Historical Novel Society 2024 UK Conference: My Experience as part of the Conference Team

“I’m wondering whether you might be interested in being part of the conference organisation team”

The invitation came in an email from my friend Tracey Warr on August 22, 2022. Tracey had recently attended the Historical Novel Society’s conference in Durham and had already jumped on the task of hosting the next. That was my kids’ first day of school in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where we had just moved from Fort Knox, Kentucky a few weeks before.

I remember reading that and being a little taken aback – I had been working with Tracey as part of the HNS Author Interview Team for awhile, but joining the conference team seemed a whole other level. You want me? Really? I was extremely flattered – and only a bit hesitant, as we knew we would be facing another move the following summer and had absolutely no idea where we would be in 2024 – but I was equally excited. What an opportunity! How could I say no?? So I hopped on in and didn’t look back.

And so began two years of EMAILS and ZOOMS and figuring out ALLLLLLL the things. We had a small conference team, with Tracey at the Lead, Richard Lee (founder of the HNS), author Katherine Mezzacappa, and me. There was a lot of brainstorming in those early months. What would be the theme? We settled on “From the Author’s Page to Screen & Stage” (which I geeked out over pretty hard. I LOVE reading the stories and then equally LOVE seeing them come to life – and there were so many great possibilities for this). Who would be invited to be keynotes? Who “fit the brief”, as I remember Katherine saying. I hopped into researching authors, even asking some of my friends who there favorite authors were, and had lists of suggestions. Things started coming together quickly and it was REALLY exciting every time Richard would announce that another author had agreed to participate.

Tracey put out a call for presenters and there were so many great ones to choose from. So many in fact, that Tracey then added an on-line Pre-Conference Program to fit more of them in. I joined Tracey for one of those sessions – “Tools for Historical Fiction Writers”, during which she presented on “Substack” and I presented on using “Canva”, which I am a huge fan of.

I worked on creating logos, ads, and promotional material. Badges and banners and awards. It was neat to try different ideas and see what stuck. My favorite was the symbol for the First Chapters Competition – the tree growing out of the book with blooming leaves. Just seemed to “fit” the idea of the contest perfectly. There are so many great writing contests out there – I loved that it was something both aspiring authors and more experienced authors could enter and that this was for unpublished submissions.

The contest was a great success for its first run. It was a international competition – there were over 400 submissions from 23 countries! I truly loved doing this. It was a lot of time, work, checking details, double-checking details, and organization, but interacting with so many writers around the world was a gift. I had to download and review every one of them before they would get sent to the judges – the variety of the stories, the settings, the characters, the plots was amazing. I can’t wait to see who wins the overall competition at the gala dinner tomorrow.

After the contest was running pretty smoothly, I started reaching out to the presenters for interviews. What an absolute treat this was – getting to interact with and interview the brilliant conference line-up was yet another gift. I hope you take a chance to read through them – so very inspiring – the prior post has links to them individually. If you had told me ten years ago, when I was sitting in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, trying desperately to finish Elizabeth Chadwick’s novels cradling two sleeping toddlers, while the three older kids were at preschool and the laundry piled high, that I would get to ask her questions one day, I would’ve laughed. The same with Diana Gabaldon, whose Outlander series I devoured book after book during nap times at our next duty station, and so many others as well. Life is funny sometimes 😉

My own writing pace definitely slowed during all of this, but I’m still writing. The time commitment for this was HUGE, but I have learned and gained so much from this. I’ve honestly gone out of my comfort zone and grown. I’ve made many new friends and met so many wonderful people. I know it’s already impacted my stories and how I approach my writing life in general, and I haven’t even seen the presentations yet 😉

The gut punch after working on this for so long was when things started falling apart for me being able to go in-person. I kind of felt it coming for awhile; hubs tempo here was pretty high, and then after he was promoted (so proud <3), it kicked up even higher. You never know what’s coming our way and heaven knows the Army has always liked to change my / our plans (cough . . . courthouse wedding). And with my family not being able to travel, it was a hard realization that I couldn’t go. So here I am hanging out in Italy with the kiddos, instead of the medieval Great Hall in Dartington.

But! Shiny Silver Lining – I get to host the virtual portion of the conference with the amazing Jenny Quinlan (of Historical Editorial and HNSNA). I’ll be getting up early to brew some coffee and log on – it’s going to be AMAZING! Can’t wait to share with you about it 🙂