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[Lisa Laing included this from Jennifer Stevenson.]

I was a dedicated but clueless writer when I joined in the winter of 1998. Chicago North educated me in how romance works, sure, but they also educated me in basics of the publishing industry, information I’d been craving for twenty years. I learned the things that make the realization of my ambitions seem possible.

CN also prepared me to get The Call, prepared me to negotiate with agents as well as editors, prepared me for a realistic understanding of how success happens in publishing. I learned when to fire my agent (fired her soon after!) and when to hold my peace, do my job, and earn my clout. I learned how to impress my editor =after= she’d loved and bought my book, how to work with departments within the publishing company, how to negotiate the cover art and promotion issues which many authors will tell you are nonnegotiable.

CN has a library of over 700 tapes and CDs, recordings of seminars, workshops, and speeches by writers, editors, agents, book distributors, publicists, and other experts in the field. One winter, I listened to every one of them while trapped in traffic in my car. What Chicago North members couldn’t teach me directly, I learned through our library.

Best of all I got unremitting support. And laughed at a lot–I write humor. In the writer’s groups I’d attended before, too often the message was, “Why should you ever get published?” At Chicago North, the message was, “This can work. How can we make it work?”

In 2003 I sold my first book, TRASH SEX MAGIC, to Small Beer Press and CN taught me how to promote it. In 2005 I sold a two-book deal to Del Rey and landed a terrific agent. In 2006 CN gave me a wonderful opportunity to meet the Borders buyer for romance, which I could then parley into a third sale to Del Rey before the first two books had even been published. If I had not been prepared for these opportunities by my RWA chapter, I wouldn’t have known how to take advantage of them. I owe everything to Chicago North.

Jennifer Stevenson
TRASH SEX MAGIC
Small Beer Press 2004
THE BRASS BED, April 2008
THE VENUS MACHINE working title, May 2008
THE HAUNTED PORN FACTORY working title, June 2008
Ballantine Books