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Lisa See on going to dark places in fiction.

Editors and Writers Conferences
We Want to Meet You!
by Erin Brown
 

I remember my first writers conference well.  Many, many years ago, as a fresh-faced young editor in New York, I was invited to attend a small romance writers conference in a small town north of the city.  I couldn’t have been more excited.  Travel to an exotic locale (off Route I-91)!  Adventure!  Free meals (Limit: one trip to the buffet only)!  Two nights raiding the mini-bar at a snazzy hotel (well, a twenty-room motor lodge off the highway)!  I packed up my bag, dry cleaned my suit, and hit the parkway heading out of town. 

When I arrived, I met with the coordinator and I asked what time my panel would be the next morning.  She looked at me a bit confused and said, “Oh, well, you’re actually giving the keynote speech tomorrow.”  When I eventually came to on the worn carpet near the motel lobby restrooms, with the help of cold water and a quick smack to the face, she gave me the keys to my room (along with a saccharine smile and the line, “I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you!”) and the topic of my speech: “The Dos and Don’ts of Writing Erotica.” more...

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That is because such talk always carries with it the faint reek of survival. The writer, like every other Joe on the planet, is just trying to get by, albeit in somewhat more rarified air. And so writing is just a job, and the real point of any job, after all, is to put food on the table.  more...

It is 1876 and young Esperanza Gorst goes to work as a lady’s maid in the imposing British country estate of Evenwood. But she is not there by accident. Esperanza has been sent from France where she has been raised by her mysterious guardian Madame. What her Great Task at Evenwood is, or how she is to accomplish it, will only slowly be revealed, though she soon knows that the Baroness she serves—whom she must make trust her implicitly—is her enemy. more...

Over nine years ago, I found myself in the hospital after the birth of my second son, having lost near to half my blood.  Without going into (possibly) unwelcome medical explanation, suffice it to say, there was a glitch in the labor process that had resulted in my severe anemic condition. 

In the hospital, I was surrounded by concerned people.  People who had studied to be there, who wore white often and who wanted to take my temperature, take samples of what little blood I had left, and wake me from sound and much needed sleep.  I found these people caring, for the most part, but often fear-inducing.  more...