…went a bit smoother than the first one.

I wasn’t able to attend Andrew Hook’s conference because I was just so tired yesterday, not even a plane crash could’ve woken me up. Cynthia Bryan, my 9pm conference “speaker” couldn’t make it, so organizer Lea Schizas took over and answered general questions. Basically, I strayed away from the chat and did some other things. Oh, but I caught the reason why Lea organized the whole thing.

Lea said she was a member of a writers’ circle before who shared no links and gave no tips because all the writers feared the other would outdo them. Lea vowed that she’d do what she can to help other writers in the future and share what knowledge she has amassed since then. And of course, she’s done it for a bit of self-promotion too.

Now, the conference with Carolyn Howard Johnson for “The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward by Writing Zero-Tolerance Queries and Cover Letters” went a lot better than the others. The time we had was quite short so her answers were also terse. The best one I think was the question about including relevant education (i.e., a degree in writing) in a query letter. Carolyn answered with a resounding NO. She said, “you let your talent speak for itself.” Good for you, Carolyn.

Another question which caught my eye was something about being a non-US resident querying American agents. Carolyn said that the problem is it might pose legal issues. No mention of non-US residents not being able to write for an American audience. Well thank you, Carolyn, I think I really like you now. I’ve found a couple of agents who’re willing to represent non-US residents, by the way. I’ve lost their links since my PC crashed but I’ll find them later and post them here.

The biggest peeve I have with the chats is that the Java applet, Parachat, keeps booting me off for unknown reasons. I’m not very thrilled with the real time chats mostly because of it. Maybe next year we can go with mIRC. Or maybe, I’ll just sign-up for the week-long workshops. Talking about the workshops, I haven’t checked things out thoroughly. But I poked around a bit, and so far, things look promising. Let’s see how tomorrow goes.