Jeri Smith-Ready

RWA Part One

Splitting this into two (possibly three) parts, so as not to overwhelm any of us.

Tuesday night my magnificent roommate Jana G. Oliver (left):



and I went to the Kiss of Death Annual General Meeting, where I saw my old buds Lisa Tapp (left) and Karen Ender:



These pictures were actually taken Thursday night after the Daphne DuMaurier Awards. Lisa won third place in the unpublished Short Contemporary category, and--drum roll, please--Jana won FIRST in the published Paranormal category. This was one of several awards her wonderful book Sojourn has won. Here are the others:

Golden Quill Award, First Place, Paranormal
PRISM Award, First Place, Time Travel
Booksellers Best, First Place, Paranormal
Independent Book Publishers Award, Gold Medal, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Forward Award, Best Overall
Compton Crook Award, Finalist (scorchingly close second place)
National Readers Choice Award, Finalist

It's just a freaking amazing book, and everyone should buy it.

Wednesday after lunch Lisa and I saw Marjorie M. Liu, Cathy Clamp, and Publishers Weekly blogger Barbara Vey in the bar briefly before heading off to the Booksellers Tea, where I met several booksellers, one of whom had actually heard of me!

David Reamer from Hastings Bookstore in Round Rock, TX, said his girlfriend was a big Eyes of Crow fan, and that all the LUNA books were selling really well in his store. He gave me some great insights on the vendor's side of the business, and soon an ARC of Voice of Crow will land in his mailbox.

At the Tea I also met authors Liz Maverick and Rosemary Clement Moore, who are ridiculously cute, and saw Cathy Clamp again. (For the record, Cathy is everywhere. I'm pretty sure she can bend space and time to manage this. Yet she always looks fresh and well-rested!).

Also met romantic comedy author Kristan Higgins, who has dogs and feet on all her book covers. We bonded over the lamentation of the lack of rom coms in the market these days. The next day she gave me a copy of her first book, Fools Rush In.

I actually spoke with several authors who were writing more humorous material (and selling it!) I'm extremely psyched about this, because there are not enough romantic comedies in the world. What's wrong with the book-buying public? Love is funny!

Wednesday evening was the mass signing to benefit literacy efforts. I sold about 30 out of 50 books, which was pretty good. Everyone who bought a copy of Eyes of Crow or who told me they already owned it received a sneak preview of Voice of Crow. I had a Rita finalist flag next to me on the table, and I was fortunate enough to sit next to the renowned Maria V. Snyder, fellow LUNA author (of the Rita-nommed Magic Study) and dear friend. So we pimped each other's books along with our own. Synergy!

I didn't get a picture of myself at the signing, but I did get to keep my flag:


So imagine me sitting next to it and a pile of books (ones without the upper right corner chewed by cats) in a roomful of amazing authors. To my left is an enormous line for Nora Roberts.

Afterwards I bought my leftover books at 75% off and put them in the Goody Room for giveaway. They were snatched up, possibly by aliens, in about ten minutes.

It was great to meet fans new and old at the signing. I found out from a nice lady from the Colorado Romance Writers that Eyes of Crow tied for First Place in their Award of Excellence contest, then lost in a tiebreaker to Shana Abe's The Dream Thief. Boo. Still, it's nice to know it almost won. Better a close second than a distant fifth.

Wednesday night was the Gathering for the Fantasy, Futuristic, & Paranormal chapter of RWA. By the time I got there after the signing, all the food was gone, and I ate three rolls (with butter!) for dinner. I sat with Jana, Gail Dayton and PC Cast, as well as some sweet ladies from Gail's chapter in Texas--Sherry and her mom Delores, and Katey Coffing, who was a Golden Heart finalist (the biggest award for unpubbed writers) for Best Paranormal.

