I participated on a panel about Self Editing your work. I managed to only mention Editomat several times, and got a suggestion for a new feature to add: When a word was introduced to the language. The request came from a lady who'd editing a story that takes place in the early renaissance, but the author keeps using words that didn't come into common use until later.

This also came up in a recent critique group meeting - twenty years ago, I might pick up the phone and "ring" someone up. Now it would be a "call" or perhaps go straight to "text."

The "Tiffany" paradox was mentioned. The name "Tiffany" was used in the middle ages, but nowadays, it's strongly associated with the 1980s or exotic dancers (or both). It's historically legit to put Princess Tiffany into your historical drama, but the readers will choke on it.

I attended a panel on Sci-Fi and Fantasy romances. Apparently, that's a new hot thing. The publishers are diving all over this and making up new genres like "Paranormal Romance", "Romantasy", and more.

I decided to hit this panel partly because I was having an email discussion with a writer friend about the new "Romances for Men" trend. This is another new genre where the romance is a big part of the story, but the Men's Romances have a different set of plot points than the classic Harlequin Romance stories.

One interesting thing about the new romance movements is that these are being driven from the ground up, instead of top down. The fan-fiction writers have been giving away stories for free and building up enough momentum with them that the mainstream publishers are paying attention.

I knew that "50 Shades of Grey" was originally written as "Twilight" fan-fic, but apparently there were over 100 NYTimes bestsellers that came out of the "Twilight" fanfic movement.

I also attended a panel on self-promotion. Mostly, I now know more about what I'm not doing than I did before. A couple of the authors make TikTok videos almost daily, but there's no content in them. Just some music and a picture of your latest book, or a book you like, or a picture of you typing, or your dog, or a tree that isn't even yours.

And this sells books.

I write about imaginary worlds because they make so much more sense than this one.