http://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

Dallas Area Romance Authors, PO Box 833092, Richardson, TX (2026)

03/14/2026

Have you ever struggled with conveying the way you see your characters to your readers? Writing, deleting, re-writing facets, characteristics, and what you hope are awesome cues for them to pick up on?

Have we got the workshop for you!

The Dallas Area Romance Authors invites you to join us for an in-person workshop with Elizabeth Essex

If you can't join in person, we'll also broadcast on our Zoom channel! – If you are interested in joining this session, please visit our website at https://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

Date: Saturday, March 28, 2026
Location: Vickery Park Branch Library – 8333 Park Ln, Dallas
Time: Social starts at 9:00am, business meeting at 9:30 & our speaker starts at 10am (Central)
Speaker: Elizabeth Essex
Subject: Toolkit for Character: Using Character-themed Words to Power Up your Manuscript

All authors want to create characters that ‘leap’ off the page and become vibrantly alive for their readers. But how? Using examples from best-selling and award-winning commercial fiction authors, Toolkit for Character will examine six different ways to bring characters out of the author’s head and vividly to life on the page, and will demonstrate the difference between “describing a character” and “revealing character.”

Bio: Elizabeth Hobbs is a New Englander born and bred, who spent her childhood roaming the woods and shoreline, making up stories about characters who live far more exciting lives than she. It wasn’t always so—long before she ever set pen to paper, Elizabeth graduated from Hollins College with a B.A. in Classics and Art History, and then earned her M.A. in Nautical Archaeology from Texas A & M University. While she loved the life of an underwater archaeologist, she has found her true calling writing historical mysteries full of wit, wickedness and adventure. MISERY HATES COMPANY is the first book in her Marigold Manners Mysteries series. The second, MURDER MADE HER WICKED will be released in 2025, with the third MERIDIAN OF MALICE to follow in 2026.

Elizabeth also writes as USA Today Bestselling author of Romance, Elizabeth Essex. Her critically-acclaimed and award-winning Reckless Brides and Highland Brides historical romance series have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award, and RWA's prestigious RITA Award, and have made Top-Ten lists from Romantic Times, The Romance Reviews and Affaire de Coeur Magazine. Her fifth book, A BREATH OF SCANDAL, was awarded Best Historical in the Reader's Crown 2013.

Elizabeth loves to travel from her home in Texas, where she lives with her husband, the Indispensable Mr. Hobbs, and her darling dogs, Ghillie and Brogue, in an empty nest of an old house filled to the brim with bicycles and books.

01/27/2026

I've added the newsletter page to DARA's website.
https://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

01/15/2026

Interested in learning how to succeed as an Indie Author? Join DARA on Saturday, Jan 24, for an informative workshop featuring Mark Lefebvre of Draft2Digital

If you are interested in joining this meeting, please visit our website at https://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

The Dallas Area Romance Authors invites you to join us for a Zoom presentation with Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Date: January 24, 2026
Time: Social starts at 9:00am, business meeting at 9:30 & our speaker starts at 10am (Central)

Speaker: Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Subject: Find Success with Indie Publishing
Synopsis: Indie Publishing offers authors freedom in how they choose to pursue their writing career, but with so many options at your disposal, how do you make the most of your author opportunities? Mark Leslie Lefebvre offers his career experience as a publishing industry insider to share some best practices for authors looking to find success through indie publishing.
Bio: Mark Leslie Lefebvre has spent his career helping authors and continues this work as the Director of Business Development at Draft2Digital. He is the author of more than twenty books that include fiction and thrillers, and paranormal non-fiction explorations. He has also edited numerous anthologies, With three decades of experience in bookselling and publishing, Mark is a seasoned and trusted book industry professional who embraces both traditional and indie publishing options.