PC, Gail, and I were the three finalists for the PRISM Award for Best Fantasy. As they read off our names, we all clutched hands, and when Gail's name was announced as the winner, the whole table went nuts. Her LUNA novel, The Barbed Rose, won first place and totally deserved it. PC's Divine by Choice (another awesome one) won second, and little Eyes of Crow brought up the rear at third.

Then PC won the PRISM for Best Light Paranormal Novel for Goddess of the Rose (these are all books I've actually read!). Then Jana won for Best Time Travel with Sojourn, then Sherry and her mom won raffle baskets. Katey got a rock.

Afterwards PC, Jana, and their publicists at Two Sisters Promotions, Sherry and Kristen, took a limo (it was the same price as a cab) with neon-lit ceiling to Avanti's, a local Italian restaurant. Dallas being an extremely vegetarian-unfriendly city, I got a loaf of garlic cheese bread. When it arrived, we all thought it was garlic bread for the table, and everyone ate it. Whimper.

I thought I'd have room to talk about Thursday in this entry, but no. More tomorrow.

A-Z Update: "One Love" by Bob Marley and the Wailers

Labels: appearances, awards, Eyes of Crow, food

• posted by Jeri @ 12:19 PM
• 1 comments

Dallas Does Jeri

That's the sound of my head hitting the pillow last night, then again at 7 am this morning after the husband and beasts were fed.

Had a magnificent time. Met incredible people. Closed the bar Friday and Saturday night. Didn't win the Rita in either category, but I got a cheer from the audience when my name and cover went up on the screen, and that was worth more than a whole armful of awards.

Being nominated for a Rita was like getting a scratch-off lottery ticket for Christmas. It was totally unexpected, I enjoyed the anticipation, and my reaction to not winning was, "Well, that was fun, anyway!" Plus I got a certificate, which they normally don't give you for buying a lottery ticket. So bonus!

I was happy to lose to my fellow WRW member Tracy Ann Warren's The Husband Trap in the First Book category, partly because she's really sweet, but mostly because I told everyone she would win. Being right is extremely important to me.

Will post more later, I swear, but I think I'm getting a bad cold, which is a perfect excuse to lie on the couch and read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Though seriously, I could go 100 years without reading another description of a Quidditch match, and it would still be too soon.

A-Z Update: "No Turning Back" by Peter Buffett

Labels: appearances, awards, Eyes of Crow

• posted by Jeri @ 1:35 PM
• 3 comments

Awards update

It just occurred to me that most people who read this blog never venture out to my home page or the news page, because they (quite reasonably) expect me to post news here.

So let the bragging begin!

Eyes of Crow has won a couple of awards and been nominated for several more.


I accepted the Reviewers' Choice Award at the Romantic Times Booklovers' Convention in Houston in April. I managed to give an acceptance speech without passing out.

Speaking of the RT Convention (yes, I'm terrible at giving convention reports--there's a reason for that, which I'll explain one day), here's a shot of me on the Urban Fantasy panel with people vastly more famous than I am. (Scroll down to the bottom photo on this page.)

Left to right are authors Rachel Caine, Jennifer Armintrout, Jim Butcher, Miriam Kress (a superb agent). Flanking me are gorgeous gals Vicki Pettersson (with the red hair) and Marjorie M. Liu. Luckily, sitting down you can't tell how much shorter than Vicki and Marjorie I am. If they were sequoias, I'd be a dwarf pine.

Not pictured are Charlaine Harris and Keri Arthur. Yep, I was the "WTF?" entry on the panel. (Or for you Arrested Development fans, the "Her?" entry) Still marveling at that one. At next year's RT I'll be on an urban fantasy panel with (catching breath) Kim Harrison and Kelley Armstrong.

Here's a shot of the two awards I've won so far. They like each other.


I used this picture because as proud as I am of having won awards, I'm equally as proud that I haven't killed these pansies that my mom planted for me on March 31.

I should mention two things about the Write Touch Readers Choice award. 1) I shared first place with the wonderful Patti O'Shea's Eternal Nights. Yay, Patti! 2) It was judged by regular readers, not writers or reviewers, which makes it particularly sweet.

