Check back on a regular basis, our list is growing!!!
UPDATES

Agent/Author Relations: How to approach an agent in the wild, and what to do once you've caught one with with Nalini Akolekar (Spencerhill Associates ltd.) & Terri Osburn

Literary Agent Nalini Akolekar and her client Terri Osburn discuss everything from how they came to work together, to the query process, agent/author etiquette, what an agent can and should do for you, and reveal the shocking truth that agents are ordinary people just like you. Join the discussion and come prepared with all the burning questions you've always wanted to ask but never gotten the chance.

 Foundations of Fiction: All the basic elements of a successful novel with Peter Senftleben (Kensington Books)

Some of the most common reasons for rejection are some of the most basic mistakes, like tense, point of view, conflict, characters, and dialogue.  In this workshop, I'll go over all of the fundamentals of writing a story, focusing on the elements I often see misused, botched, or ignored in submissions.  I'll touch briefly on the basics that every writer needs to know and remain aware of as they write their novel, and give tips on how to avoid getting caught in these traps.  A question and answer session will provide writers in the audience with the opportunity to get my advice on problems they frequently find themselves encountering.

 Career Arc with Deb Werksman (Sourcebooks)

What does Career Arc mean? How do you build a brand? Why do you need a career arc anyway? An editor from a house that specializes in career strategy will address your specific questions about strategizing your own particular career.

 

Back by popular demand......Floridian Idol
Anonymously submit the first two pages of your manuscript (not contracted)  at registration and our dynamic volunteers will read the pages aloud to the group. The Agents and Editors will offer their valuable feedback on each submission. Be aware this is not for the faint of heart. We occasionally get some Simon Cowell type comments.

Rules of the Floridian Idol:
* The first two manuscript pages, double spaced, 12 pt standard font.
* One submission per attendee
* Notate genre and manuscript length in the header.
* All submissions must be turned in at registration, so carry them on board with you.
Readings are selected in the order in which they are received. We always try our best to ensure that every submission gets read, but there are no guarantees.

Write In with FRW Writers

Have a case of the been there, done that? Instead of traipsing into Cozumel, put your creative juices to work at our write in. The hardest part of writing is finding the time to sit your butt in a chair and write the novel which is what makes Nanowrimo so popular each year. Bring your computer, notepad or whatever you use and see how much you can you write in an hour or two. Feed off the creative juices of other and the vibe that a group of writers brings, not to mention the prizes we will be handing out.

Editor and Agent appointments
Sign up at registration on Thursday to have some valued one-on one time with our Agents & Editors.   

Dialogue: It’s More than What You Say with Julia Quinn

Dialogue affects every corner of your manuscript, from characterization to voice, pacing to point-of-view. In this lively workshop, Julia Quinn will help you learn how to make your dialogue shine.

 Love is in the details with Heidi Lynn Anderson

Just like real life, it’s the little things that show us how someone feels. Discover how to “show” your reader your Characters feelings without being in their Point of view and without the dreaded “telling” we all desperately avoid. Build sexual tension in and out of the bedroom by making body language work for you. It’s the little things that will take your story from slush pile to published. 


Website 101: Plan Before You Build with Win Day
Whether you’re starting from scratch, rebuilding your current website, or finally moving from one of the free blogging platforms to a website of your very own, there are things you need to know before you start. Learn the steps to getting a website that works for you – and your audience.
*A limited number of appointments will be available for one-on-one sessions with Win- more details coming soon.

 

Our Dark and Twisted Family: Paranormal chat with Asa Maria Bradley, Heather Graham, Bonnie Vanak and Rebecca Zanetti


Marketing 101 with Jennifer Fusco
Need to market your book but don't know where to start?  How about with Marketing 101. This interactive session will teach an author how to find their target audience, draft a marketing message in four easy sentences and deliver the top 18 things an author can do to market her romance novel. This class will also discuss an author's brand and platform, and the importance of managing a budget.