08/15/2025

The Dallas Area Romance Authors invites you to join us for a Zoom presentation with Susan Gable

Join Zoom Meeting – If you are interested in joining this session, please visit our website at https://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

Date: Saturday, August 23, 2025
Time: Social starts at 9:00am, business meeting at 9:30 & our speaker starts at 10am (Central)

Subject: Catchphrase to Page-Turner: Using Mottos to Power Story

Want to create characters that feel real—and stories readers can’t put down? In this interactive workshop, USA Today bestselling author Susan Gable shares her Motto Method, a powerful tool for crafting three-dimensional characters who come alive on the page. Learn how to craft meaningful mottos that reveal your characters’ core beliefs and use them to shape plot, deepen setting, intensify conflict, and add emotional punch. Whether you're plotting a new story or revising a draft, this technique will help you bring out what matters most to your characters…and to your readers.

Susan Gable is a USA Today bestselling author known for her emotionally layered, character-driven romance novels. With experience in both traditional and indie publishing, Susan brings a deep understanding of story craft to her workshops. She’s passionate about helping writers create 3-D characters that come alive and drive the plot, setting, and emotional heart of the story—because compelling characters keep readers coming back for more. If she’s not writing or teaching, she’s probably geeking out over story structure, tech tools, or the perfect opening line

06/19/2025

The Dallas Area Romance Authors invites you to join us for our June workshop on World-building with Michelle Miles.
Date: June 28, 2025
Time: Social starts at 9:00am, business meeting at 9:30 & our speaker starts at 10am (Central)
Location: In person at the Lochwood Branch Library – 11221 Lochwood Blvd., Dallas, TX 75218
Join Zoom Meeting – If you are interested in joining this session, please visit our website at https://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

Speaker: Michelle Miles
Subject: Plan Brave New Worlds that Live and Breathe Synopsis: Ready to craft immersive worlds that feel real, vivid, and unforgettable? In this workshop, you'll learn how to build living, breathing worlds from the ground up—whether you're writing epic fantasy, science fiction, or anything in between. We'll dive deep into setting, culture, magic, politics, and conflict, showing you how each element shapes your story and your characters. You'll walk away with a clear understanding for designing worlds that leap off the page and captivate readers. Come ready to dream big, dig deep, and unleash your inner worldbuilder!

Get to know Michelle Miles!
About Michelle: MICHELLE MILES believes in fairy tales, true love, and a little bit of magic in every story. She writes fantasy, paranormal, and young adult books packed with adventure, action, and swoon-worthy romance—because what’s a story without a bit of danger and a whole lot of heart? From angels and demons to dragons, elves, and time travelers, her books are filled with epic quests, fierce heroines, and the kind of heroes worth falling for.
When she's not crafting new adventures, she brings stories to life as a narrator and hosts Miles Beyond the Page, a podcast where she chats with authors about their writing journeys. A Texas girl through and through, she loves getting lost in a good book, binge-watching movies, hiking the trails, and sipping a glass of wine. Come hang out with her on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and more!

05/14/2025

https://www.rwa.org/so-you-want-to-write-romance

05/12/2025

The Dallas Area Romance Authors invites you to join us for a Zoom presentation from Candie Moonshower
Date: May 24, 2025
Time: Social starts at 9:00am, business meeting at 9:30 & our speaker starts at 10am (Central)

Join Zoom Meeting – If you are interested in joining this session, please visit our website at https://www.dallasarearomanceauthors.com/

Speaker: Candie Moonshower
Subject: ’Time Is On Your Side’: How to Use the Events of Our Lives to Plot Our Stories

When do I start my story? When do I end it? Sometimes the hardest part of plotting is figuring out the timing. In this interactive workshop, I'll share some of my tried-and-true ways to figure out how and when to start (and end) your story, scaffold your plot, and help you outline using historic or contemporary events, Aristotle, and ticking time clocks. Using both time and events gives you a definitive start and finish, helps you develop your characters, and aids in research. Bring your pen and paper for both group and personal exercises!

