Retreat/Conferences

Harlaxton Manor Kidlit Retreat 2024

| jowuauthor

Ever since my agent sister Debbi Michiko Florence posted pictures from her experience at the inaugural Harlaxton Kidlit Retreat hosted by our friend best-selling young adult author Kristy Boyce, I was very eager to take part in this retreat myself! So, at the beginning of this year, I booked my spot in the retreat. 2024 is just flying by, and I can’t believe summer has come and gone!

Anyone else thinking of YA fantasy covers from the late 2000s through 2010s? Just me?

Last time I was in England was 2019, so this was a great excuse to return to the UK! For 6 days, I got to stay at Harlaxton Manor. There’s a whole Wikipedia page for anyone interested in going down the rabbit hole of the manor’s history. To make a long story short, it was built by a nobleman named Gregory Gregory (yes, that is really his name!), and is currently owned by University of Evansville. I loved exploring the manor, admiring the architecture, and getting good laughs over seeing my boyfriend’s name everywhere I go.

Oh will you look at that? There’s Gregor!

It was such a joy to write in such gorgeous surroundings every day, and switch up my location. I could write in the haunted library, the gardens, conservatory, ballrooms, wherever I wanted! I felt like I was in the castle from Beauty and the Beast. All my novels feature a castle in some shape or form, so it was a treat to be able to immerse myself in the experiencing of staying in one for a writing retreat. I liked pretending this was my home for nearly a week.

Afternoon tea!

Every day, on top of our writing time, we had optional activities and excursions that we could take part in. These included:

  • Afternoon Tea
  • Playing croquet
  • Garden tour
  • Pub tour (we visited 3 pubs and had dinner in one called Chequers Inn),
  • Visiting Belvoir Castle (pronounced “Beaver,” because the British hate the French lol)
  • Attending Kristy’s reading and signing of her book Hot British Boyfriend. Fun fact, the fictional school Emberton in her book is inspired by Harlaxton!
  • Day trip to York
  • Banquet to end the retreat
Made a feathery friend in York! His name is Scout

I completed revising an updated outline for a new novel, and sent it back to my agent before the end of the retreat. Mission accomplished!

Harlaxton felt so magical. I’m honestly a city girl, but I loved living in the manor in the English countryside so much, it actually felt jarring once I was back in a city like York and London. Not complaining. Kristy did such a phenomenal job creating a memorable writing retreat experience! It’s going to be hard to top a retreat where I get to write in a fairytale castle!

After the retreat, I took off to London, and enjoyed a few days there before catching the Eurostar train to Paris.

Look Ma! It’s the Olympic Cauldron!

Taking the magic of Harlaxton back home with me and continuing to work on my new novel!

First-Ever AAPI Kidlit retreat at Highlights foundation

| jowuauthor

This is a very late post 6 months AFTER the inaugural AAPI Kidlit Creative retreat at the Highlights Foundation. I meant to blog about this experience earlier, but in my backlog of writing and non-writing obligations, this kept getting pushed down my to-do list. With Halloween today, I figured it’d be a great day to write about this!

Remember how I mentioned I got laid off in my last post? Well, that was a total blessing because, for one thing, it gave me a great excuse to fly across the country to go to the first-ever AAPI Kidlit Creative retreat held on the Highlights Foundation campus out in the boonies in Pennsylvania! It’s so obscure, Scranton airport doesn’t accept many airlines (bye-bye Southwest), so scheduling logistics and buying plane tickets and getting all my transfer flights lined up like ducks in a row, only to end up dealing with multiple cancellations and delays, was a major headache.

The retreat started on Sunday at 5pmEST, and I originally planned to fly out of the Bay Area on Saturday morning, with one transfer in Seattle and another transfer in Chicago, so that I could get to Scranton Airport on Saturday evening and stay an extra night before the retreat started. BUT THEN, that Saturday morning flight got pushed up to Friday night around 7:30. Ok, that was annoying, but I’m sure I’d be fine staying overnight in the Seattle airport. When I got to the Oakland airport, the flight then got pushed to 8:30. Then 9:30. Then 9:55. After we boarded the Seattle-bound plane at 10:55pm, the plane rolled out onto the tarmac, only to suddenly announce “Oh JK, this flight is canceled.” Wow, THANKS BIDEN. And no one affected got hotel vouchers.

I got transferred to the San Francisco airport for a flight the next morning. Shoutout to my dad for being a real supportive MVP for getting me past midnight and then driving me to SFO at 5am in the morning…where my 8am flight ALSO GOT CANCELLED, and I got transferred to ANOTHER flight that would fly out around 12:30. I was wondering if this trip is even going to happen at all. Because of all the travel headache I was facing, the Highlights Foundation was so kind to book me a room at the inn across from Scranton Airport, I could cry from both elation and exhaustion when I finally made it.

Relieved to FINALLY be in my room on campus!

The next day, Sunday, when I FINALLY made it safely to my room on the Highlights Foundation campus out in the Pocono Mountains, I felt this wave of relief, of feeling like all of those travel headaches had been worth it and I was so EXCITED to finally be here! When I first stepped into my charming and adorable room, I felt like I had been whisked away into a storybook setting. I enjoyed walking around in the beautiful green landscapes during the day and various kinds of weather (I felt like I experienced a wide range of seasons here! Sun, rain, and snow happened all the days I was here), exploring the “haunted” house, hopping from writing spot to writing spot all around campus, and swinging on the swing.

