Moonlight & Magnolias 2013

The excitement is building, tonight Georgia Romance Writer's will bestow their prestigious Maggie award to the brightest and best of the Romance industry. The program will begin with the unpublished division and progress through each category until, finally it reaches the published categories.

If you've never been to Moonlight & Magnolias Writer's Conference, you don't know what you are missing. I love Moonlight & Magnolias. I cut my writing teeth at M&M! I attended my very first M&M way back in the stone age. Or the 80's anyway. For years I attended every year. M&M was in fact, the high light of my year. For fifteen years I attended GRW meetings and M&M faithfull without missing a single one. It was the wind beneath my wings, the life in my fiction. It made my soul sing.

Then life got in the way and I allowed it to do so. For way too  many years, I allowed "life" to keep me away from writing and the organization I loved. My life was not the same, there was something missing. I was not complete. I missed my friends and fellow writers.

Finally, I found my way back into the fold. My life returned to normal, the sun began to shine again and I was able to write.

In early 2013 I sold my first book. I don't  think I would have done that if I hadn't returned to my friends in GRW. Friends who understand when I say there are people talking in my head. Friends who don't call for the men in the white suites because they think I'm losing it. Friends who understand the special anguish and pleasure a writer feels as they open a metaphorical vein and spill words onto paper or computer screen.

Do you have the support of a great writers group? If not, then take thyself out and find one! Now, I've got to go, it's almost time for the Maggie Awards.

Happy Writing!