Jenyfer Matthews

Time to celebrate – the kids are back in school! Now that I’m not subject to constant demands for food or entertainment (in stereo) I can finally get down to work on polishing my latest manuscript for submission to the agents and editors I met at the conference.

Not to say I don’t still have lots of other things to distract me. My husband and my son have birthdays this month, a week apart, hubby first. Thank goodness I already have his present! I bought it way back in May when I was in Dubai and I can’t wait to give it to him. (Pictures later!) The only thing other thing I need to do for his birthday is track down the ingredients for a cheesecake and then actually make it. At least I hope it’s that simple. Last year I ended up walking around for more than an hour, checking every grocery in the neighborhood before I finally found the last container of sour cream anywhere in a square mile radius.

Next week is the boy’s birthday – which means hosting a party. Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time already knows how much birthday parties stress me out. I’m trying not to let this one get to me too much but it’s hard. There have already been a ton of party invitations sent out – for other people’s parties! I have to get ours out tomorrow, lest all his friends get booked up. He’s requested to have the party in our back garden – which is well and good except now I have to think up some sort of entertainment for a pack of 5 & 6 year old boys. I’m considering renting a bouncy castle. I think if I get a smallish one it will be reasonably priced – worth at least as much as my sanity, right?

If all that wasn’t enough (on top of our on going sports activities), the children have started in on me about their Halloween costumes. First they wanted to be Scooby Doo, now they have switched to mummies. My daughter suggested we could wrap her up in toilet paper. I jumped on that idea because Scooby Doo costumes are scarce in Egypt but toilet paper we’ve got. I can probably even do better than toilet paper. Since my husband wasn’t impressed with the toilet paper suggestion at all, I’ve taken it as a personal challenge to come up with some great mummy costumes for them.

So that’s what’s going on with me this month. Progress reports as progress occurs…

It’s been a week since I returned from the Womens Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy and I’m still a little high. It was a phenomenal experience.

Picture it: a wildly talented but largely unknown romance author attends her first writers conference, hoping to snag an agent and better yet a book deal for her latest project on the strength of a face to face pitch. She arrives in Rome, exhausted and travel worn after a red eye flight, only to run into another author (YA) and online friend in the airport. YA author friend introduces romance author to her traveling companions: two literary agents, a romance editor, and a Hollywood producer / screenwriter and his lovely wife. Romance author spends the rest of the short flight to the conference town regretting her travel attire and lack of mascara.

Romance author ends up being adopted by the glam group. She ends up pitching her book to one agent over dinner her first night, shopping with the second agent and romance editor another morning – finding the perfect Italian leather shoes for the closing gala for only 10 euro – and tossing around ideas with the movie producer during happy hour. Romance author stays in a quaint cave-like hotel in the historic area of town, requiring her to walk home alone late at night through twisting cobblestone streets, following signs to The Museum of Torture to find her way, often after consuming large amounts of fantastic food and wine. (Insert great potential here for pratfalls and other physical comedy here) By end of conference, romance author is invited to submit her full manuscript for consideration by all with whom she has spoken. She sells the book and the movie rights for a huge advance and lives happily ever after.

Sounds like the premise for a kooky chick-lit book doesn’t it? (The only thing missing from this above scenario is an affair with a sexy Italian man – and that was on offer too, only I didn’t think my husband would approve.) Aside from the thus far fictitious HEA ending (though some might also quibble with the opening), the above is actually a summary of my experiences this weekend while attending the Women’s Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy.

This was my first experience attending a writer’s conference and I have to say I think I’ve been spoiled for all future conferences. The location was definitely a draw for me – not only is it a relatively quick flight from my home in Cairo, Egypt but Matera is a World Heritage Site and has been the backdrop for several films, most notably The Passion of Christ. When we weren’t attending workshops, we were plied with food and drink – I hardly had time to work up an appetite between coffee break and happy hour buffets. But just in case you did still find yourself feeling peckish, the town was also having a food festival where you could sample and purchase local products. (I wasn’t the only one who bought chunks of stinky cheese!)

The most amazing part of this conference however was the opportunity to speak to industry professionals in such a friendly atmosphere. I had arranged appointments with the agents and editors before arriving but in the end I really didn’t need the appointments because there were so many opportunities to talk to people otherwise. The size of the conference – less than a hundred attendees at a guess – was what made that level of casual interaction possible.

If spending time socializing with authors, agents, and editors in such lovely surroundings isn’t convincing enough, here is another good reason to go to Matera – Italian designer leather goods. Need I say more?

Hailed by reviewers as “Janet Evanovich’s heir apparent” and an author who “weaves romance and suspense wonderfully”, Liz Jasper is the award winning author of Underdead, a cozy vampire mystery about a middle school science teacher who is bitten by an inept vampire and becomes almost undead. The sequel, Underdead in Denial, is available as an ebook from Cerridwen press.

Most of Liz’s early writing was of the dirty limerick variety (one finds fun where one can while getting an MBA and an M.A. in Economics), but she progressed to short stories and now writes mysteries. And why paranormals? After years of teaching middle school science, writing about blood-sucking demons was only natural. She lives with her family and cranky grey cat in Northern California where she is hard at work on her next book in the Underdead series.

You can read excerpts, reviews and maybe win something in a contest over at her website www.lizjasper.com.

Underdead in Denial
by
Liz Jasper

In the sequel to Liz Jasper’s award winning Mystery novel, Underdead, gorgeous enigmatic vampire Will is back and almost undead Jo Gartner is more determined than ever to avoid all things vampire and maintain a normal life. And what’s more normal than doing community service to help a lovesick friend? But getting dressed up in a Halloween costume for a haunted house fundraiser is not what Jo had in mind. Especially when one of the extras turns up dead…

Excerpt

“Something’s going on with you.” Crossing her arms, Becky gave the demo counter a quick, automatic check for spills and leaned against it. “And I think I know what it is.”

I started in disbelief. “You do?” It came out as a whisper.

“Yes. Let’s look at the symptoms, shall we?” She ticked them off on her fingers. “You haven’t gone on a date in months, you get here at dawn, leave at dusk and spend your weekends sitting alone inside your apartment eating nothing but takeout burgers and chocolate, when you eat at all.”

She narrowed her dark almond-shaped eyes. I swallowed convulsively, unable to look away.
“You’ve got chronic PMS,” she said.

“What? I do not have—”

She grinned and then her expression sobered. “I am worried that you’re depressed.”

I grunted in dismissal.

“Not that I blame you,” She looked around my classroom at the solar system dioramas, sagging volcano posters, and dusty mineral display and curled her lip. “Teaching eighth grade earth science would depress anyone. But I have a plan.”

“Oh no.” I knew her plans. It was because of one of them that I now occupied the strange and lonely world between normal human being and vampire. I sank deeper in my chair and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the sharp bite of disappointment. I longed to tell her—tell her what? I couldn’t explain what was really going on. It was too fantastical.

I was too tired today to make one of my usual excuses. Maybe if I fell asleep she’d go away.

“Better yet, I’ve already set the wheels in motion.”

My eyes snapped back open. “Becky, what have you done?”

Buy Underdead in Denial!
Prefer print? Liz’s first book Underdead is also available in print!

Wouldn’t you know it – I come back from a writer’s conference fired up and ready to get to work and the kids have a week off school for the Eid holiday. Not going to get anything done this week. Oh well…there’s always next week…

Eid Mubarak everyone.