West Houston RWA

Notice: Location and Time change!

Program will begin at 9:15am in the Athens Room! We are back in the Fellowship Hall.

The Happy Hookers: Using Hooks and Lines to Avoid Sinkers

Hooking for fun and profit? Join Heather MacAllister & Vicky Dreiling as they show writers how to create hooks that catch editors and readers and reel them in. The first part of the workshop will show how a story’s setting, subject, time, and even you, the author, can be used as a marketing hook. In the second part of the workshop, writers will learn to identify classic story hooks that are both intriguing and familiar to readers, and how to turn a time-honored plot device into a unique, compelling, high- concept premise.

Heather MacAllister used a holiday sales hook with her first book, DECK THE HALLS, a Christmas romance published twenty years ago this December. It worked so well, she used the same hook for several more of the 47 books she’s sold to Harlequin, including this December’s Blaze, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS.

Vicky Dreiling got a request from her agent with a one-sentence pitch. She swears she learned the art of brevity when told to cut 192 slides from a PowerPoint deck for a presentation to a VP. In her day job, Vicky is a market research analyst for a Fortune 500 corporation and a  former intern at Ogilvy & Mather. Her debut historical romance HOW TO MARRY A DUKE will hit the shelves on January 1, 2011. HOW TO SEDUCE A SCOUNDREL is slated for publication in July 2011.

As I write this, it’s the end of July and many are off to Orlando.

Congrats go to Leslie Marshman who sold a short story to True Romance for the October issue that’s focusing on Breast Cancer Awareness. She got home from the West Houston meeting Saturday to find the contract in the mail. Her story is tentatively titled BLIND DATE REDEMPTION and it’s her first sale.  (Squee!).

In other exciting news, Sophie Jordan’s debut YA, FIRELIGHT, has been optioned for film! In addition, HarperTeen has also decided to send Sophie on a 5-city book tour in September, the month of FIRELIGHT’S release. She’ll be visiting Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas and Austin. In related news, FIRELIGHT has more foreign sales to report. Turkey and Brazil can be added to the growing list.

Next, Tera Lynn Childs is thrilled to announce that her June 1st release, FORGIVE MY FINS, has already gone back for a third printing!

Last but not least, Kathleen Y’Barbo is pleased to announce that her Rita nominated book THE CONFIDENTIAL LIFE OF EUGENIA COOPER was just named a finalist in Historical Romance in the American Christian Fiction Writers’ CAROL contest. Congrats!