___________________________________________________________________________________________Published by Heart of Iowa Fiction AuthorsRegion 2, Chapter #135April 2009March 2009 1 www.hifarwa.org

WELCOME

Welcome to the April 2009 edition of Heartof Iowa, the monthly newsletter publishedby the Heart of Iowa Fiction Authors!A big thanks to Cindy Kirk traveling to ourMarch 2009 meeting and presenting herwonderful workshop "The Selling Synopsis".Check out Cindy's newestrelease,

Claiming the Rancher's Heart

, aSilhouette Special Editionrelease.For more information, visitCindy on her website,www.cindykirk.com.

OLD NEWS

2009 RWA CONFERENCE

Conference Bound? Register by May 31

for the early member registration fee of$425 ($500 for non-members). Registrationinformation is available on the RWA websiteat www.rwanational.org.This year's conference will be held inWashington D.C. and will feature suchexciting speakers as Janet Evanovich,Linda Howard, and Eloisa James.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!

Our meeting in May will be on the 16

, andwe will be making the trek to Des. Moines,where we will visit our sister chapter, IowaRomance Novelists. If we have enoughinterest, we may plan an overnight"brainstorming" session. Mark yourcalendar and plan on joining us for a chanceto meet other aspiring authors!

MEETING PREVIEW

April 2009

CARRIE LOFTY

"Snakebite Scenes and Hollywood Plots:Adding Emotional Action to Romance."

This month HIFAwould like towelcome CarrieLofty! She'll shareplotting strategiesas well asmeaningful ways todraw the hero andheroine together ina way that forcesintimacy, creates a shared history, andbrings their budding relationship intofocus. These "snakebite scenes" can befound in almost any romance, butthey're most effective in action-orientedstories where a good jolt to the systemhelps the hero and heroine realize whatthey mean to each other.

Carrie Lofty was born in California, raised in the Midwest, and found the love of her lifein England. She earned her master’s inhistory with a thesis on Old West outlaws.

What a Scoundrel Wants

, the hot,adventurous tale of Will Scarlet and hisdangerous lady love, was a December 2008 Zebra Debut, and

Scoundrel’s Kiss

, thesequel featuring a Spanish warrior monk and an opium addict, will follow in January2010.www.carrielofty.com

___________________________________________________________________________________________Published by Heart of Iowa Fiction AuthorsRegion 2, Chapter #135April 2009March 2009 2 www.hifarwa.org

NEW RELEASES

CONTEST RESULTS

Wildfire

by Roxanne Rustand is a 2009 WriteTouch Reader's Award Finalist! Way to go Rox!

"And Then There wasOne"

Take No Prisoners

by Cindy Gerard is a 2009RITA Finalist! Congratulations Cindy!

byBura RandolphFreeman

Are you entering contests? Please keep usapprised of your contest entry results! We loveto boast about our members!

andMary Freeman Boardman

2009 Program Schedule

Available onwww.amazon.com

Below is the anticipated program schedulefor 2009. Stay tuned for any changes oradditions to the schedule. It's a year full oftalented authors and exciting programs youwon't want to miss!

"Night and Day"bySherri Hansen

Jaunuary 24

- Cindy GerardFebruary 28

- Lois Greiman

Available onwww.amazon.com

"Beyond the Honeymoon"

UPCOMING RELEASES

March 28

-Cindy Kirk/ "The Selling Synopsis"

May 2009

April 25

- Carrie Lofty

Deadly Competition

- Roxanne Rustand

June 2009

May 16

- Trip to Des Moines I.R.N

Colorado Secrets

- Jacquie Greenfield

July 2009

June 27

- Jacquie Greenfield &

Terms of Attraction

- Kylie Brant

Pamela Nissen

August 2009

July 25

- Michele Dunaway

Save the Last Dance -

Roxanne Rustand

"Channeling Your Inner Superwoman"

