~ Put Your Heart in A Book ~

The annual New Jersey Romance Writers Conference took place on October 19 and 20. Three members of STAR drove down to the conference: Jen Bokal, Joan Koster, and Rasha Selim.  As always there were wonderful speakers and great workshops. The opportunity to pitch your books to editors and agents is always a great feature of the conference.

Hearing successful romance writers is one of the highlights of the conference. To start off, Melinda Leigh gave an overview workshop on writing romantic suspense, but which really covered writing any romance. On Saturday, Virginia Kantra gave the breakfast keynote and Jane Porter spoke at the luncheon. Rebecca Zanetti and Hope Ramsey also gave marvelous workshops.

Although, the meals have always been delicious, the food this year was served buffet style so attendees could enjoy a choice of offerings and not be held up by slow service. There was more than enough to eat and plenty of dancing and fun at the Roaring 20s party on Friday night.

Here we are with Rhonda Penders, editor of Wild Rose Press

If you missed the conference this year, consider going down with a group of us next year.

submitted by Joan Koster