The Jambalaya Writer’s Conference

The Jambala Writer’s conference was 3/26/2011. This conference is unique in that it offers agent pitch sessions and it only cost $30. They were supposed to have an editor as well, but unfortunately the editor canceled.

Fiction contest: Yours truly got 3rd place.

Agent Pitch Session: Turns out there was a typo. The agent’s name was Cherry Wiener. She told me she might look at Lady and the Necromancer if I trim it down to within 95k and 100k words. She told me to take my time (i.e. about 3 months).

Other stuff: They had a critique of first pages of various manuscripts at the end. Mine was not in that group, but it was interesting to notice how almost every manuscript had description and backstory as the opening. Nothing actually happening for a few paragraphs. No questions being raised in the reader’s mind. A surprising number of opening paragraphs mention blood.

Workshops: We participated in two workshops. Each broke into small groups and started with an element for the beginning of the story. The first was a woman leaving her house in the middle of the night. The second was someone tripping over a body. It struck me that each of these present the reader with a puzzle (why is the woman leaving? who’s body was lying on the floor and how did it get there?).