What will your neighborhood look like in 100 years?

It sounds like a new meme, but it's the question I'm asking myself as I plot my new post apocalyptic YA book. It's grim fun to decide what's fallen apart and what's survived. I also find myself looking at my own world with new eyes. I have a lot of stuff, and if I lost most of it, I'd still be okay. Lamps, sofas, garden tools, that concrete gargoyle that lives under the blueberry bushes - all if it could vanish (okay, not Phred the Gargoyle, but everything else) and I'd be fine.

Here's another question that I've asked myself for this book: If I had to flee tomorrow with just a backpack, what would be in it? And given that the backpack now represents everything I have in the world, what would I do to keep it?

My iPhone is coming! Pardon my geek moment.

I have a blended household. In my case, that doesn't mean kids who started off in separate households, it means Mac and PC. My husband, who is against all things PC, started us on our Apple journey back in 2001.

My little Mac iBook is a powerhouse machine, but I still have a PC laptop and a PC tower. I like them too, although I've learned to save frequently to conserve my work. I don't want to repeat the heart-stopping panic of having my PC seize up in the middle of a complicated Photoshop file, or an almost finished chapter blink out of existance. The Apple is much more stable.

On Tuesday the 30th I'm going to add to my Apple tech stash when I toddle over to the AT&T store to pick up my iPhone. Then I'll go app shopping. Ahhh....techie bliss.

Just don't tell my PC. It's still trying to save my last session of Sims3.

Getting ready for the Con!

Tomorrow begins Timegate, where Michelle Roper and I will be guests (as Gillian Summers). I received boxes of our books to have on hand when we man our table, and now that we have The Secret of the Dread Forest, the last book in the first trilogy, we can offer complete trilogies for sale. We thought we'd offer them at $25 for the set, a $5 savings over buying individual books.

Timegate hosts a fundraiser, each year benefiting a different charity. It's a cabaret. As in performance. Michelle and I are so not performers! Sing? Um, no, although the thought of Michelle and I doing a duet of "Sweet Child Of Mine" is amusing.

Instead of frightening the natives, we decided to do a skit. Michelle sent me a slew of funny short pieces she'd written over the years, and after I mopped up all the coffee that I sneezed out when I made the mistake of reading them during breakfast and had an attack of caffeinated giggles, I chose one to turn into a play form.

So Saturday evening Michelle and I will perform, with the help of Jana Oliver and perhaps others, "The Haunted Chicken Truck of Lake Lanier" (cue spooky banjo music). We'll save "Earlene's Evil Pickles," which came in second, for another time.

If you're in Atlanta this weekend, catch our act - God willing there will never be a repeat!

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GRW's Moonlight and Magnolias

**********PERMISSIO N TO FORWARD***** ********* ********* **

Come have some Dark, Bad, Fun with the Georgia Romance Writers at one of the largest regional annual writing annual conferences!

GRW's Moonlight and Magnolias, October 2nd – 4th 2009 at the Atlanta Hilton Northeast.

Featuring keynote speaker and #1 New York Times Bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon along with our featured GRW author and New York Times Bestselling author Dianna Love.

Registration is now open.
http://www.georgiar omancewriters. org/mmconf/ 2009/MM09Registr ation.php
http://www.georgiar omancewriters. org/mmconf/ 2009/MM09Registr ation.php>

Free entrance to the Pitch Workshop for the first one hundred registrants. Hurry, because this one is filling up fast! Further your career by getting help pitching to this year's all-star line-up of editors and agents including:

Emmanuelle Alspaugh- Judith Ehrlich Literary Agency
Chelsea Gilmore - Avalon Books
Raelene Gorlinsky - Ellora's Cave
Melissa Jeglinski - Knight Agency
Monique Patterson - St. Martin's Press
Barbara Poelle - Irene Goodman Agency
Becca Stumpf - Prospect Agency
Denisa Zaza – Harlequin.

Enjoy workshops with veteran presenters Stephanie Bond, Rita Herron, Wendy Wax,Raven Hart, Berta Platas, Dorie Graham, Ann Howard White, Jennifer St.Giles, Hank Phillipi Ryan, Molly O'Keefe, Tami Cowden - And Many Others!

