contradict each other.

As the official conference closed I met up with Audra, Sarah from Reading the Past, and Meg from A Bookish Affair and we had lunch and chatted about blogging, books, etc. Great fun with these ladies! Then just before I left the hotel I grabbed some gelato with Meg, Teralyn, and two others whose name I unfortunately did not get. Great experience, however bad decision for my sometimes lactose intolerance just before a plane ride. I was sad to leave behind these great friends and great fun but I know I will keep in contact with many of them online and see them again in 2015 – because barring a disaster I will be there again!!

And a couple of clean-up things:

• I want to thank the HNS 2013 committee for deciding to have a panel about blogging – I think a lot of people really took a lot of information away from it. And I want to thank them for inviting me to be a panelist. It was a great experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
• If you didn’t get to go to the conference, they recorded audio of all of the sessions and you can purchase recordings online.
• Julianne and Heather Webb both composed summaries of their topics from our panel which you can read by clicking their names above.
• I wasn’t very good about Tweeting about the conference – there was very spotty wireless service – but Audra has compiled a summary of the conference in Tweets which you might find interesting. You can also use the hashtag #HNS2013 on Twitter to follow all the tweets from the conference.
• Again, thank you to all the wonderful people that made this conference a wonderful experience. A special shout out to my blogging friends who made the weekend!

My HNS Badge
Photo Credit: Me

Hope you all have a great rest of your weekend!

Suddenly Sunday is hosted by Muse in the Fog.

 

Copyright © 2013 by The Maiden’s Court

HNS Bound

Good morning everyone!  Hope you have a lovely weekend coming up!  I’m relieved to finally be done with my research paper on Roman Roads and moving on to the fun stuff.  Today I set off for the Historical Novel Society conference in St. Petersburg, Florida!!

I had an awesome time as an attendee of the 2011 conference in San Diego, but this year I am speaking on a panel about blogging within the Historical Fiction genre.  I am specifically speaking about how to evaluate success on your blog as well as blogging etiquette.  Looking forward to that tomorrow afternoon.  Hope to get a little prepping in on the plane. 

I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of you there as well.  I know that Amy from Passages to the Past and Audra from Unabridged Chick will be there – any others?  Please let me know if you are attending as well because I would love to meet up with you! 

I will be sure to post pictures and a discussion of the conference when I return.

Have a great weekend all!

 

Copyright © 2013 by The Maiden’s Court

Suddenly Sunday - HNS Wrap Up

So it has been a week since the Historical Novel Society 4th North American Conference ended.  It doesn't feel like it was that long ago.  I will kick this off by saying that I had the most wonderful time!  FYI this is one of those marathon posts and there is a giveaway at the end for HNS swag!

My flight out to San Diego was a long one.  I had to get up at 3:30 AM (Eastern time) to catch my flight out of Hartford, CT.  That went very smoothly.  After about an hour and a half flight, I changed planes in Detroit - of course I had to go from gate 68 to 11 and had 20 minutes to do so before boarding.  I got my workout in for the day!  Then the long part of the flight - just over 4 hours to San Diego.  I have to say, despite the bad press that Delta is getting these days - I was extremely happy with my 2 Delta flights.  We were served ample snacks (and had several things to choose from), I purchased a very tasty breakfast meal, and I was happy with the service - so I'm not complaining.  

So it was around 11 AM (Pacific time) when I finally got to the hotel room.  It was on the 7th floor and had a great view of the parking lot and a few buildings - we were not on the side with the waterfront, which was right across the street.  I shared a hotel room with Allie from Hist Fic Chick - we hadn't seen each other since BEA 2010 - so you can imagine we had a lot to catch up on (but she didn't get there until 7 PM so I had some time on my hands).

I napped a bit to get caught up on the time change and then met with Christy English for a coffee/soda before the registration for the conference.  We chatted for about an hour about everything from Eleanor of Aquitaine to my tornado experience to where we are from.  She is the nicest person.  We would meet up several more times throughout the conference.  

