Christina Suzann Nelson

Sunday morning. The breakfast, worship, and message by Debbie Macomber were inspiring, but when I turned around the room was already half empty. Sadly, many of the attendees must start their travels early to get home at reasonable times.

I filled the rest of the morning with goodbyes to friends I’ve meet on the loop, in critique group, and at conferences.

At 12:15 I hopped on a shuttle with the hopes that if I arrived at the airport early, I might get on an earlier flight. No such luck. The 6:25 flight was the only one scheduled for the day. This left me plenty of spare time to get work done and the Donald Maas session had left me with much work to do. It was a good match.

About an hour before the flight, right when I had begun to go a bit stir-crazy, other people from the conference showed up. My flight home was shared by Christina Berry, Sherrie Ashcraft, Randy Ingermanson, and Chip MacGregor. It was nice to have the company and conversation to fill the wait.

So after days for running around, I spent nearly twelve hours riding two shuttles, one airplane, and sitting in an airport. At about 11 pm I arrived in Corvallis and my dear husband picked my up from the shuttle dump.
We were home ten minutes later. YAY!

Thanks for hanging in through my conference ramblings. I’m posting some pictures. Thanks to Christina Berry and her working camera, you’ll be able to see one of the banquet picture clearly.

No cartoons this Saturday morning. After breakfast I was back in the Continuing Education class. This time I was able to stay for almost the entire morning session. I did have one appointment near the end.

Susan and Rachel talked about scenes and making them more powerful. I’ve learned to evaluate a scene for tension. You can’t seem to get enough good conflict or tension in fiction. The other thing was to write it between the quotes whenever possible. I’m going back through my manuscript and placing more action in the dialogue.

After another huge lunch, we were off to workshops and then the big events began.

Here is a couple pictures from the book signing.

The day concluded with the ACFW Annual Awards Banquet. It is always such fun to watch people being rewarded for their hard work. For your reading pleasure, I’m listing the ACFW book of the year award winners. Enjoy.

Debut Author

A Passion Most Pure Julie Lessman

Lits

Sweet Caroline Rachel Hauck

Long Contemporary Romance

Controlling Interest Elizabeth White

Long Contemporary

Symphony of Secrets Sharon Hinck

Long Historical (tie)

My Heart Remembers  Kim Vogel Sawyer
I Have Seen Him in the Watchfires  Cathy Gohlke

Mystery

For Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls Nancy Mehl

Novellas

Stuck on You in A Connecticut Christmas anthology Rhonda Gibson

Short Contemporary Suspense

Broken Lullaby Pamela Tracy

Short Contemporary

Family Treasures Kathryn Springer

Short Historical

Family of the Heart Dorothy Clark

Speculative

The Restorer’s Journey Sharon Hinck

Suspense

Fossil Hunter John B. Olson

Women’s Fiction

The Shape of Mercy Susan Meissner

Young Adult

The Big Picture Jenny B. Jones

Christina

The ACFW conference always provides an amazing opportunity for worship. Thanks to Rachel Hauck and the worship team for bringing us such great music. This is one of the songs they performed.

Somewhat bright, but definitely early Friday morning I joined the group of over five-hundred ACFW members for breakfast. Obviously this was a very peaceful and intimate event. We continued with worship then off to classes.

All morning I was scheduled to be in the continuing education class taught by Susan May Warren and Rachel Hauck. Both of these women are not only generous with their time and gifts, but also multi-award winning authors. This class turned out to be just the thing for me this year.

I’ve been working on the craft of writing and come a long way, baby, but what I needed this year was a bigger picture. Susan and Rachel taught on diagnosing the problemed areas in our manuscripts and gave us techniques to fix all of our problems. Well, maybe not all of my problems. They didn’t even touch on how I’m suppose to get all this laundry done.

I had to miss a fair amount of this session due to appointments. My first was with Deb Raney. If you haven’t read any of her books, stop reading now and go to amazon.com to order one. My meeting with Deb was to go over the first three chapters of my manuscript. This was the second year I’ve done this with her. The input of someone with her kind of experience is priceless. I’ve grown more as a writer from these evaluations than any other thing I’ve done.

My second appointment was with Beth Adams of Guideposts. Beth and I met in Minneapolis last year. She’s one of the people I look forward to seeing at the conference. We are blessed to have so many editors and agents take the time to listen to our pitches and answer questions one on one.

Lunches are hosted by editors and agents. I plopped my tired self down at Chip MacGregor’s table. He has a great reputation as an agent but is somewhat flawed in his devotion to the Oregon Ducks. No one’s perfect.

The afternoon found me taking in another appointment and workshops. By dinnertime I felt exhausted. Friday night we don’t join together as a group for dinner. I met up with three new friends and took a short walk to the nearest Mexican restaurant. Yummy food, fun company.

After dinner it was time for the late night agent chats. I attend the talk with Rachel Zurakowski, Karen Solem, and Steve Laube. All three agents did a fabulous job expressing what they are looking for and giving their impressions for the future of publishing. Twice during this session, the lights turned off on their own, reminding me that I needed sleep.

Keep watching for the continuing saga that is ACFW in Denver.

Christina