RWA-WF Board 2012
President — Laura Drake
VP Programs — Christina Lorenzen
VP Communications — Kecia Adams
Wise Woman — Pamela Morsi
Secretary — Amy Sue Nathan
Treasurer — Barbara Burnham
PAN Liaison — Sharla Lovelace
PRO Liaison — Orly Konig Lopez
Laura Drake is a Corporate CFO as well as a motorcycling, fly-fishing grandma with a serious Pro Bull Rider obsession. Within days of being elected to the RWA-WF board, Laura was informed of her first sale – a three-book deal with Grand Central. It’s going to be a busy year!
Laura has been active in RWA for years, serving as her local chapter’s treasurer, and RWA-WF Chapter’s PRO Liaison. She is excited to take the reins from our founding President, Therese Walsh. Laura aspires to lead well, assist members to reach their goals, and continue to give a voice to romantic women’s fiction writers.
Christina Lorenzen left years of paralegal work behind to begin a writing career when her son was born. After twenty years and two hundred fifty published articles, she won a Specialized Press award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2006 for a women’s health feature article. A year later she started to get the itch to get back to fiction, something she hadn’t pursued since high school.
After a few years of stumbling, starting, and stopping, she completed her first women’s fiction novel for the inspirational market. In September she completed a novella for an Avon Romance contest and is now working on Garden Variety, her second women’s fiction novel.
Christina has been an RWA member since 2008. In March she made PRO. In addition to RWA-WF, she is a member of the Faith, Hope and Love Chapter, where she volunteers as the O.T.H.E.R.S. chairperson; Dunes & Dreams Chapter, where she is the blog coordinator; and Long Island Romance Writers, where she will be working on the annual Agent/Editor Luncheon committee for 2012.
Christina blogs about her quest to land a publishing contract at http://www.countdowntocontract.wordpress.com. She lives on Long Island, New York and is wife to a NYC Fire Department Lieutenant and mom to two young adult children.
Kecia Adams put a career in the Navy behind her to “settle down” with her own personal hero. Together they traveled to exotic destinatons, but returned home often enough to figure out that love really does make the world go ‘round. It was while touring in Italy, in fact, that Kecia began to write down the stories that had been in her head for years.
Now, when she’s not spending ridiculous amounts of time at the computer, dreaming up interesting characters and spicy conflicts for her fiction writing, she loves to ride her bike really fast and shop for shoes with her two daughters—heroines (and world travelers) in the making.
Kecia’s been a member of RWA since 2005, participating in RWA Online and Passionate Ink chapters. Her first contemporary romance, The Vendetta, is available now from e-publisher Etopia Press. You can find out more about Kecia and her writing at her blog: www.KeciaAdamsAuthor.wordpress.com
RWA Hall of Fame member, national bestseller and two-time RITA winner, Pamela Morsi writes stories that depict the voices of ordinary people overcoming everyday challenges. After a career in library science, Pam wrote her first book, an historical romance, in 1990. She was an immediate success garnering awards and accolades from reviewers, readers and peers. She has gone on to author twenty-three full-length novels and four novellas writing for five different publishing houses in New York and Toronto. Pam is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and has a master’s degree from the University of Missouri. Her next women’s fiction tradepaper, available September 2012, returns to one of her favorite settings, the Arkansas Ozark’s and is titled The Lovesick Cure.
Pam is well aware that the road she’s traveled would have been much more rugged if not for the help and encouragement of more veteran authors in RWA. She takes up this position as an opportunity to pay-it-forward and share what she’s learned with her fellow women’s fiction novelists
Barbara Burnham has tackled two careers: one as a nurse and the other as a writer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in nursing and a Master’s degree in journalism. Since 1997, she has been published primarily in non-fiction with articles ranging from a feature article on cardiac ablation studies to a national news story detailing Herb of the 1970’s duo Peaches and Herb and his search for his lost singing partner.
More recently, she served as editor at the American Nurses Association where she was the sole manager for a line of certification review manuals. She continues to edit nursing textbooks and is working on a non-fiction book to help nurses with the certification process.
She has been actively involved with RWA since she joined in 2007. She volunteers for her local chapter, Washington Romance Writers and, in the past, has served as President for an online RWA chapter. She blogs with her critique partners, Seven Sassy Sisters, and hopes to have her WF novel, Weddings Can Be Hazardous . . . ready for submission by June.
Amy Sue Nathan is a published writer and freelance fiction editor. Amy’s debut novel, The Glass Wives, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2013. Her short stories and essays have been published in Rose and Thorn Journal, Scribblers on the Roof, Grey Sparrow Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times online, the Washington Post online, Chicago Parent and in regional print publications nationwide.
In 2011 Amy launched Women’s Fiction Writers, a blog dedicated to the authors, business and craft of women’s fiction. An East Coast ex-pat near Chicago, Amy is the mom of a son in college, a daughter in high school and two rambunctious, rescued dogs.
PAN Liaison, Sharla Lovelace, would like to help other PAN’ers traverse these crazy waters. The publishing world is always changing, always moving, and it can be very intimidating. Especially for those just finally stepping through that door. Sharla joined the PAN ranks mid-2011, and hopes to lend her experience on issues that published authors face, some of them even as she hits them herself!
Sharla’s debut novel, The Reason Is You, is a contemporary romance (pitched as a romantic women’s fiction, so there is a topic right there…☺) that hits the shelves in early April, 2012 from Berkley. She was a PRO member for a year before joining PAN, and a RWA member since 2008. She lives in Southeast Texas by the Neches River with her family, an old lady dog, and an aviary full of cockatiels.
When she’s not writing or doing the family thing, she’s working full time or stalking her Twitter feed. In a previous life, she owned an indie bookstore, was a certified scuba diver, and hunted crabs in a Honduran jungle. While the “used to’s” may sound more interesting, Sharla thinks this writing gig is much cooler.
For more on Sharla and her current and upcoming books, see her website www.sharlalovelace.com. Also she can be found under ‘sharlalovelace’ on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.
Orly Konig Lopez has been a PRO member since April 2011 and joined RWA-WF just in time to register for the mini-con in New York. She will also be assisting the newsletter team with Member News.
She has a Masters degree in journalism and started life as an editor of a satellite communications magazine until she was seduced into the dark side of corporate communications and PR. For the last five years, she’s been freelancing and writing.
She’s putting the finishing touches on her WF manuscript, It’s Not Me, It’s You, and hopes to have it making the query rounds before the end of the year.
Contact information:
Membership applications: Amy Sue Nathan (amysuenathan [at] gmail [dot] com)
General membership enquiries: Amy Sue Nathan (amysuenathan [at] gmail [dot] com)
General Website enquiries: Kecia Adams Dilday (kadilday [at] gmail [dot] com)
Workshop enquiries: Christina Lorenzen (carp119 [at] aol [dot] com)
Accounts enquiries: Barbara Burnham (burnham_barbara [at] yahoo [dot] com)
PAN community of interest enquiries: Sharla Lovelace (sharlals [at] yahoo [dot] com)
PRO community of interest enquiries: Orly Konig Lopez (orly [at] oklopez [dot] com)
To contact the Chapter President: Laura Drake (laura_drake1123 [at] yahoo [dot] com)