I’m a conference junky. I love going to conferences and sitting through informative sessions about writing, the business of writing and market trends. Lately, I find myself on the other end of that. This year at Romance Writers of America’s Annual Conference in Dallas, I’ll be in two workshops.

In one, I’ll be with my sister, Delilah Devlin, and friend Megan Kerans talking about World Building. I’m not so nervous about this one as we’ve taught in online on several occasions. Although, it is a bit different standing in front of a room full of people who are staring at you like really might KNOW something. I’m nervously flapping my hands hoping I can fool them into thinking I actually do!

That aside, I’m in another workshop about how to make professional jealousy work for you. Yesterday I looked at the calendar and realized I have a week to come up with what I’m going to say!  I called my sister, Delilah, and frantically asked her what we were going to talk about.

The beauty of having a sister who is also a writer is that we can share our moments of fear, frustration, and joy and KNOW WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT (for the most part). We’ve always had a knack for brainstorming together, a synergy in coming up with great ideas. Well, it worked this time! Within minutes we had our talk all planned out and the wonderful part is that I don’t even need notes! First of all we had to work through who we were jealous of in the writing industry and how we turned that around to our benefit. I didn’t have to look far. Being the younger  sister(that’s right, don’t let her tell you differently) I’ve always had to follow my sister in school, in college and life. She’s one of the brains of the family (younger brother is the other). I’m a typical middle child. Although not a slacker in grades, I was never quite the same caliber as my sister. She always made better grades, was the top of her class, the battalion commander in ROTC and I was always third or lower. No matter how hard I tried. Talk about jealous! So how do you put that kind of history to work for you?

It’s all about the competition. You don’t give up because you think you’re not better. You get tough! You keep trying and you go for it! Competition between me and my sister has spurred us on to do greater things, to follow our dreams and become writers. Now we’re both published and working toward the next plateau in our careers (making the bestseller lists).

So is jealousy a bad thing? Heck no! Let it work for you instead of eating away at you. Let it motivate you to achieve what you’ve always dreamed of, whether it’s getting published or getting that promotion.

Have you ever been jealous of someone and had it work out for you? Tell me your story! I’ll draw from those who comment for a free download of one of my e-books. So let me know about your jealousy experience! Come see me at the booksigning in Dallas on July 11th. If you’re a writer and attending workshops, please come see me in classes!

Oh and I’m excited to announce the following books are out in print now and will be available at the RWA National Literacy Booksigning!