Normally, I would think, “Wait, paying just to write with other writers? No critiques or workshopping or anything? What?” But because this was an AAPI-specific retreat, it was so rewarding to meet other AAPI writers in the kidlit community knowing that we could be comfortable within our cultural community. Many attendees are already traditionally published or aiming for traditional publication. I also got to meet my agent sisters, Sarah Park Dahlen and Debbi Michiko Florence!

Meeting my agent sisters in person, Sarah Park Dahlen and Debbi Michiko Florence

With all the time set aside for writing each day, I set the ambitious goal to write roughly 10k words a day to meet a 40k middle grade historical fiction novel goal by the end of the retreat. When I wrote my last words on the last evening of the retreat, it felt like a huge victory.

My guest entry in the room’s dedicated journal.

It was a magical time! Getting to escape to the mountains and meeting fellow AAPI Kidlit writers was such a rare opportunity, I was so happy I flew out to the East Coast for this. Afterwards, I decided to spend some extra days on the East Coast and Midwest, playing tourist in Philadelphia, visiting a good college friend out in Detroit, and taking the train for a short touristy afternoon around Chicago before flying back home. Now that I’m writing this blog post 6 months later, I absolutely would come back for a future AAPI kidlit retreat!

Big sur conference 2021 review

| jowuauthor

Seeing that it’s New Year’s Eve, I wanted to make sure I get in this blog post before the new year rolls in.

I’m absolutely happy that I was able to go to Big Sur Conference. I was originally on the waitlist, and when I was notified that a spot opened up, I asked my agent her thoughts. She said she thinks I would love it, so that convinced me to register and plan what I wanted to wear. I haven’t been to any conventions or big events for nearly 2 years now, and it feels weird for me to go to an event like this and not dress up. It’s not an event to me if I can’t dress up! I packed my Excalibur Night Parade of One Hundred Demons wa-lolita dress, and a reversible kimono dress that I sewed a couple of years ago. One side features a pattern inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, and the other side is a pattern depicting the story of Snow White with a Japanese-inspired flair.

My printed manuscripts ready to be critiqued, and my two dresses to be packed!

On Friday morning of the conference, I woke up at 5am to start heading down to Monterey and beat the traffic. I screamed in delight when the Princess Mononoke theme played on the classical radio channel! On the way, I called the hotel to let them know I’d be arriving a bit early. The gal on the phone named Tiffany was SO NICE and asked me about my writings and said she has a 9 year old son named Joe (similar to me lol!) and wants to keep an eye out when my book is published. I was so very touched! I do hope my book can get in his hands sooner than later.

All the agents, editors, and authors

Even though I am already agented, Big Sur Conference was a very valuable experience. Attendees came from a wide variety of backgrounds, and writing experiences ranged from those who were starting out to those who were already agented and published and wanted feedback on new work. What I appreciated about the conference was getting to meet the Andrea Brown agents, editors, authors, and fellow writers, and collect so much personalized feedback and implement them during revision time. The two mentors I was paired with were agent Jem Chambers-Black and author Victoria Piontek. I was in groups of 5 people (not counting the mentor), one group with 2 sessions with Jem, and another group with 2 other sessions with Victoria. This was so great, because I got such valuable feedback from groupmates and unique perspectives both from Jem and what she looks for as an agent, and from Victoria and her author perspective. When one of my critique mates asked me for spoilers, it was great to hear Victoria say, “Wait, I want to read it first!”

Working on revisions in front of the Christmas trees made me so cheery.

The Q&A panels with the editors on Saturday and with the agents on Sunday were great, too! At the agent panel, I asked them what happens when they go on submission with their client and they encounter an editor who turns down their client’s work, either because the editor has something that’s too similar, or because they are already publishing a work by an author who’s of a similar ethnic background. It was really great to hear their response and their actual encounters with those editors. They’ll blacklist editors who outed themselves as racist, discuss it amongst themselves and other agents, and keep track of which editors to not send to. It was so wonderful to hear them acknowledge that a culture and ethnic group are not monoliths and just because there’s an author from that specific background already published, it doesn’t mean that other authors of that background can contribute with their own perspectives. In the white-dominant publishing industry, it was so great to hear them say that to the conference audience.

The triangle of a good story: Character, Theme, and Plot

Dinner served each night was absolutely delicious and served buffet-style. Since we’re still in the midst of a pandemic and Omicron is around the corner, masks were worn, and everyone was very respectful. Unlike a convention crowd where there’s always someone who’s ruining it for everyone else (ahem, Anime NYC), this crowd was mindful of covid guidelines, and everyone had to provide proof of vaccination when registering for the conference.

Mmmmmm, tempting my sweet tooth!

Since it was December, with the holiday season in swing, my favorite place to work on my revisions was in the hotel lobby. There was a giant Christmas tree by a roaring fireplace, and I could sit on couches or at a table. It was almost like being able to work in a cozy coffeshop again, though I did love how upscale and beautiful the hotel atmosphere felt while also being warm and welcoming. I must say, receiving and implementing all the feedback I got throughout the conference sparked new ideas for revisions for the rest of my story and made me fall in love with my manuscript all over again. I felt so blissfully immersed in my new novel, I never wanted that feeling to end.

Cozy!

Would I choose to come back to Big Sur Conference? Maybe not 2 years in a row, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I’m at least very happy I had the chance to attend and experience this conference for myself, and would definitely recommend any children’s author with the goal of traditional publication to attend at least once, whether in California or in Massachusetts. This conference was a great highlight to the end of 2021 for me. Here’s to a bright new dawn in 2022!