Visiting Other Worlds

Had a wonderful time last night. It's good to meet new people who write and read our kind of books. My panel was outstanding--Linda S. Cowden, Kimberly Raiser, Yyvonne Wisdom were great, giving lots of insight about the urban fantasy heroine (specifically, Anita Blake, Sookie, Bella) and whether they were role models or good girls gone bad.

I think I was probably the only author on board who didn't write vampires, LOL, but hey, I'm definitely a fan of the genre and have read my share of vampire romances, so I didn't mind having a little discussion fun. I played devil's advocate and went for "good girls gone bad" against the girl empowerment standard. It was fun because I got to talk about enlightening topics such as "the reduction of the female role to being a magic hoohah," which drew some laughter from the mostly male audience.

It was fun precisely because of the male readers in the audience. They were attentive and some of them had insightful observations about the series they read, mostly the Anita Blake one. Do you hear that, writers? They have INSIGHT, which means they read the books and continued reading them even as the romantic elements are expanded. I loved it. I mentioned some series that they might want to try--not necc. vampire series but since we were talking about tough chicks who could be either role models or bad girls--such as Saintcrow's Danny Valentine series, Iona Andrews' Magic series, and even J.R. Ward's bad ass Brothuhs ;-) as the extreme example of "protected" females.

At the end of the panel, a male reviewer came forward to ask for my book. A radio station wants to do an interview. Several male readers came up to ask me whether I was at RT because they were there during the Book Fair and now they've found a new author--me--because they like spy/thriller romances. That's what I was talking about, folks. A chance to get new readers who don't necessarily classify themselves as romance readers. A chance to network with reviewers and talk radio interviewers who I'd never meet if I hadn't gone outside the box and promote at different CONs. A few of these readers have even read Virtually His because of John Scalzi's recommendation last year. I was totally wowed by this. And gratified. This is what I want, to bring my stories to all kinds of readers who aren't necessarily "romance" readers but are just after a good story.

Now...I'm off to check out the panel about military SF and how to write great battle scenes. Then I want to meet John Ringo. And where else could a writer get to ask questions face-to-face with a scientist from NASA on one side and a Star Trek writer on the other? I'm just so psyched!

Later, dudes, may the force stop the rain.

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