2018 Dublin Writers' Conference

Back in Dublin! From arriving at the airport, riding into the city from the airport and stepping down from the bus in O’Connell Street, there was something rather familiar.

Once again, I’d been invited by Laurence O’Bryan who heads up the Books Go Social group to speak at this very friendly festival. Although I’m waving CARINA, my latest book, around, and did mention Roma Nova (thank you Catherine pullman for the prompt), my main subject was outline a skills audit for newer authors.

People have more skills than they think and they’re often transferable from their day job or a previous job. (More here: Do you have transferable skills for the business of being an author?)

You can see the full programme here, but some stand-out messages of the weekend were:

  • have a terrific, genre specific cover
  • have your manuscript professionally edited
  • embrace marketing and hone business skills
  • put yourself in the place of your reader and engage with them
  • research your book world thoroughly
  • research the publishing options open to you

With David Gaughran and Susanne O’Leary

But the joy of any conference is the people. Attendees and speakers came from Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, the US, Norway  to my knowledge. I met up with longstanding friends, (Eliza Green, Wendy (H) Jones, Susanne O’Leary, Catherine Kullman, Pam Lecky), admired and chatted to indie icons like David Gaughran, and made many new friends like Alan Gibson and his colleague JoAnn from the US).

With fellow Alliance of Independent Authors member Eliza Green

Laurence O’Bryan looking serious

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, the convivial atmosphere was enhanced by many chats in the bar!

A sincere thank you to Laurence and his team, especially Tanja and Elisabeth,  for all their hand work before and during the conference. They were pleasant, practical and patient the whole weekend.

 

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers –  INCEPTIO,  PERFIDITAS,  SUCCESSIO,  AURELIA,  INSURRECTIO  and RETALIO.  CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available.  Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  

  

  

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.