 

The Art of Writing with Traci Hall & Christopher Hawke
Whether you are new to writing or a seasoned professional, the Art of Writing workshop will provide you with the focus necessary to skillfully craft your story. We will look at how to create your manuscript’s pivotal scenes while keeping essential storytelling concepts in mind.

 

Writing Deep POV with Amy Jarecki
This is a hands-on workshop with exercises for each topic. The workshop is for experienced writers and is adapted from Jill Elizabeth Nelson’s Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View. Topics will include: general points of view, what deep POV is and isn’t, rules for writing deep including exercises to hone your skills and tools for writing lively and emotional prose. Bring your laptops or notebooks and pencils!

 

Can You Make A Living Self-Publishing? with Liz Schulte, Melissa Lummis, and C.G. Powell
We will talk about the various stages of self-publishing success. We will talk about real sales numbers and personal self-publishing experiences, as well as going over the marketing tricks and trends they have had the most success using and the pitfalls many new self-published authors fall into. Discussion will include forming author groups and how to successfully build a platform for cross promotion.

 

Pre-pitch Workshop with Victoria Pinder & FRW Writers
Polish your pitch to perfection with the help of the FRW published authors.

 

What We Love about Contemporary with Kathleen Pickering, Erin McCarthy and Kristen Wallace
Join us to discuss the things we love about contemporary and the  

 

Uncliché Your Romance with MM Pollard, editor, Black Velvet Seductions
Your first draft is probably littered with clichés. Your hero has a heart of gold. Your heroine has the patience of Job with the hero. He saves her in the nick of time from the terrible, horrible, evil serial killer villain.
Clichés are more than just dead-beat words and phrases that have lost their original meaning and their cleverness in making comparisons. Genre fiction has clichés in characters and plots that most readers expect and some complain about. How can a writer please all readers?
This workshop isn’t about shredding that draft and starting over. I’ll give you lots of ways to create fresh characters and plots from those clichés often found in genre fiction.

 

Sexy Confessions with Lexi Post
Join us for an interactive hour with some of your favorite erotic authors! Taboo tales you’d like to read, risqué stories too wicked even for us to write and chances to win a dozen prizes! It'll just be us...you...a pitch-black room and a flashlight. Shhh - it'll be our little secret. Just whisper it.  And don't worry - we won't tell...but you'll have to if you want to win!
Then it’s time to confess. Drunken sex in college, went too far with a stripper in a strip club, made it with a girl and REALLY liked it? Turn on your flashlight and hold it up in acknowledgment that you have done the naughty deed in question…if you dare.

 

Titles, Customs, and Manners of the Regency with Ella Quinn
Ever wonder if your titles were correct, or whether or not your lady should curtsey rather than inclining her head as well as a multitude of other small but important details? Then this class is for you. Not only will we practice the correct form of address and discuss what every lady and gentleman would know, you’ll also learn what types of parties and other entertainments they gave, and what the rules on waltzing really were, as well as what and when to serve food and what types of liquid libations were available, it wasn’t punch.
Time permitting we’ll also discuss the duties of various servants including the all important lady’s maid and valet.

 

Our Workshop Presenters from A to Z

 Award winning multi-published author Heidi Lynn Anderson, spins erotic tails with lots of heart. When not writing she likes to spend her time with her family experiencing what Florida has to offer. You can contact her at www.heidilynnanderson.com

 

Asa Maria Bradley is a 2014 Golden Heart Finalist. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance featuring Vikings and Valkyries sworn to save humanity from Ragnarök—the god’s and goddesses’ final battle and the end of the world. Originally from Sweden, she grew up surrounded by archeology and history steeped in Norse mythology. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including the Random House anthology Female Nomad and Friends: Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread from Around the World and she is a regular contributor to the writing blogs Bark and See Jane Publish. Visit her at: www.asamariabradley.com.