Get to know Candie Moonshower
Witty banter is Candie Moonshower's favorite aspect of a romance novel. It is also the basis of her thirty-three happy years of marriage with her handsome Hubcap. She enjoys using her wits to teach her students how to write well and to introduce them to reading romances, which she does in the class she designed and passed through committees (with much laughter), a survey of the modern romance genre. Moonshower is the author of two published books and 200+ freelance articles and essays.

11/13/2024

You’re invited to join the Dallas Area Romance Authors for their Annual Holiday Breakfast
When: Saturday, December 7, 2023
Location: Hybrid
Topic: Tropes Are Our Friends

If you would like to attend in person, (Garland, TX) please email Anita Learned at [email protected] for an invitation.

If you'd like to join us free via ZOOM please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYldOivrjgoEtCDVpabr6jgLJE3zQnNSuPz

Schedule of Events (Central Time):
9am – 9:30am Breakfast (Members Free. Guests $20 to be paid on arrival, cash or checks accepted).
9:30am – 9:45am – Short turnover meeting
9:45am - 10am – break and socializing
9:50 am – Zoom will open for virtual attendees. (Free to all)
10am: Keynote Speaker Cindy Dees presents TROPES ARE OUR FRIENDS (said in a creepy Mr. Rogers imitation)

If you’d like to donate a basket or item to the raffle, please contact Janet Leigh at [email protected]

TROPES ARE OUR FRIENDS
Widely misunderstood and blamed for all manner of bad writing, tropes are, in fact, the foundation of all story structure and one of your most powerful tools for creating a layered, complex, compelling story that your readers will love. The top selling novels in the biz today layer multiple tropes, sometimes dozens of them, into a single story. Join Cindy for a down and dirty master class on how to do this in your own work in progress. This is a hands-on workshop, so bring your thinking cap, a pen, and a work in progress or story idea you’d like to develop.

CINDY DEES BIO

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 120+ books, Cindy writes in a variety of genres, including thrillers, military adventure, romantic suspense, fantasy, and alternate history. She’s also the creator and executive producer of an upcoming Netflix television series based on her Helen Warwick thriller novel series about a woman assassin of a certain age. Cindy has recently launched a series of bestselling non-fiction books about story structure called the Tropoholic’s Guides. So far, she has released four of seven volumes of romance tropes and the first of eight volumes on thriller tropes. She’s currently gathering tropes for books in mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, westerns, and melodrama genres. A former U.S. Air Force pilot and part-time spy, she draws upon real-life experience to fuel her stories of life (and sometimes love) on the edge of danger.

10/15/2024

When: October 26, 2024

Central Time: 9am, social time, 9:30a Business meeting - 10am Speaker

If you'd like to join us , please e-mail info(at)dallasarearomanceauthors.com) to get the ZOOM link

Title:

A Deep Dive into Developmental Editing

As an author, you’ve probably heard that several of your writing colleagues use a developmental editor for their romance novels. But what exactly is a developmental editor? Do you need one? Why?

We’ll examine what a developmental editor looks at, including:

· Story arc

· Plot holes

· Tropes

· Characters

· Setting

· Inconsistencies

We’ll also talk about:

· Who would be the best developmental editor for your job?

· How do you find a developmental editor?

· What your developmental editor expects from you.

· What you should expect from your developmental editor.

We’ll answer these questions and leave time for any additional questions you may have.

Bio:

Sue has dedicated most of her professional life to honoring the English language through editing and teaching. Ever since she learned to read, Sue has loved words and you can most often find her somewhere quiet with her nose stuck in a book. She passionately believes in the power of great writing. Her goal is to help authors make their writing shine. She specializes in developmental editing, concentrating on character development, pacing, story arc, and plot holes. She also offers book coaching packages.

Dallas Area Romance Authors

03/14/2026

01/27/2026

01/15/2026

08/15/2025

06/19/2025

05/14/2025

05/12/2025

11/13/2024

10/15/2024

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