September 2009

Waking Nightmare

- Kylie Brant

August 22

- Kylie Brant

Final Exposure

- Roxanne Rustand

October 2009

September 26

- Leigh Michaels

Waking Evil

- Kylie Brant

Feel the Heat

- Cindy Gerard

October - Roxanne Rustand

November 2009

Waking the Dead

- Kylie Brant

___________________________________________________________________________________________Published by Heart of Iowa Fiction AuthorsRegion 2, Chapter #135April 2009March 2009 3 www.hifarwa.org

Jan and Jen's Excellent AdventurePart Two: "Onward and Upward"

By Jan Schliesman, HIFA V.P.

There are two ways you can look at the creativeendeavors of our mutual admiration society. Youeither acknowledge our blatant attempts at fillingspace in the monthly newsletter or you believe ourwarped sense of humor and creativity willeventually lead us to great fame and fortune.Don’t ruin our fun and voice your opinion quite yetbecause we are just getting warmed up

☺

Last fall after the October meeting, Jenand I decided to team up and hold each otheraccountable for our writing. The best way to dothis (for us) was to pick a contest with a realisticdeadline that wouldn’t send either one of us intofreak-out mode. Jen was a contest virgin and Ihadn’t entered a contest in almost five years so itwas a good starting point for both of us.The GOTCHA contest offered threecritiques on your first fifteen pages for $25 and Ithink the deadline was around Thanksgiving. Wespent a couple weeks shooting pages back andforth to each other, trying to provide usefulcomments up until the final day. Then the entrieswere gone and the holidays were upon us. Weboth got a little side-tracked and suddenly the endof January was upon us. Jen remembered theGOTCHA results were supposed to be announcedsoon and I came home to a phone messagesaying I had placed in the contest.We shared our contest critiques with eachother and tried to pin down our judges commentsinto three categories: valid, possibly true andsimply ridiculous. At first it was easy to stronglydislike the meanest judge on both our entries.She either had an ax to grind or hated all ofhumanity and would probably kick kittens out ofmoving cars and brag about it. What kind of nastyperson would choose to judge a contest and thenbe so harsh to our fragile egos? We wereincensed.But a few weeks later, after we had timeto stop taking the criticism personally, thingsbegan to make more sense. What if the mean judge knew what she was talking about? What ifshe wasn’t a whack job out to destroy all of ourpositive plans with her negativity? What if shewas right?We flipped to a clean sheet of paper andwrote from the assumption that the worstcomments were the most valid. This meantdifferent things to each of our stories. Jen gotmany comments about her heroine being tooneedy and unrealistic. She re-wrote the firstchapter and created the character the judgesexpected to read about and boom…her story tookon a new direction.I got a lot of comments about my overuseof ellipses (…) and words ending in –ly. At theend of my first chapter I also had my heroinegiving up her gun just because the hero asked herto. Easy enough to fix with a couple commentslike “fat chance” or “you first”. Of course it’s notPERFECT and it’s not ever gonna be perfect, butit was BETTER. And I finally realized getting alittle bit better is a great goal.And speaking of goals, when was the lasttime you had one? It takes effort to track yourprogress and hold yourself accountable in anyendeavor. But writing is a beast with fangs thattakes some taming. And Jen is a lot braver than Iam.I entered a couple contests and got ickyfeedback and never wrote a word for TWOYEARS! Jen entered a contest, got icky feedbackand got over it! (Maybe she drinks heavily whenI’m not looking…)I wrote a few manuscripts, got rejectionsfrom a couple agents and convinced myself tohide everything in a file cabinet. Jen wrote amanuscript and sent it straight to an editor! Howbrave is that? She also makes me accountablewhen it would be a hell of a lot easier to fall backinto an old routine.So, onward and upward with our mutualadmiration society. You’ve got to aim high if youwant to reach your goals, and Jen and I areheaded to the top!

Jan Schliesman is the Vice President of HIFA and a2009 finalist in the GOTCHA! Contest.