 

In her day job, Win Day is a web developer and business strategist as well as a published non-fiction author. She’s also a romance writer working on her first contemporary romance novel. Web development site:www.CreativeImplementations.com, Author site: www.WinDayWrites.com

 

Jennifer Fusco is an author, publicist and owner of Market or Die Author Services, LLC. A three time Advertising Excellence award winner, Ms. Fusco is also the host of Romance is On The Air with Jennifer Fusco, a weekly romance talk show produced by Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. She is writer of non-fiction, contemporary romance and is represented by Nicole Resciniti of The Seymour Agency. For more information about Jennifer or Market or Die, please visit www.marketordie.net

 

One of FRW’s founding mothers, and therefore a writer most special to FRW, is New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Heather Graham. Her first book was with Dell, and since then, she has written over one hundred novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult and Christmas family fare.

She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty languages. She has been honored with awards from Walden Books, B. Dalton, Georgia Romance Writers, Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times and more. Heather has also become the proud recipient of the Silver Bullet from Thriller Writers. Married since high school graduation and the mother of five, her greatest love in life remains her family, but she also believes her career has been an incredible gift, and she is grateful every day to be doing something that she loves so very much for a living. The Unseen, The Unholy, The Unspoken and the Uninvited are available now.  Let the Dead Sleep will be released in March, 2013.  The Night is Watching,  The Night is Alive and The Night is Forever will be released in June, August and October.

 

Award winning author Traci Hall writes genre fiction for both adults and teens. Believing in Happy Ever After, she pens stories guaranteed to touch the heart while transporting the reader to another time and place. She is co-founder of Community Authors, an author service company for writers who don’t want to do it all.  www.tracihall.com

 

After writing two acclaimed novels on spirituality and reality, Christopher Hawke followed his passion for teaching, information technology and marketing to help create Community Authors a one-stop author services company. CommunityAuthors.com­

 

Amy Jarecki is an Amazon bestselling author of Scottish historical romance and is President of the Heritage Writer’s Guild in St. George, Utah. She has won several writing awards including the Spark Book Award and the LUW award for Best in Show. For fun, she hikes, bikes and plays a mean game of golf. Born in California, Amy holds an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

Jennifer Kacey is a wife, mother, and business owner living with her family in Texas. Stories that speak to her are a little bit dark and a whole lotta naughty! She sings in the shower, plays piano in her dreams, and has to have a different color of nail polish every week. The best advice she’s ever been given? Find the real you and never settle for anything less.

 

Melissa Lummis is a self-published author of paranormal, erotic romance, and urban fantasy. She currently has three novels and two short stories published, with an upcoming novella series scheduled to release the spring of 2014. While becoming a published writer was always in the works, it was the self-publishing phenomena that inspired her to make full-time writing a reality. Her goal is to support her family financially as a full-time writer and take them on adventures, while inspiring other writers to pursue their dreams, too.

 

Although born in the Ohio Valley, Terri Osburn found her true home between the covers of her favorite books. Classics like The Wizard of Oz and Little Women filled her childhood, and the genre of romance beckoned during her teen years. In 2007, she put pen to paper to write her own. Just five years later, she was named a 2012 finalist for the Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® Award, and her debut novel released a year later. You can learn more about this international bestselling author of the Anchor Island contemporary romance series by visiting her website at www.terriosburn.com.

 

Kathleen Pickering is an award-winning author who believes stories teach life lessons. A member of Florida Romance Writers, Romance Writers of America, and Mystery Writers of America, Kathleen draws plots and characters from people around her. Kathleen also travels to research her work. So beware. If she meets you, you may wind up in one of her novels! Kathleen’s passion for writing is only matched by her joy in conducting writing and self-awareness workshops to bring you back to what matters in life: the Power of Love.  kathleenpickering.com.

