10 Benefits of Broad Universe Membership

As some of you noticed, I took a brief hiatus from blogging. I had a lot of overtime at work… and there was a lot of awesome things happening with Broad Universe! As no one has yet hooked me up with a personal time machine (or a personal David Tennant, but that's a different story…), I had to give things besides the blog priority.

But I'm back! And as it's still Writerly Wednesday, I want to share with you the biggest thing that's helped in my fiction writing career:

Broad Universe

As part of the community, I've made some amazing friends and business contacts, learned a lot, and had a place where I felt celebrated and supported. As an organization, we offer this to any woman writing or publishing in the many speculative genres through our discussion list, the Broadsheet publication, and the community we build online and at conventions. As a member, I'm supporting fellow women through our mission… and getting these benefits:

Spiffy Broad Universe Pins!

Show the world you're proud to be a Broad, unafraid to display your awesome feminine power, willing to help your writing sisters!

Ooh, shiny!

Post to the Broad Universe Discussion List

Anyone can join the discussion list on a read-only basis. That's pretty cool in and of itself because there's open calls, news about signings, releases, contests, and lots of great information about the publishing industry from brick and mortar stores to epublishing. Members get to be in the thick of it: asking questions, adding opinions, sharing news, networking with Broad editor, authors, and professionals.

Bad-ass faeries need my writing and reviews? To the laptop!

Promotion through Advertising

With our 10th Anniversary, one of the things Broad Universe has started doing is advertising. We've taken out ads in Locus, Ralan.com, Realms of Fantasy, and many convention booklets for the organization and to honor member achievements.

Conventions support our writers… we support conventions with ad $ = Win-Win!

Print Catalog Listing

Every year, Broad Universe puts out a New Releases catalog that we send out to convention faring Broads or Broads running local events. This catalog informs hungry readers of available books by members so they can sate their voracious appetite.

So… Many… Booooks… ~drool~

Online Catalog Listing

Broad Universe also offers an online catalog, and as we develop our brand new website, the listings will come up in regular search engines, helping more readers find books by their favorite authors, on their favorite topics, and in their favorite genres.

Gay, angel-ghost pairing… AND steampunk? w00t!

Broad Universe sponsored Local Events

From local libraries and coffee shops to the Library of Congress, members of Broad Universe have been able to meet readers and audiences beyond their genre and with the support of other members as they read, talk, and sign their books.

Enjoy an afternoon of intergalactic travel, dragons, and lattes…

Promotion via our Social Networks

Broad Universe has accounts on Facebook and LiveJournal, as well as an online newsletter dedicated to member happenings. Members can use all of these avenues to promote their work, their achievements, and any events they are running.

I can haz Broad Universe?

Rapid Fire Readings

Hearing an author read can inspire a reader to become a fan. Reading aloud effectively comes with practice… and not everyone is a big enough name to land her own reading (or draw enough of a crowd) by herself. RFRs give writers a chance to practice reading in short bits and among supportive colleagues. Not only that, the more readers, the bigger the audience, the more potential fans for everyone!

It's just 5 minutes. You can wow people in 5 minutes, trust me!

The Broad Pod

Taking the RFR and broadening (take or leave the pun) the audience beyond a physical location at a convention or other venue and into the infinity of the Internet - because, you know, orbiting aliens might be pirating our broadcasts - is the idea of the Broad Pod podcast. Give fiction-hungry listeners a taste of several pieces so they may seek out more.

Wait! They know we're listening?

Book Tables

At conventions where there's enough Broads willing to help, Broad Universe may purchase a dealer's table and cover the taxes - taking no cut of the authors' profits - so that members may have an extra venue to sell their books. Even for members who cannot make it to conventions, many of us will step up and let them mail us books to sell on their behalf.

So, we got your vampires here, your androids there… your dystopic future over here… What's your pleasure? All of them? Great!

xx

In any case, being a member of Broad Universe has become an important part of my writing career, and I was happy to be able to renew this year with an extra donation to help women who want to join but cannot afford.

Please take a minute to find out more about Broad Universe, or share some of your stories about BU or your favorite organization that helped you in the comments!

Wiscon: A lot of Memories, not a lot of Photos

I started going through the pix of Wiscon before writing this post. I think I've mentioned before that I am not a photographer?

I remembered to take out my camera when other people yanked theirs out. And sometimes, I just asked people to email me copies.

I haven't gotten any photo emails yet. -pout-

So, I'll tell you a little more. I AM a writer after all. (There are some photos later on.)

In any case, the Motherboard meeting went really well. We accomplished a lot. I still need to write up the minutes, but that will get done tomorrow. Long story short: I'm wonderfully excited about being part of Broad Universe in what we've done, what we continue to do… and the really fabulous things we WILL be doing!

Thursday night had me meet JJ… who I didn't ask if I could blog about her, so I'll just include her first name. In any case, we were kindred spirits who met in the hall and ended up chatting and hanging out until the wee hours. I owe her a delicious dessert and tea next convention we meet.

And to me, this sort of thing is exactly what I love so much about conventions - and why I take so few pictures. Living the unexpected fantastic. I've made a lot of friends at conventions - and happily lost - lost is a bad word, FOUND hours - in conversation and just "hanging out" with some of the most amazing people who change my life. While I'd never hope some of these meetings were once-in-a-lifetime meetings, some have been, so I let each touch my soul and be part of my person. These moments compose my being.

Since joining Broad Universe, I've found myself missing panels (and I LOVE panels) that I wanted to attend because I am getting to know an amazing woman who's also at the table with me, or someone buying a book, or someone I sort-of recognize in the hall… And I gain so much more in that one conversation.

Wiscon had even more special moments.

I met up with other attendees at the airport, and we kept running into each other at the convention. One of them helped me find my Bad-Ass Faerie 3 novels that had been mis-delivered! Another is someone who I'd only known from livejournal, but who's posts I love - she was even sweeter in person.

All of the panels I attended or was part of were very good to excellent. As I mentioned Friday, the Future of Food was definitely my favorite, but really, all were a lot of fun! Thanks you to some great panelists!

I didn't even mention on Friday about the Rapid Fire Reading, which was also great! We had a good showing, despite my utterly forgetting to bring the chocolate Amy Hanson (one of the Broad Universe Founding Mothers) remembered to pick up for me along with important party supplies for that night. There wasn't a single reading that I didn't enjoy - and it was quite the buffet, too. Humor, horror, action-adventure, self-discovery, poetry, prose, ghosts, rituals and breaking rituals…

If you're at a convention with a Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading, just go. Trust me!

And after the RFR, Kimberly Long-Ewing kindly drove me in her super-sci-fi-fantasy Prius go shopping for party stuff! We hit a Hy-Vee - which is one of those supermarkets where I know I've interviewed someone but had never actually been in yet - and got everything we needed and then some.

Ada Milenkovic-Brown, Phoebe Wray, and Kathryn Sullivan met us back at the room and, with their help, we were ready to party by 8 - and damn - the room looked good and the food was perfect!

Throughout the party, I had a lot more of those magic meeting moments. I ran the "bar" of tea, coffee, beer, sodas and wine. (The wine took an adventure on its own, but F.J. Bergman & her hubby made sure it finally found its way to us - and we were even happier!)

There were between 130-140 attendees at the party, which made the simple hotel bedroom feel HUGE by the time we got around to clean-up with help from Ada and her very cool son who didn't need a chair to help us take streamers down. Several people took our pamphlets, and I hope we inspired more new members - or at least more women in writing overall.

In all, Wiscon was an amazing convention. Yes, I missed many good friends of mine at Balticon, but it was an experience I won't trade away - and I am so looking forward to next year!