Tag Archives: Jodi L. Milner

Romantic Letters Conference 2024

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For the past few years, I have participated in the Romantic Letters Conference, an adorable writer’s conference hosted by the League of Utah Writers Romance Chapter. Even though I’m definitely not a romance author, I have a handful of classes that can apply to any author at any phase of their writing experience. This year, I presented a class called “Getting Unstuck: A Scientific Approach to Overcoming Writer’s Block.” It’s a class I’ve given several times that I think is a needed message in the creative community.

This year’s conference ended up being unusual. Normally, the class lineup and keynote follow the expected schedule and everything works smoothly. This year, however, the keynote had a last-minute emergency and wasn’t able to come. Anyone who has ever attended a writing conference, know that the keynote is generally the highlight of the day. It’s a chance to better get to know someone who is further along in their writing career and gain inspiration and insight from their journey.

When the reality of this predicament dawned on the conference organizers, they made a last-minute scramble to fill in the gap. Imagine my surprise when I received a slightly panicked email asking if I could pull something together and step in. The reason they thought I was the best pick? I’d won this year’s Diamond Quill award for my book Stonebearer’s Redemption.

Cue imposter syndrome in all its shiny trappings. Even now, even with that level of win, it’s still hard to believe that people look up to me for it. It’s hard for me to believe I deserve any special attention for it. But, at the same time, nods like this are really nice and I appreciate the gesture. I did work really hard to make that book amazing.

So I said yes.

But … I didn’t want the limelight all to myself. I said I’d only do it if my dear friend Rachael Bush, who just happens to be this year’s League of Utah Writers President, would come and share the keynote with me. Because that’s what friends are for. I think I owe her a pack of Oreos…

Our last-minute joint keynote went fantastic and was thankfully short. Rachael was able to share about the league’s mission and goals and her experience with being part of it, and I was able to share my path to becoming a Diamond Quill Winner.

For this conference and getting that opportunity, it all came down to being in the right place at the right time. Had I not agreed to present at this conference, a different deserving author would’ve had their chance to be their last-minute keynote. And that’s okay.

But I’m happy to have been given the opportunity.

Romantic Letters Conference promo card for Jodi L. Milner

Squirrel! Podcast for the Distracted Writer

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There’s a new podcast for writers who tend to get distracted. Created by Candace J. Thomas and myself, Jodi L. Milner, the aim of Squirrel! is to support, educate, and entertain.

Candace and I are both highly distractable people. We’ve both got families with kids that need our attention. She’s got a day job I have clients I consult with to help them reach their writing goals. We both volunteer way too many hours of our time for our local writing organization. And – we’re both published indie authors trying to continue to bring new books into the world.

So, yeah – you can say we understand what it’s like to really want to work on writing projects and getting distracted by life constantly.

But, there’s one thing that we’re both passionate about, and that’s helping other writers succeed in their creative efforts. We love attending and teaching at conferences and conventions and delight when writers come up to our table wanting to know more about the craft.

So, making a podcast where we can collect all this awesome information that we’ve gathered over the years simply made sense.

If you’re a creative person who needs a bit of encouragement and support in the pursuit of your own creative projects, Squirrel! was made just for you.

Each episode has a specific focus. Popular topics include productivity, craft, mental health, and character development. We aim for each episode to be between 20-30 mins – the perfect length for your commute or while working around the house.

Find Squirrel! Podcast for the Distracted Writer in the following places:

Cover Reveal – Stonebearer’s Betrayal

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Each phase of the publishing process brings with it a mix of excitement and carefully controlled terror. Excitement springs from completing another step and coming that much closer to bringing your book baby into the world. Terror lurks around each turn, because there is always the possibility of something going wrong.

Whoever compared creating a book to having a baby is absolutely right. Each month of a healthy pregnancy is cheered, each milestone celebrated, but disaster is unpredictable and always a heartbeat away. Until the baby is born, all mothers understand the fear of something going wrong as they carry their child. I know I did with all three of my pregnancies. I’m doing the same now with my book.

But, you can’t allow fear to stop you. In fact, if you aren’t doing something that scares you from time to time, then you aren’t stretching to meet your potential.

Allowing myself to trust my cover artist to create an image that represented the entirety of a project I’d been working on for years was scary. Really scary. I’m glad I did. She did amazing work.

So, here it is. The moment I’ve been teasing about for the last few weeks.

My cover reveal.

(Squee!)

Stonebearer's Betrayal

Isn’t it amazing?

A huge thanks to Ashley at Strange Devotion Designs for creating a magical cover for me.

Here’s the back cover copy:

A secret society of immortals, tasked to protect the world.

A demon bent on revenge.

A girl brave enough to fight for her family when the two collide.

Archdemoness Wrothe stirs the ashes from a long dead war, rekindling a fire that threatens to burn the world. Only the legendary Stonebearers of the Khandashii have the power to stop her, if they catch wind of her plans in time.