Afterward there was registration and a cocktail reception - I met so many different authors and people from various aspects of the publishing world.  While I was in line for a glass of wine I ran into Laurel Corona, Anne Easter Smith, and Susanne Dunlap.  It was so cool to hear "hey, this is one of our bloggers!".  After mingling for a while it was time for dinner - I sat at a table with Susan Higginbotham, among many others, and Allie finally arrived!  The keynote speaker was Henry Turtledove - who I had no idea who he was - who spoke about alternative history.  A new addition to the conference schedule was Friday Night Fight Scenes - several authors got up and read from their fight scenes.  We only stayed for the first one, since fight scenes are not really my thing when I am reading.  After that, it was off to our hotel room to chit chat, read, explore our swag bags, and listen ALL NIGHT to the trains coming into the train station 2 blocks behind our hotel!  That sucked just a bit.

Saturday morning started bright and early at 7 AM - and I was still feeling the effects of the time change.  We had breakfast with Christy English et al and honestly we skipped the first panel to walk around and just get our bearings together (it was early!) then we were off to our first panels.  The first panel we viewed was Historical Fiction and the Fantastic.  This was featuring Mary Sharratt as moderator and Cecelia Holland, C.C. Humphreys, Shauna Roberts, and Christopher Cevasco as panelists.  The basic discussion of the panel was about the drawing on belief and superstition of a people when writing about them.  C. C. Humphreys made some of the most poignant statements on this panel - "magic happens to people who believe in magic" when discussing the beliefs of the people who are writing about.  Also, that the fantastical elements can bring young men into the historical genre and bridge that gap between fantasy novels and historical fiction.

Our second panel was Are Marquee Names Really Necessary?  This was a panel that I was very interested in hearing the opinions of because I have often wondered the same thing.  I have enjoyed novels that feature marquee names and those that don't, but wondered how well they did.  Allie and I sat with Kate Quinn, who we had met at dinner the night before.  This panel was again moderated by Mary Sharratt and featured Susanne Dunlap, C.W. Gortner, Vanitha Sankaran, and Margaret George.  As you can imagine the panel was split on this one - Sankaran and Dunlap haven't really used marquee names while Gortner and George have.  I learned that a marquee name isn't just limited to a famous character but can also be a famous place, setting, or event - at least that leaves a little more wiggle room.  Gortner stated that the use of a marquee name is driven mostly by the publishers while readers are happy to read about a wide subject range.  George added on to that by relating that she had been told by an editor that the marquee name has to be in the title.  I could understand both of these statements because they are looking for the thing that will reach out and grab the readers from their spaces on the shelf.  An interesting difference is within the YA genre - Dunlap stated that it seems that YA readers are looking more for the exciting story as opposed to the marquee name, possibly because the names are not as entrenched in their minds yet.

After this panel we went off to lunch - we sat with M.L. Malcolm and several other authors and chatted away.  The keynote speaker was Jennifer Weltz from the Jean V Naggar Literary Agency.  Her speech was awesome.  If you want to read it in its entirety you can here (and you really should because it gives a great insight into an agent's job, just beware it is LONG!).  Off to our next panels!

The next panel was a one woman show - Susan Vreeland discussing her various novels and reading excerpts from them all.  This was interesting as I have several of her books but haven't read them yet.  The last panel of the day that we went to was Whose Side Are You On? Turning the Antagonists of History into Sympathetic Protagonists.  This panel had several heavy hitters in my opinion.  The panel was moderated by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon and featured Emma Campion, Anne Easter Smith, Susan Higginbotham, and C.W. Gortner.  Allie and I had the chance to meet Sandra Worth who was featured recently on this HFRT site.  She was so sweet and thanked us for hosting her.  I thought it was funny that Smith and Higginbotham were seated side by side since they write from different perspectives on the Wars of the Roses.  I loved these quotes that the authors made about their various sympathetic protagonists - "I was drawn to her [Catherine de Medici] because she had this reptilian, woman in black portrayal" (Gortner); "her story just didn't hold weight, this doesn't make sense" (Campion on Alice Perrers history); "Margaret of Anjou was this totally evil woman with no redeeming qualities what so ever" (Higginbotham); "Richard III was definitely one of our bad kings" (Smith on what she was taught in school about Richard III).