 

Victoria Pinder grew up in Irish Catholic Boston before moving to the Miami sun. With her full time job of teaching, in 2013 and 2014, she sold on her own sold six books to three different publishers. She is represented by Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary Agency for her next novels. 

 

As an editor for Black Velvet Seductions, MM Pollard reads many entertaining and thought-provoking stories, some littered with common mistakes in the fundamental skills of writing. With fifteen years of experience teaching English serving as a resource of knowledge and a life-time love of teaching and of language. Her goal is to teach writers what they need to know about the writing craft through her fun workshops. She has presented workshops for many RWA chapters, Savvy Authors, Writers Online Classes, and in her own virtual classroom. MM is sure she can help you, too, master the fundamentals of English.

 

Lexi Post spent years in higher education taking and teaching courses about classical literature, but Lexi's first love was romance novels. In an effort to marry her two first loves, she started writing erotic romance inspired by the classics and found she loved it. She also loves ice cream and makes her own every weekend, wears bright colors, and you will never see her without a hat (unless she is going incognito). http://www.lexipostbooks.com/

 

Christine Powell Gomez (AKA- CG Powell) started writing in 2011, she decided that indie pubbing was the direction for her. Since then she has never looked back, Christine has written books and short stories in the paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, and erotica genres all with a twist of romance. Christine has taken her vast knowledge and insatiable appetite for learning and applied it to the stories she writes.
Christine opened The Book Swag Shop, which caters to indie authors looking for unique swag items for their fans. This venture has helped her to understand branding, time management (still working on this one), and business management.

 

Ella Quinn lived all over the United States, the Pacific, Canada, England and Europe before finally discovering the Caribbean. She lives in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands with her wonderful husband, three bossy cats and a loveable great dane. Ella loves when friends connect with her.  www.ellaquinnauthor.com

 

Julia Quinn, see Keynote Speaker

 

Liz Schulte is a self-published author in mystery and paranormal romance with ten novels, one short story, one box set, and has been in three anthologies. Though success in publishing didn’t happen overnight, like she envisioned it would, the journey has been worth the trials along the way. Liz became a self-supported full time author in 2013 and wouldn’t trade her hard begotten knowledge or the wonderful friends she has made along the way for anything. She has taken numerous forensic and writing classes and attended several symposiums on writing. She believes that with any craft, you should constantly work on honing your skills and improving your output. www.LizSchulte.com

 

Bonnie Vanak is the New York Times bestselling author of paranormal werewolf romances. A former newspaper reporter who became a writer for a major international charity, she travels to destitute countries to write about issues affecting the poor. Her books take readers from the mysterious, dark alleys of New Orleans to the sweeping plains of Montana. Visit her Web site at www.bonnievanak.com.

 

Kristin Wallace is a published author and 15-year veteran of the advertising industry, with a background as a copywriter. She writes inspirational romance and women’s fiction filled with “love, laughter and a lead of faith”. Kristin is the author of the Covington Falls Chronicles, the Amazon Best-Selling series set in a fictional Southern town filled with memorable, lively characters. Marry Me, Acting Up and Coming soon Imagine That. Connect with Kristen at: www.KristinWallaceAuthor.com

 

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author, Rebecca Zanetti writes dark paranormals, romantic suspense, and contemporary romances for three New York publishers.  She’s sold from the slush pile, from auction, from pre-empt, and most recently from a short conversation with an editor that turned into a five book deal.  She believes strongly in luck, karma, and working her butt off…and she thinks one of the best things about being an author, unlike the lawyer she used to be, is that she can let the crazy out a little bit.  Currently, she is writing the bestselling Dark Protector series from Kensington, with the tenth book, Marked, being released in December 2014; the Sin Brothers series from Grand Central, with Blind Faith, book three, released in May 2014, and finally, the Maverick Montana series from Entangled, with Rising Assets, the third book, hitting the New York Times and the USA Today Bestseller lists in April 2014.  Find Rebecca at RebeccaZanetti.com