Katira didn’t believe the legends. She didn’t believe a person could alter the fabric of reality or live forever. She didn’t believe in the dark mirror realm or in the dangerous creatures prowling there either.

That was before the first shadow hound came for her.

Release date for Stonebearer’s Betrayal is November 13th, 2018. Available at online retailers where books are sold.

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Mini Blog Tour

Two awesome friends from the Twitter #DarkLitChat offered to help spread the word. As a thank you I encourage you to go check out their blogs, not just because I wrote mini articles there, but because they went above and beyond for me to help with my cover reveal.

Elesha at E’s Writing Journey

Rae at A New Look on Books

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Love staying in touch? So do I! Let’s connect. Pick your favorite platform, either here on WordPress, or you can also find me on  Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

 

Find me at Fyrecon 2018

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b6228817e7c6ee37bfcc7f548def5a6e-rimg-w720-h273-gmir.jpgWith Spring into Books (Utah’s Awesome-st Author signing and workshop) at the beginning of the month, paired with end of school craziness for my kiddos, June has been a wild ride – and it’s getting wilder.

Fyrecon, the conference that encourages writers and artists alike to “Burn Your Creative Path,” kicks off tomorrow – and they are kind enough to let me play!

Writing conferences are wonderfully gratifying because they give creatives a chance to spend quality time with like-minded people. They are my tribe and I love all of them. This year I decided to be super ambitious and offered three brand new classes to teach, with the hopes that perhaps one or two might be chosen.

And … they asked for all of them. Woohoo!

Needless to say, I’ve been working my little fanny off getting ready and I’m super excited to share the awesomeness that I’ve learned.

Here is my schedule – come find me!

  • Class – Overcoming Ego for Better Head Space (Thurs 11am, Building D2, Rm 318)
  • Panel – Portrayal of Death and Dying: Discussing the Philosophy of the Memento Mori (Friday 1pm, Building D2, Rm 111)
  • Panel – Medical Accuracy in Fiction: Common Pitfalls and What is a Better, More Believable Approach (Friday 3pm, D2 – 111)
  • Class – Gut Punch your Audience with Emotion (Saturday 9am, D2 – 117)
  • Class – Finding Balance in Storytelling: Not Everything can Explode all the Time (D3 – 341

For those of you trying to decide whether you want to go or not – come! If you register at the door for the whole conference it’s only $50 and daily rates range from $22-27. If you’re a student it’s cheaper than a hamburger, $10 dollars for the whole conference or $5 a day. Military gets a 10% discount. That’s a whole lot of amazing for an extremely reasonable rate.

If it doesn’t work out for you to come this year, be sure to like Fyrecon on Facebook to be the first to hear about future events.

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LTUE 2017

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jodimilnersocialmediaThe 2017 Utah writing conference season kicks off with the ever popular, and oh-so-affordable “Life, the Universe, and Everything” symposium on science fiction and fantasy. I’ve attended this particular conference a handful of times as a hopeful starry-eyed participant in the past.

However, this year for the first time ever, they let me play with the big kids. That’s right, yours truly got to be an expert panelist. If that wasn’t exciting enough,  I got to be a panel moderator as well, which is a huge first.

It’s hard not to read too deeply into the committee’s choice to include me, a mere short storyist. My qualifications as an author are still a bit thin. There are so many super talented and super published authors in Utah that you can’t throw a rock without hitting one. I’d love to say I was picked because they had seen some of my presentation work before and they were impressed.

The truth is, I apparently have in-depth knowledge of several obscure fields of study, knowledge that most gals in my position don’t have.  I also volunteered to be part of several obscure panels. My first panel discussed the realities of what happens at death. I haven’t personally died yet, so my experience is limited there. I’m holding off on trying it out until it goes on sale. Instead, I have worked in health care for both humans and animals and seen plenty of death that way. My fellow panelists included a firefighter, a seasoned RN and personal friend, a physicians assistant obsessed with cellular biology, and the moderator who I still haven’t figured out the background on. In fairness, he’s still puzzling out mine.

The other panel centered on the visual comedy of Rowan Atkinson. I know, I laughed too. death goes so well with visual comedy. On the panel was the founder of the LTUE conference itself, Dave Doering, and the TMA track head, Nick Mills, and another guy who apparently spent his childhood the precisely the same way I spent mine, watching late night PBS when all the British comedies came on. Yes, I didn’t have that many friends, why do you ask? Needless to say, having two fairly influential people on the panel stressed me out to no end.

To sum up – I had a great time and I believe that my panels went well. I wanted to attend a few other panels and perhaps glean a few nuggets of new writerly wisdom, but instead I hung around with writing friends instead, which honestly is the best part of the conference anyway.

A huge shout out to the following awesome people who let me play and were kind enough to let me hang out with them: Jared Quan, President of the League of Utah Writers; Candace Thomas, Eliza Crosby (who got a full manuscript request – you go girl!), Sarah Seeley, Chris Roche, DawnRay Ammon, Jenna Eatough, and all my other LTUE talented friends!

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