So I had no idea what to expect from the New England SCBWI conference. No clue. This year was different. I was so curious to see if there were any other self publishers. Writers I could talk crazy with about coding and html and marketing and price points. And how’d you do this and how’d you do that. And oh, wow I had trouble with that too….etc. I’ll be honest, I didn’t find too many.

But there were hundreds there and I just might’ve missed ‘em by a few seconds. Who knows?

I’ll tell you a secret that I only admitted to my roomies. I was a little nervous about how I would feel. There’s this little thing I call the residual-effect-of-spending-years-querying-agents-and-thinking-traditional-was-the-only-way-to-go. And I’ll be truthful. I felt it a teensy weensy bit. But it in no way made me doubt the path I’ve chosen.

If there were small twinges, lingering – one conversation took care of it all. Here’s the highlight, my friends. We ran into a long time author who has published with multiple houses, ghostwritten popular series, and is one of the most real people I’ve met. She’s had some great publishing experiences and some not-so-great. She’s self-publishing her backlist. And she encouraged us 100% percent to go for it as far as publishing our own work.

That was cool.

When I grow up and have years behind me in this industry, I want to be like her. Positive. Honest. Encouraging. Friendly. To all writers.

How about you? What do you want to be like twenty years down the road at a conference?

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