Can You Hear It?

Do You Hear It?

There's a ground swell of excitement, rumbling across the country ... The ACFW Conference is coming!

September 20-23, 2007 in Dallas, TX, sponsored by the American Christian Fiction Writers, this premiere fiction conference brings together under one roof, one of the largest contingencies of editors and agents of any conference—all for fiction. This year there will be over 40 of them, sharing their knowledge and looking at proposals.

The faculty is composed of multi-published authors who will be teaching by genre this year, and I for one, can't wait! I'd been to other writers conferences, and they were good. Very good. But they were for both fiction and non-fiction writers. Therein lay the difference. The ACFW conference is all fiction.

Picture me a wide-eyed newbie, walking the halls in Nashville at my first ACFW conference. Beside me walked best-selling and award-winning authors. And one of them invited me to lunch with her. Wow. I had to remind myself to close my mouth before I tripped over my lip. My neck felt like one of those revolving doors.

The camaraderie was beyond anything I'd experienced. These were people who understood me! As a writer, I live such a solitary work life, and no one in my family understands the voices in my head. My poor husband gets exasperated when I zone out, following my latest heroine into a new adventure. No one but another writer can relate. Because of the ACFW e-loop, by the time you get to conference you're old friends. Each name tag you glanced at turned out to be a good cyber-friend. Wow.

But one of the best things was meeting all the members of the crit group Gina, Jessica and I mentor. A dozen of them came to Dallas last year. We live all over the country and most of us had never met in person. We went out for dinner Friday night and had a blast! And hopefully, we'll all be here again this year. We even have one member coming from Canada.

Did I mention the classes? Oy, the classes are top notch. I learned so much, I equate conference to a semester of college. And the worship times were awesome. I learned all about goldfish moments from Karen Ball :o), and the following year I learned that God loves me best—shameless, I know, but that's what the song said.

Liz Curtis Higgs taught me to take "Ta-da" moments—after all, I'm His handiwork.

This year, James Scott Bell is our keynote speaker. I can't wait. Margie Larson is teaching the Early Bird session, and intense 6 hour workshop on expressing emotion in our fiction. All the continuing classes are by genre this year, something the members have requested.

All I can say is hop over to the ACFW website (click here) and read about it, then register for it. You don't want to miss this!

Do You Hear It?

There's a ground swell of excitement, rumbling across the country ... The ACFW Conference is coming!