I enjoyed our Orange County chapter’s April meeting for RWA on Saturday. Well, I mostly enjoyed it. I brought in a never-before-used insulated coffee canister and within seconds of sitting down for the meeting I spilled scalding hot cocoa all down the front of me. OUCH! My bottom lip blistered and my chin was red, but after frantically applying ice for a while it eventually lessened to a mild discomfort. As I type this, three days later, my bottom lip is still numb, and the skin has hardened into a stiff line. Lesson learned; never assume you know where the hot stuff is going to come from when trying a mug for the first time. Fingers crossed my lips will be kissably soft again in no time.
How did I get so off topic?
The thing I wanted to spotlight about Saturday’s meeting was the inspiring women that abound within my RWA chapter. (I’m sure there are inspiring men too, but they are overwhelmingly outnumbered. I think there’s four men total? Not sure. OCCRWA men – roll call! Give yourself a shout out and inspire the masses with your genius and perseverance!)
In just one meeting I heard about authors pitching to Hollywood honchos, not one, but TWO cases of an editor leaving a publishing house (which is the kiss of death for your manuscript if they happened to be YOUR editor) but through miraculous circumstances (and dogged determination on the part of the authors) they managed to recover their books and make them available to the masses, and an author celebrated publishing her ONE HUNDREDTH book. To which I say, “Daaaamn Daniel! Back at it again with your epic stories!”
If all that wasn’t enough, our fearless leader and chapter president, Nichelle “Nikki” Scott-Williams is graduating with a Master’s in English and Creative Writing concentration in fiction. I find her story particularly inspiring. She is a single mother to two young kids, works full time, was going to school, and STILL managed to crank out novel after novel – she has twenty novels and short stories to date!
Nikki writes under the name Nikki Prince, and you can check out her steamy novels at authornikkiprince.com
Nikki plans to go for another Master’s in English, and then go for her PhD! Not too shabby for a woman that used to struggle with a learning disability. She is graduating with a 3.9 GPA and even managed to score a B+ in statistics despite math being a challenge.
We’ll miss her at next month’s meeting, but we know she’ll be rockin’ that mortar board as she struts across the stage to receive her degree.