Category Archives: Writers Life

Conference Connection – How We Bond with Our Writers’ Tribe

Alice Orr Books at Liberty States Conference Conference Connection. How We Bond with Our Writers’ Tribe. I am just now emerging from the fog of a writers’ conference. Why a fog? Because that’s what the misty airlock feels like between conference world and my daily world. A sweet fog of adjustment before re-entry. Why sweet? That is a more complicated question. The sweetness of the fog is a carryover from the sweetness of the experience and the many nectars of its ingredients.

We leave our daily world behind. This is the essential first step toward making the Conference Connection. My personal sweetness recipe begins with the hotel stay. I’ve long maintained that room service and maid service are among the supreme triumphs of this or any culture, with the twenty-four-hour lobby snack corner running a close third.

We open up from our solitary selves. Writing is a self-on-self pursuit. We sit in a room and commune with our muse. As fiction writers, we converse with folks who only exist inside our heads. Sometimes we stare at the wall, and we do it all alone. Thus, we can become a bit in-grown. Like musty bedding, we require occasional airing to remain fresh. There are few more refreshing opportunities for a writer than making a Conference Connection.

We fall in among our Tribe. Which brings us to the sweetest ingredient of conference ambrosia. Writers, writers, and more writers. In corridors and workshops. At informal get-togethers and more formal ones. Talking, laughing, debating, sharing. Writers everywhere, on furlough from the trenches, encouraging one another to fight through the obstacles we all inevitably encounter. This is the beating heart of the Conference Connection, and it is Us.

We celebrate ourselves and one another. My entrée into Liberty States Fiction Writers Conference 2018 was an impromptu gathering in the hotel lounge. I had been invited to join by my old friend, Sandra Barone. She introduced me to Christine Akins Clemetson, who immediately became my new friend, as often happens at writers’ gatherings. Christine had huge news to share. She’d just signed with a literary agent. Joy and wonder shone from her slightly dazed smile, encouraging and inspiring us all with a magical Conference Connection.

We learn. We learn. We learn. From workshops, keynote talks, forums and, most of all, each other. Author, teacher, maven Chris Redding took time from her busy day to share her marketing expertise. Amazon algorithms are incomprehensible to me, but Chris pierced that darkness with enough light to set me on a more fruitful track. She also reminded me of my own mantra, Do It Anyway! She didn’t have to bother with any of that, but she did it anyway. Such generosity is the gold which is mined for each of us when we make a Conference Connection.

We Book Fair. Book signings can be humiliation hell. I once signed next to Nora Roberts. R for Roberts, O for Orr and OMG. The Ps and Qs knew enough to stay away. But at Liberty States, the O section sat me with long-time author friend L.G. O’Connor. Sweet indeed. Because book signings can be heaven.

We know that these events aren’t about selling books. These book signings are about being there, showing up, sitting behind a propped-up copy of your latest publication. Or dreaming of the day when you’ll have a propped-up copy of your own to flaunt. Either way, we smile ear-to-ear and heart-to-heart amidst our tribe, linked to one another by our Conference Connection.

Is there a downside? Maybe the case of Crammed-Brain Syndrome many of us take with us from hours and days of workshops and panels. Or the soft brace you wear on your wrist after scribbling like crazy in your notebook to capture every morsel of information. But we can handle that and then some, in return for establishing a Conference Connection.

We re-enter our individual writers’ lives better off for the experience. We have shown our shining faces to the writing world. We have hugged old friends and discovered new ones. We have been embraced by the spirit of our community and participated in a powerful ritual of our tribe. Plus, last but far from least, we’ve had fun.

So, here I am, post-fog. I made another solid Conference Connection, and, best of all, I bonded yet again with how blessed I am to do this writer thing.                                                 Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

– R|R

A Time of Fear & LovingConference Connection and her writers’ tribe have a lot to do with Alice’s joyful experience of her career and her novels. Don’t miss her latest, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

 What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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Life Changes When You Start the Day Writing #MFRWauthor #IAN1

The first monsoon clouds from my terrace

On many summer weekends, Jonathan and I leave the city for our camp in the Skylands of northwest New Jersey. Two days later, unfortunately, we return from all of that relaxation with a list of city-life things to do long enough to bring stress barreling back big time.

The next day, an act of iron-bound determination will be required to make myself pick up my notebook or pop up a file in my computer and write. Too often the notebook and the word doc file lose out. The post-weekend lists seem so much more crucial to our weekday existence. They are about keeping our real-world life running on the smooth track rather than the bumpy one after all, which is crucial to the max. That is what I’ve tended to believe most of the time.

But something happened this past weekend at camp that disrupted my customary way of thinking. I started a new book, not an adaptation like my last two books have been. The first, A Vacancy at the Inn, a novella that was orphaned when I decided to leave my agent. The second, A Villain for Vanessa, a re-imagining of a previously published novel whose rights I’d reverted.

This new book is neither of those things. It is a brand-new story, fresh out of my creative brain matter and growing word after word into scene after scene like a miracle on the page in front of me. Maybe that is why, when I work up Monday morning, I ejected the To Do lists from their previous priority position and replaced them with a long writing session. Maybe the magic had me in its thrall.

When the same thing happened on Tuesday morning, my doubts disintegrated. I was enthralled indeed. Caught up in an alternate world of story that seems somehow more truly my reality than my day-to-day down-to-earth one. And here is something else equally enthralling. After each writing session, an aura of the magic remains. My mind feels less fettered. My worries press less heavily. The To Do lists have lost a huge dollop of their tyranny.

Voila. Because I start my days writing, my life has changed for the much, much better. Alice is in Wonderland again. What do you think about that? I think things are getting curiouser and curioser.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com/

– R|R

Book 5 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series – A Time of Fear and Loving – will debut on Saturday, September 16th, our 45th wedding anniversary. A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Romantic Suspense Book 4and my other books are available from Amazon HERE.

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A #Holiday #Gift and Greeting for You

FROM THE ORR HOUSE TO YOUR HOUSE

seasons-greetings-1Happy Happy Merry Merry.

Here is my Christmas/Hannukah gift for you. A Free eBook copy of A Villain for Vanessa at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533185050. “I was gripped before I was off the first page.” That’s what one reviewer says. I hope you will agree.

More important, dear friends, it is the most blessed season of the year, and at the Orr house we’re feeling grateful for the grace and good will that have carried us through the past twelve months to this present good moment.

Jonathan and I continue to enjoy our cozy city apartment and to run Orr and Orr Contracting with Jonathan as Project Manager and me as CFO. I continue to write romantic suspense novels with A Time of Fear & Loving – Book 5 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series, in progress. We are both glad to be productive and doing work we love.

Our family remains our abiding joy. We will all be together here at Christmas and my birthday on the day after. An added blessing is granddaughter Maya nearby as a freshman at NYU. If we could only get grandson Julian to the city as well, this would be entirely paradise. Meanwhile, daughter Kathleen and son-in-law Luis live just blocks from us, and son Ed and daughter-in-law Deborah aren’t far away in Boston.

Our friends are beloved sustenance as always. We feel privileged to have each of you in our lives. And, finally, our faith lives embrace us and remind us to dwell in gratitude, kindness and love.

We look forward to a new year in the light and wish you, your friends and family joy, contentment and heartfuls of the truest satisfaction life can afford.

Love and Blessings. Alice

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com – Delicious Suspense Spiced with a Love Story.

Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 4 – A Villain for Vanessa and Book 1 – A Wrong Way Home – A FREE eBOOK – are both available at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B000APC22E.