***New in 2009: Thursday night movie night, intensive craft workshop with Mary Buckham and Dianna Love on Sunday morning, Friday meals, genre themed mixers, and much more! Special Guest Barbara Vey from Publisher's Weekly! Check the conference schedule for updates

We also offer special programs for published authors.

Low conference prices: GRW Member - $199, RWA Member - $209, Non-RWA -$219

Please visit www.georgiaromancewriters.org for more information.

Cigars? Dinner?

In a strange coincidence, tobacco tax has shot up just as Obama relaxed travel restrictions to Cuba. Not sure if the U.S. will impose purchasing limits, but according to the Cuban government's regulations, each traveler may leave Cuba with 25 cigars. That's a lot of cigars. I don't think I'm going take advantage of that offer, though.

Despite the The New York Times's report that Cuba is ready for a deluge of American visitors, expecting 1.5 million, um, guys, not that many of us want to go back, or have immediate family to visit.

I'd love to go but have no immediate family there. My mother, who remembers the vibrant place that Cuba was in the 1950's, doesn't want to see the sad derelict it is today. Me, I remember the playground, the kindergarten, the front yard and the swings on our porch. At four, my world was limited.

How many people like me have the many thousands of dollars that it costs to visit Cuba, especially when our own economy is in turmoil?

The exciting change, for me, is that now we can once again send money to our Cuban family members. As long as the government doesn't get too big a chunk of it, I think my relatives on the island are going to have a much rosier life in the near future. It depends on how the rules are laid out. I may go back, but it will be with a Habitat for Humanity crew, or a church mission. One thing's for certain: those 25 cigars are going to stay on the store shelf. I was never a smoker, and you can't eat cigars.

It's Spring! Romance is in the air--at WalMart?

It was gratifying to read the big article on romance in today's New York Times. For one, it verifies what I've noticed in several economic downturns, that movie box office receipts and escapist literature sales stay strong. According to the Times article, it even increases: romance sales were up 7% last year according to BookScan, and that's probably low because BookScan does not track WalMart sales.

This is great news for romance authors, but tinged with caution: due to mergers and downsizing, the market has shrunk, and with it author advances. I think every career romance author would do well to diversify, writing for different houses, expanding to young adult and nonfiction.

I wish I could remember where I read recently in a blog that now is not the time to write the book of your heart. The blog's author recommended that aspiring authors write something commercially viable. She obviously does not know the ladies of Georgia Romance Writers, a pragmatic group of writers who write for the thrill, but with an eye out for the market.

We know that the bonbon-munching, martini-swilling author is a myth (well, except for the martini part, at my house) and work hard at our craft. Now's the time to get those proposals in the mail!

Can't open the link for the NYT article? Email me at bertaplatas@yahoo.com and I'll send you the pdf.

The Writing Blizzard and the Meandering Post

I've been writing like wild the last few days. I have one proposal off to my agent, synopsis and four chapters, and another one almost ready to go. I've also mapped out key scenes of the next Gillian Summers book and shared it with Michelle, who is on a writing blitz of her own. Knowing her, the next email she sends me will have the first 100 pages of the book. Speedy is her middle name.

The weather folk say we're in for some snow tonight, which I'll believe when I see it. In the meantime, I'll be shrink-wrapping my backyard to protect all my new green babies. I'm really sad about my dogwood, which is in full bloom and totally gorgeous. It's a tall tree, but before my house was plunked down in a shaved-out piece of forest, it was crowded by much taller trees. At some point a heavy, falling branch must have taken out most of its crown, so the tree grows straight up, then has one graceful branch, like a ballerina's gesture. When it's in bloom it looks like a Japanese flower arrangement. I'll try to snap a picture later and post it here, before the cold ruins it.

I had another idea for a book after church yesterday, and reading the earthquake coverage from Abruzzo today cemented the idea. I've been making notes like crazy. I would have wanted to live in the middle of Italy, until I found out about the earthquakes. Georgia is the best. Except for the occasional tornado that wanders through, we're immune from most bad weather events.