If I can snag either the PRISM or the Rita next week, I'll feel like Eyes of Crow hit the trifecta--awards judged by readers, reviewers, and fellow authors.

Of the remaining two contests, the Award of Excellence has already been decided (won by Shana Abe's The Dream Thief), and the Golden Quill was won by Jana Oliver's Sojourn (yaaay!)

Also, my publisher nominated Eyes of Crow for NBC's Quill Award for Best Debut Novel. It didn't make the final ballot, but it was still an honor to be singled out by the Powers That Be.

/bragging

A-Z Update: "My Home is in the Delta" by Muddy Waters

Labels: appearances, awards, Eyes of Crow

• posted by Jeri @ 6:44 AM
• 4 comments

Rita update

Um...I finaled.

Twice.

Cool.

UPDATE 3/26/07: Here's the Official List of Rita finalists. I finaled in Best First Book and Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements. Yipes, heavy competition in both categories. Good thing I'm not planning to win. But I am planning to milk this as much as I can enjoy the honor of the nomination.

What the heck is Strong Romantic Elements*, you ask?

It's the Best Non-Romance with a Damn Good Love Story. It's sometimes just called "Mainstream." Among this year's finalists in the category are chick-lit novels, mysteries, and historical fiction novels. And, er, mine. So it's a wide variety, which makes it even more of a subjective crapshoot than other categories, because the judges might not have a taste for your kind of work.

However, whenever I judge a contest, I always choose Strong Romantic Elephants, because I enjoy an esoteric mix of reading material. So anyone looking for a full-blooded, wait-until-the-last-page-to-say-I-love-you romance probably wouldn't choose to judge that category. But it's a subjective crapshoot nonetheless, and I wouldn't have felt bad if I didn't final.

I could have entered Eyes of Crow in the Paranormal Romance category, but I felt that it was a fantasy/coming-of-age story first, and a romance second.

The awards will be announced on July 14 at a big hoop-dee-doo wrapping up the Romance Writers of America Conference in Dallas.

Which I somehow have to find a way to afford. Does anyone need their house cleaned? Dog groomed? Shower recaulked? I'm an excellent driver.


*which I've decided to start calling Strong Romantic Elephants, and if anyone would like to draw me a picture to represent that, I'll start a gallery here and maybe take it with me to Dallas. Works in all media, including crayon, will be accepted.

Labels: awards, Eyes of Crow

• posted by Jeri @ 3:56 PM
• 9 comments

Speaking of awards...

Uh oh
Waiting on
Waiting on Sunday
Waiting on Sunday to land
--Tori Amos, "Spring Haze"

I hadn't even realized until a few days ago that this coming Sunday around 1PM central time, the phone calls will begin. The Romance Writers of America staff will call the finalists for the Rita Awards*, which is supposed to be our industry's equivalent to the Oscars(TM). The finalists dress up in gowns, go to a lavish ceremony, get treated like a big shot for months and try not to cry onstage (or try to look like they're trying not to cry). That's as far as the comparison goes for me.

According to romance novelist Barbara Samuel, Sunday is nervous-making time.

And believe me, RITA day, as we fondly call it, is a day when cyberspace and telephone lines are afire. None of us get much work done. I think it’s one of the most exciting days of the year and I still cry when a friend who has been aching for that nod calls me screaming, or I read on an email loop that book I adored has made the lists.

By the end of the day, bitter tears are sometimes spilled, too. Because this matters desperately to us—making the RITA finals has meaning and power. Trust me when I say that it might feel great to make other favorites lists, but we don’t weep over not making them.

I can't imagine crying over not finaling for a Rita, or any award for that matter.

