Photoshopped Taken by Vernice Dollar-Kappell/Studio 16
Well, technically it wasn’t a summer vacation, it was the RWA National Conference in NYC, but it’s as close to a summer vacation as I’m likely to get this year.
Here are the highlights:
- Scored a double win in the Booksellers’ Best Awards with The Demon Always Wins, for Best Paranormal Romance and the Patti Shenberger award for Best First Book. (Woo-hoo!)
- Received offers of help with promotion from several people. (Yay!)
- Had someone tell me The Demon Always Wins is “the best f*cking book I’ve read in five years.” (I’m still swooning.)
- Got to see the first African-American romance novelists ever win RITA awards. (And about damn time.)
- Did a book signing and gave away all the paper copies I had with me and had some folks sign up to receive free ebooks.
- Got to see a couple of plays–Drunk Shakespeare, an off-Broadway presentation of Macbeth with one slightly hammered cast member. and Ain’t Too Proud, the story of the Temptations, complete with great music and Tony-award-winning choreography.
- Checked out the Guggenheim Museum.
- Got slightly lost in Central Park with Jilly, accumulating 21,000 steps on my Gear before we got back to the hotel.
- Attended some great workshops:
- How to turn a premise into a plot.
- How to do a successful book release with Skye Warren (Best quote: “You’re either everywhere or you’re nowhere.”)
- How to create audio books. (The other Ladies were interested in that topic, too, so expect to hear a lot about audio books in the coming months.)
- Instagram for Authors aka Bookstagram
- Pick 3 topics and post on them regularly
- One should be pictures of your book(s), hanging out with flowers or coffee or pastries or whatever.
- Two other topics related to your brand.
- One of mine will be flowers, not sure about the other.
- Pick 3 topics and post on them regularly
- How to get your books into libraries:
-
Not photoshopped Taken by Vernice Dollar-Kappell/Studio 16
Paper books
- eBooks
-
- Facebook for the Marketing-Minded Author
- Too
- Much
- Information
- Implicit Bias training
- We’ll talk more about the workshops in the coming weeks.
- Got a new headshot taken..
- Proceeds went to ProLiteracy, a charity RWA supports that helps women achieve literacy.
- They gave me several different poses.The two in this post are the best. The tech guy erased all my wrinkles from the first one–and didn’t give me a copy of the undoctored version. I actually happen to be okay with my wrinkles. I earned them honestly and they’re mine.
- Which do you prefer?
Eight Ladies Writing 
Sounds like a jam-packed vacation! As far as the headshots are concerned, I love the unphotoshopped version. You’re beautiful!
I don’t know about that, but I prefer my face the way it really looks.
Thanks!
I agree with Alicia—the conference sounds like it was busy and productive for you. And congratulations on your book contest wins! That’s outstanding.
I like the un-Photoshopped photo also, although it has nothing to do with your appearance per se, wrinkles or otherwise. 🙂 I just think that the un-Photoshopped version looks less stark. The contrast on the Photoshop version is too strong for me—too much black and white (although I would crop your forearm; I’m finding it distracting). Both photos are nice, though. It would be hard to choose.
Cropping my forearm–the woman taking the photo said if the pose doesn’t feel awkward you’re not doing it right. Unfortunately, it also looks awkward. (And you should see some of the others–they look like I’m attempting to do a backbend.)
Sounds like you had a wonderful time at the conference – glad we were able to fit in some time together and glad I got to see you win your Booksellers’ Best awards.
As for the photos – I definitely like the untouched photo best.
I did have a great conference, and one of the best parts was getting to see you and a few of the other 8 Ladies. Hoping to see you all again in SFO next year!
That’s an exhausting vacation schedule, Jeanne, though a worthwhile one. I’m glad I got to share it with you, and very happy that you won the Bookseller’ Best double.
Like the other commenters I prefer your untouched photo, but I don’t think it’s the Photoshop. I like the angle, and your expression looks a little more relaxed, and as Kay says, the colors don’t contrast so strongly (though when I mouse over the image the colors get darker). They’re both nice pictures though, and I imagine that in thumbnail the close-up would be a better choice.
Personally, I’m planning a few days’ real staycation this week. On my sofa with a cup of coffee and a good book or ten 🙂
Trying to get back into the swing of real life this week, but it’s an uphill battle!
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