I spent much of the weekend at events, first as the keynote speaker at the annual Irving Club Tea in Lockhart, and then as the keynote speaker at the Tarrant County College’s Writing’s A Snap Conference.

Both were great fun, and I couldn’t have felt more welcome (as in, people were incredibly nice, laughed at my talk–at appropriate moments–and bought books.  Can’t beat that!).

Between the two events, I listened to some classes on CD from screenwriter William Martell, and folks, let me tell you, if you haven’t heard of Bill and his ScriptSecrets website, you’re missing out (and, yes, I’m talking to you novelists, too!).  I listened to Guerrilla Marketing (great ideas even if you’re not writing screenplays), Writing Indies, Writing Thrillers Part 1 and 2 (fabulous discussion and very thought provoking) and Ideas and Creativity (wonderful, and inspirational, and damn Martell, I came up with several new ideas that I have No Time to write!).  You can learn more at the Script Secrets website or check in over at my J.K. Beck blog, where I’m talking about writing and inspiration and Bill’s books and CD classes.

So, Friday started with me dumping my children on my good friend Aaron (is that not one of the coolest sights?) so that my girls could play with his little girl until my husband got off from work and gathered the kids up. (A million thank yous to Aaron from me!). After that, I got on 183 and headed off to the charming little town of Lockhart.

The Irving Club, I learned, is the oldest women’s club in Texas and has been permanently housed at the Eugene Clark library since the library was built.

The ladies were awesome, and the building was fabulous!

Check out these pics of the event, the room, and the incredible food!

I felt royally spoiled!

In talking to the ladies, I also learned about a great opportunity for all you writers out there.

A ghost story contest with a (drumroll!) $1000 prize! The proceeds go to the upkeep of the library building, and considering the beauty of the building that’s a worthwhile cause.

The contest is the Scare the Dickens Out of Us contest, and the deadline is still a long way off. So be sure to check it out!

We wrapped up with a booksigning and general chatting and it was so much fun! The ladies also gave me an awesome gift basket (thanks!) that I forgot to take a picture off (bummer!). I have, ahem, already finished off the candy. The wine will be opened in an hour or so (of when I’m typing this…no, I’m not indulging in the morning!).

After that, I got back on 183 and headed to the relatively new tollroad that skirts Austin’s horrific stretch of Interstate 35. Then it was about 3 hours of heading down one road. It’s a boring drive, but I had the afore-mentioned Martell CDs to keep me company, so I was happy and the trip zoomed by.

I found my hotel (thanks to the conf for putting me up!), adjusted my Sleep Number bed (how fun is that?) and pulled out my laptop. I didn’t get nearly as much work as you’d expect done. Having trained myself to write between interruptions by the kids, it’s now hard to write knowing there will be no interruptions. Sigh.

But I did indulge in some of that chocolate!

The next morning I headed off to the conference and met Liz Lounsbury for the first time in person (she’s another Harlequin author and was coordinating the conference. She’s awesome!).

I also met Marianna Jameson, an online friend who I finally met in real life. Yay! And a bunch of other people participating in the con, including O.K. Carter, a columnist for the Ft. Worth Star Telegram and Alan Birkelbach, the 2005 Texas Poet Laureate (how cool is that?).

I thought I took more pics, but apparently not. Here’s Liz giving an introduction, and a shot of some of the participants and faculty/instructors/panelists.

We started with a Q&A panel (well, my part started. The conference was an all-morning affair, and I rolled in about 11) and then we had lunch (fajitas!) and then I gave a keynote speech, which went great. I think. The downside of reading glasses is that I can no longer see audience faces. But I got laughs and questions after and lots of people stopping to comment and have me sign their books, so I’m calling it a big success. Most of all, I had a great time.

So thanks to the folks in Lockhart and Tarrant County for a great weekend!

Reviewing the Purrfect Pitch iPhone app over at my J.K. Beck blog!

Today in 1962, John Glenn, Jr. became the first American to orbit the earth.

read more at J.K. Beck.

…over at J.K. Beck.  Go check it out and see what Jess is up to.  It’s cool!

via J.K. Beck.