Writing-related things that could make me cry:

• Having a contract canceled (hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure I'd cry, assuming the three bottles of whiskey didn't dehydrate all the tears out of my ducts)
• Being orphaned (no, wait, that just made me stand there holding the phone with a blank look on my face for about ten minutes)
• Getting a bad review (no, wait, that just made me go -phhbt!-)
• Losing a sale because the eager editor who wanted desperately to buy the book was vetoed by higher-ups (who didn't actually read it) who thought it sounded like another book already out there, a book I'd read specifically to make sure mine was nothing like it (no, wait, that just made me throw things)

To me, getting published is the award. Any contest win is just a nice bonus. Perhaps I haven't been around long enough, or haven't raised my measurement of success to the point where awards matter. I don't think they matter to readers.

Do you care if a book has won an award? Which ones make a difference to you? The Pulitzer? NBA? Hugo? Nebula? Edgar? What about movies--do you try to see every Oscar(TM)-nominated film each year?

*which, by yesterday's definition, is actually a contest

Labels: awards, Eyes of Crow, writing life

• posted by Jeri @ 7:24 AM
• 3 comments

My first final

But not the final final, I hope.

Eyes of Crow has finaled in the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence contest. Woo-hoo! The winners will be announced at their conference in May. I purposely don't know what date that is, so I can forget about it.

A quick distinction between "awards" and "contests." Whereas the Reviewers' Choice award is what I call an award, because I didn't pay (or do anything) to enter, the AoE and several others I'm waiting to hear from are what I consider "contests."

Most chapters of RWA have contests--several for published authors, and dozens for unpublished authors. What I like about contests is that the judges weigh my book equally against others, regardless of my (nonexistent) reputation. It seems more democratic somehow.

Actually, even the Reviewers' Choice award is fair in this regard. The reviewers have to read the books, and they nominate the ones they like best. It's all extremely subjective, but at least these types of awards don't discriminate against, ahem, low-profile books like mine.

The two biggest reasons why EOC is low-profile for these purposes:

Release date: November is a great month for sales, but when the call goes out for year-end reader nominations for best book, mine is still buried in hundreds of To-Be-Read piles. (The Nebula Awards(TM) avoid this bias by making a book eligible for a year after its publication. Not that I could ever win one of those.)

Price: Eyes of Crow is trade paperback, so by simple supply-and-demand economics, fewer people will read it than its mass-market competitors that cost half as much.

But the beauty of a contest is, I can pay someone to read my book!

Er, that didn't quite come out right. But the fact is, it's a great way for a new author to get his or her name out there. Last year I judged the PRISM contest and discovered two wonderful new authors whose books I'll continue to buy. Certainly other judges might feel the same about my book.

I don't know if I'll enter Voice of Crow in all these contests next year. Its romantic subplot is smaller than that of Eyes of Crow, and overall it weighs more heavily toward the fantasy end of the spectrum.

Plus, the entry fees add up to a big chunk of change. Ultimately it's worth it to introduce readers to a new series (I'll sure as shootin' be entering Bad Company), but simple economics tells us this is a world of finite resources.

Labels: awards, Eyes of Crow

• posted by Jeri @ 8:58 AM
• 1 comments

Quarterfinal in Scriptapalooza!

My romantic comedy, Between the Lines, has just made the quarterfinals of Scriptapalooza, one of the country's biggest screenwriting contests. Out of more than 3600 entries, 334 were picked as quarterfinalists.

Think I'm making this up? Go to the Scriptapalooza site, click on "9th Annual International Screenwriting Competition, and then click on Quarterfinalists. Sorry there isn't a direct link.

In the past, production companies and agents have requested looks at winners, finalists, semi-finalists, and even quarterfinalists of this contest. But the coolest part to me is that now more than one contest has given me strong positive feedback on this script. So it's not just that one guy at Bluecat Screenwriting Competition who thinks it's cool (though not cool enough for the 10K first prize).

Semifinalists will be announced tomorrow, probably around 11:59 PM Pacific time, the way these things go. Obviously I'll let you know about that, as well as a recap of the RWA conference, which was, in a word, awesome.

Labels: awards, movies

• posted by Jeri @ 5:10 PM
• 7 comments