I was just invited to attend Conestoga 9 in Tulsa this July. This is very cool and will be good exposure for me. I’ll be participating on panel discussions. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Cons are keeping me busy this year and that’s great.

Speaking of which, I think I mentioned a couple of entries back that I learned I’ll be doing two one-hour lectures at the OWFI conference in April. One of those will be “Dead Babies Count,” but I’m not sure about the other. Why don’t you tell me which of these topics sound most interesting to you?

1) Cross-genre Pollination — A lecture about reading outside your chosen genre to find elements you can bring back to the genre to keep it fresh. For example, finding inspiration for a romance story based on a reading of The Grapes of Wrath. Or setting a horror story in the Old West.

2) Newspapers to Novels — How to build credibility as a writer by establishing a track record of publication in your hometown newspapers. The basics of news reporting are discussed. This one would be hard to put into one hour; I have an outline to teach this subject in nine 3-hour installments, so you can see it’s pretty deep.

3) The Perils and Pecularities of Print on Demand Publishing — There isn’t much to say that’s good, but I can discuss the problems I’ve had with POD publishers, the way to handle book signings when a store won’t order your books, the importance of asking questions and looking at previous books, talking to authors, etc.

I’m leaning toward the first one. What do you think?