Thanks to Affaire de Coeur for making me the January/February author of the month, and for putting together such an awesome issue. (And you can subscribe online and download the issue!)

The article talks about the Blood Lily Chronicles (TAINTED, TORN & TURNED) and me in general. Check it out!

I’m lazing here on the couch watching the kids play Battleship with their dad, and I thought-”hey, great opp for a review–on the run blogging!”

I like this app. It’s handy and easy. You’re not going to be doing an HTML heavy entry from it, but would you really want to?

Upsides- ease of use-you just start typing, and photos embed where you tell them to. It lets you set up lots and lots of blogs, which is cool, and you can post simultaneously to multiple blogs. I’m doing that now with juliekenner.com and jkbeck.com

Downsides: I’ve lost work I thought I’d saved. Lesson learned-compose in another program and paste. Also, it tends to give me an error if I try to include more than 1 photo. (Catherine, my kiddo, tells me she doesn’t have that problem, so it may be a total size issue rather than the number of pics). I have 3 photos in this entry. We’ll see if it posts thru.

Also, the image inserted has to be in your library or camera roll- you can’t snap and go (though I typed, closed, snapped, and opened right up to my draft)

Also on the downside, there doesn’t appear to be anyway to include tags or categories or hyperlinks. If that capability exists, it’s not intuitive.

The app is 2.99, and since I can’t include a link, just search for Blogpress in the app store. There’s a lite version, but I can’t speak to it. All in all, I’m giving 4 out of 5 iPhones to this app, which may be a little generous considering the lack of certain features and the occasional lost data, but on the whole I like the app, it’s simicitu and it’s ease of use.

Later, I’ll review the WordPress app.

{{Please post comments over at J.K. Beck! App reviews are a regular feature over there!!}}

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

My name is J.K., and I’m an iPhone App-oholic.

Seriously. It’s rather scary, though less expensive than being a Desktop App-oholic. (So many apps are free, free, free!)

But rather than let some of my fun, productive, useful and, yes, crappy-ass Apps simply sit on my phone doing their little app things, I thought I should review them. And so the All About Apps category is going to be a regular feature of the blog (you gotta love regular features–it takes away that “what the HECK should I write about” problem).

via J.K. Beck.

Seeing as I am J.K. Beck, I’m an app-aholic, too.  Come join me over at my J.K. Beck site, where I’ll be reviewing all my little iPhone goodies!

LEGO building blocks are, truly, some of the coolest toys out there. Now, I don’t qualify as a major geek I can’t write machine code, and I don’t own a Wii, but I definitely appreciate the several stories tall Lego creations that you can find in cool places like the Times Square Toys R Us and the LEGO store at Disneyland.

via J.K. Beck.

I recently signed up for Google Alerts, and let me tell you…talk about an education.  I knew my books were appearing on Torrent sites (because I send a never ending stream of “you’re violating my copyright, please take this down” emails), but I had no idea how MANY torrent sites until I signed up (which is weird because, like 99.9% of authors out there, late at night when the manuscript is going slowly, I’ll Google my name, just to see what’s out there, and I would only rarely find these sites.  GA finds tons.  Several per day.  Damn depressing.)

So I thought this post was particularly appropriate, and very informative.  My husband works in a school, and from what I hear about what the kids talk about, most of them just don’t get it.  It’s out there, online, how can it be bad?  But it is, because, hey, it’s stealing.  Folks need to be educated, folks.  Pass it on.

“Piracy.” It sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? The high seas. Adventure . . .

But there’s nothing romantic about the case in Minnesota where a woman was fined $2 million for illegally downloading 24 songs and sharing them with others. Last Friday, the judge slashed her fine dramatically – by more than $1.8 million — saying the initial punishment was too much.

via Blog – Murderati.

Hey! My alter ego website is live! There’s information about my upcoming Shadow Keeper series–including awesome advance quotes and the back cover copy of the first two books, a link to join the mailing list, a link to enter a contest to win a Kindle and an ARC, and lots more. Plus a blog with fun features like The (mostly) Daily Factoid, The Cocktail Hour, and other fun stuff.

I hope you check it out!