A day at ACFW: One author’s experience…

My mind is still trying to process all that happened yesterday. I woke up praying for this conference and praying for all the people I connected with yesterday. Here is the scoop.

First, I had breakfast with other Amish Authors: Kim Vogel Sawyer, Suzanne Woods Fisher, Vannetta Chapman, Jerry Eicher, Mary Ellis, Also joining us was Dianne Burnett of CBD.com (love them!) We had a great time talking about all things Amish–and just having fun getting to know each other better.

After that was the main session. It was awesome seeing nearly 700 Christian writers worshiping together. It must be a beautiful sight to God. It also gave me a glimpse of how He sees things. He doesn’t care who’s published or non-published, who has won awards or who has the most rejection letters. In His eyes we are all His beautiful sons and daughters.

I attended a workshop taught by Julie Gwinn from B&H, Allen Arnold from Thomas Nelson, and Jim Rubart amazing-author-dude (yes, I’m making that his official title).

Next was an appointment with Jeane Wynn from Wynn Wynn media. She’s working on my publicity for my Amish novels. Yeah!

I was blessed to have lunch with Marcia Nelson from Publisher’s Weekly. You can follow Marcia on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/PWreligion If you don’t know about Publishers Weekly and you’re a writer, you need to. It is THE place to go for resources about books and the publishing world.

After lunch I taught a 2-hour workshop with Cara Putman. She’s one of my favorite people ever and the workshop went great! The time flew by and we had so much fun. I’ll let you know when you can order the workshop cd.

After my workshop was a general session with our wonderful keynote Tracie Peterson. She reminded us to turn to God continually for the HUGE task of writing for Him.

Then … an appointment with my amazing agent Janet K. Grant from Books and Such. We talking about books releasing, books I’m working on, books that I’m writing proposals for … which took up an hour! I’m so thankful God has brought this amazing woman into my life.

Next was dinner with the folks from Revell at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. I had the most amazing filet ever. But the conversation was even better. I sat with Mesu Andrews, Andrea Doering (editor at Revell), Lynette Eason, and Suzanne Woods Fisher. I could have talked to those women all night! But I couldn’t because next was the Summerside Dessert.

It was appropriate they were they end of a great day because Summerside is like the cherry on the top of a dessert for me. Susan Downs, Suzanne McDonough, Lindsey Stout, and Rachel Meisel are super fun, super energetic and super cool. I drifted off to bed last night with a smile as large as the St. Louis Arch!!