The panels were followed up by book signings (where I got Mistress of Rome signed by Kate Quinn and my ARC of Before Versailles signed by Karleen Koen).  If only I could have brought my books with me from home because I had books by so many of these authors I could have had signed!  We also had the chance to stop and talk with Mitchell James Kaplan.

There was another reception and then dinner.  During the reception we chatted with C.W. Gortner and Michelle Moran - both of whom I was very excited to meet as we have exchanged emails in the past.  At dinner we sat with Gillian Bagwell, M.L. Malcolm, DeAnna Cameron, Lynn Sheene, Marci Jefferson, Kevan Lyon, and Deann Smith.  This was a great group of ladies to sit and chat books with.  The keynote speaker this time was Cecelia Holland - a short speech but it cut straight to the point and earned a standing ovation.  This was followed by a Historical Fashion show - the host was hilarious as she introduced each person - an author wearing garb from one of their novels.

 Following the fashion show, Allie and I went and joined Kate Quinn and C.W. Gortner to listen to the most scandalous part of the conference - Saturday Night Sex Scene readings!  Yes, it is exactly what you are thinking - authors read sex scenes from their novels.  There were awkward moments, moments that made you bust out laughing, and those where you were a little horrified - but we couldn't have been sitting with better people to enjoy this show.  Then it was off to our hotel rooms - where a group of us got stuck in the elevator for awhile before it finally decided to let us out on a floor we hadn't chosen!

Sunday morning started out with packing up my bags, figuring out how to get all of these books home, and breakfast.  During breakfast with Mitchell James Kaplan and Christy English, Laurel Corona asked us if we had any lunch plans for after the conference ended, we didn't, and we were invited out to lunch with a group - I will return to this story later.

The last panel that we attended was Fact in Fiction or Fiction in Fact - this was another heavy hitting panel and probably the one I was most looking forward to.  Jennifer Weltz was the moderator and Donna Woolfolk Cross, C.W. Gortner, Karleen Koen, and Sandra Worth were on the panel.  By this point, I had stopped taking notes but it was a wonderful panel.  Afterward we went and finished packing, checked out, and met the group to head to lunch.

We walked about 5 blocks to a cute restaurant in Little Italy - in the process I managed to trip on the curb and fall on the sidewalk - I'm still dealing with the scrapes and bruises.  Lunch ended up being over 20 of us including Laurel Corona, Susanne Dunlap, Sherry Jones, Margaret George, C.W. Gortner, Vanitha Sankaran, Christy English and Mitchell James Kaplan among others.  It was a wonderful causal atmosphere.  Everyone departed from here for their various planes, trains, hotel, or other fun explorations.

 I went back to the hotel with Susanne Dunlap and Deb Grabien and we sat in the hotel restaurant and talked for a few hours - Susanne and I had several hours to kill before our flights left that night.  After hanging out at the airport for awhile I caught my red eye to Charlotte, NC.  Luckily I slept some on the plane there, because by the time I get to NC it was 7 AM.  I had breakfast, caught my flight to Hartford, and then drove the hour home from there.  You can probably imagine what I did next - slept for a few hours.  It took me two days to get back on the correct schedule (I even called out of work on Tuesday because I was still not a functioning human being.)  It was an absolutely wonderful trip and I wish I had more time to explore more of San Diego and meet some more of the people there.  Allie and I have since talked with Sarah from Reading the Past (and an organizer for the conference) about a blogger/social networking panel for the 2013 conference.  I had several authors ask me why there wasn't one (I don't know!) - so we will see where that goes - but I hope to be able to attend again in 2013!

Whew!  Told you it was going to be a marathon post!  Hope you enjoyed the ride!

Now for the giveaway!


Suddenly Sunday is hosted by The Muse in the Fog Book Reviews.



Copyright © 2011 by The Maiden’s Court