Candice Hughes

ThrillerFest is coming up soon and a lot of writers are wondering if they should pay the fairly substantial fee to attend. Last year I attended the CraftFest and AgentFest portions of the ThrillerFest conference. Based on my experience, I recommend that any writer who focuses on the thriller genre should attend this conference if possible.

CraftFest emphases basic writing techniques as well as pointers for selling your manuscript. Lectures at CraftFest are given by well-known authors, agents and editors. If you you want to learn or brush up on technique, you will benefit from this portion of the conference. You will also have the chance to network with industry professionals.

I highly recommend AgentFest. I don’t know of any other opportunity to pitch to 40 top literary agents at once. That said, the agents do not accept every manuscript pitched to them. Expect that some will say no based on suitability of your novel to their interests. What you will get at AgentFest is experience in pitching and the chance to meet agents who might be interested in your work. I recommend researching the agents before pitching to them. Select those most likely to be interested in your specific story. That will make the experience better for you (the writer) and for the agent. If you haven’t finished at least one full draft of your novel, I recommend not pitching. It’s hard to pitch if you don’t know what happens in the story. (Unless of course you have several published novels that sell well but if that is your situation, you could likely contact agents outside the pitch room.)

To attend AgentFest, you must attend CraftFest.

Good Luck and Happy Pitching!

Apologies for the relative silence on my blog! If I released audiorecordings, the past few months wouldn’t be silence (as it appears on the blog) but an unrelenting click clack of keys typing out words. I’ve been fully consumed by editing novel 2. Beside the editing there’s the query and synopsis writing. Finally, the dreaded pitch (yes, indeed, you can get 400 pages down to one line)!

I’m tremendously lucky to be part of CoLoNY and RWA as a whole. Through these groups, I’ve been cramming with my writer friends. I feel just like I’m at college again! Only this time, I’ve got generous, wonderful, highly experienced writers showering me with advice and reading drafts (not to mention listening to my pitch!)

So, please, excuse the silence and do check back! I hope to get some posts in during the conferences and will definitely post afterwards with some highlights of RWA Nationals and ThrillerFest.

This weekend I thoroughly enjoyed myself being an archaeologist for a day. Who ever thought that digging through someone’s trash could be so much fun! After several hundred years, the yuck factor disappears and trash becomes an amazing window into another world. I was lucky enough to get a look into a world almost four-hundred years ago when Native Americans lived throughout New England (and other parts of the United States as well, only they weren’t states then, and you get the picture…).

Archaeologist call the trash pit the midden. In the 1600s, a Native American midden contains things like oyster and clam shells and burned seeds. Our group was lucky to find some European flint. Not bad for a hour or so of digging! Other members of our group investigated an area of the old fort that used to be living space and found glass, beads, and a large piece of flint.

I also learned about a field unknown to me, archeobotany. Since most seeds have been cooked or burned by Native Americans and since seeds lose water and shrivel, it can be hard to identify them. Of course, it’s not easy to find them in the first place since they’re small! But if you’re patient and  have a good eye, seeds show what types of plants people ate or utilized in daily life.

The downside of archaeology is trudging through mud and poison ivy. Of course, there are also mosquitoes, ticks and other insects to dodge (or if unlucky, to suffer from). Overall, I’d say it’s worth getting a bit dirty to watch the past unfold before your eyes.