On the Board: Directors Volume 1
We'd like to help you get to know more about the members you've elected to guide our organization! Each week, we'll feature different board members answering some fun questions and talking about what service to the membership means for them. This week, learn about four of our Directors-at-Large!
Priscilla Oliveras
Chanta Rand
Farrah Rochon
Damon Suede
Priscilla Oliveras
What does RWA Board service mean to you?
Honestly, RWA Board service offers me a chance to give back to the organization that’s given so much to me—both personally and professionally—over my many years as a member. Sure, board service involves a time commitment; however, when you’re working alongside others who also trying their best to make a positive difference for our organization and its members, it’s doesn’t really feel like “work.” No, it’s more like a blessing. One I take seriously and am extremely thankful for.
What's the best place you've traveled
Oooh, thank goodness the question isn’t “where would you like to travel.” I don’t think we’d have enough time to cover that. One of my favorite travel memories happened during a trip to Barcelona to visit one of my daughters during one of her college internships. My
familia and I hit La Boqueria Market in Las Ramblas to pick up fresh cheese and bread along with some meats and fruit for a picnic. Naturally, a few bottles of cava were added to the loot. Then, we made our to the beach where we enjoyed a tasty picnic on the ocean shore. During the week we spent in Barcelona, we visited and toured many beautiful, historic, and inspiring sights. But that calm, relaxing, laughter-filled afternoon, just “being” with my loved ones … that’s a memory I’ll always cherish.
If you were auditioning for a play/movie, what famous monologue would you read?
This is a short monologue, or I’d have to combine some of the lines in the scene to make the monologue longer. But, I think it’d be fun if I could master Marisa Tomei’s accent in
My Cousin Vinny and audition with her
famous deer hunting scene. She’s wonderful in the movie and her spunky and good-hearted character made me LOL.
If you could have one of your characters' professions, which would it be?
One of my “dream jobs” is to be a color commentator on Chicago Cubs radio. J I listen to Ron and Pat nearly every game via the MLB app on my phone. In “Holiday Home Run,” my novella in the Fern Michaels’
A Season to Celebrate 2018 holiday anthology, my hero is Ben Thomas, former Chicago Cub pitching phenom who was forced to retire early due to injury. Now Ben’s the new face of a sports show on TV. He’s also emcee for a charity fundraiser benefiting Chicago youth centers, which is how he and Julia Fernández cross paths. I’d
love to work alongside Ben, or at least shadow him for a while. Get an inside view of the job. From there, I’d hopefully be able to ease my way onto Cubs radio traveling with the team to all their games and getting paid to bring the game to life for radio listeners everywhere.
Chanta Rand
What does board service mean to you?
The opportunity to serve our members’ needs. Whether it’s responding to their feedback and suggestions, going to battle for them on issues of concern, or simply being an ear for them to vent, my goal is to help create an enriching experience for members.
What is your favorite love declaration in a movie?
“I know you think Alonzo isn't perfect, but I'm going to hold on to him ... cause he's all I got. The wards ain't full of Jasons. What you found was quiet ... in a world full of thunder. I ain't got no choice but to listen to it. You do.” – Marti from
Jason’s Lyric
What's the best place you've traveled?
The best place I've traveled is Egypt. Touching the Great Pyramid and standing in the same temples as some of history’s most famous queens and kings was a humbling experience.
Do you participate in any fandoms?
Anything zombie-related. If it involves, bites, blood, guts, and gore, I’m all in!
Farrah Rochon
1. What does RWA Board service mean to you?
Serving RWA as a director-at-large has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in the seventeen years I’ve been a part of this organization. It is a weighty responsibility to serve 10,000-plus members, and know that the decisions I make will affect them for years to come, but it is always extremely satisfying when those members share how much RWA has helped them. Board service has meant giving back to an organization that has helped me throughout my writing career. I will never regret answering that call to serve.
What does RWA Board service mean to you?
Serving RWA as a director-at-large has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in the seventeen years I’ve been a part of this organization. It is a weighty responsibility to serve 10,000-plus members, and know that the decisions I make will affect them for years to come, but it is always extremely satisfying when those members share how much RWA has helped them. Board service has meant giving back to an organization that has helped me throughout my writing career. I will never regret answering that call to serve.
What trope do you adore?
I love all the tropes that most people claim to hate, like secret baby and amnesia stories, but I’m a sucker for the best friend’s younger sister (or younger brother) trope. Oh, and enemies to lovers! And guy/girl next door! And...
What's the best place you've traveled?
This is a hard one because anyone who knows me knows how much I love to travel. I’d have to say Thailand, with Italy and Israel running a close second and third.
Aside from writing-related posts, is your Instagram full of selfies, food pics, scenery, or something else?
Instagram is my happy place. I occasionally will throw in a writing-related post, but for the most part, my feed is filled with items I’ve crocheted, the latest recipe from my Instant Pot, my travel pics and my adorable Chihuahua, Dayle.
Damon Suede
What does RWA Board service mean to you?
RWA is such a gift in my life. The organization has grown so far beyond its original scope that its task seems vast and impossible: protect what’s precious about our genre
while moving the entire industry into the future. Crazy! But
inspiring too. What I love most about working on the board the opportunity to work on solutions “in the room where it happens” as
Hamilton puts it. The contradictions we face are colossal, but the opportunities are mind-boggling. I love finding real-time solutions and thinking strategically with the facts at our fingertips. It’s exhausting, hilarious, and inspiring in the best ways. Like a jungle gym for my professional skills. Working on the board with these brilliant, talented, patient, thoughtful, creative people challenges me to be a better writer, a better entrepreneur, and a better person.
What's the best place you've traveled?
Until last year, my answer would have been different, but this past summer my husband and I attended the New Zealand Romance Writers conference in Auckland. It had been on our bucket list for a while, and after they invited us to come speak, we decided to make a proper trip of it and ended up spending three-plus weeks on the other side of the world. New Zealand
blew my mind: the food, the people, the landscape, the artwork … spectacular in every sense of the word. Food for the muse and more. I have so many actor friends that shot movies and then immediately bought houses there, and now I understand why. We had a spectacular time as tourists, but there’s a warm, funky, artistic vibe that made me feel I could have lived there happily, in an alternate universe. If you haven’t been to the RWNZ conference, check it out; it’s fabulous and
deductible!
What trope do you adore?
Rake redeemed is one of my go-to comfort read tropes, probably because it’s such an inherently
hopeful story arc. Baked right into the theme is the certainty that everyone, even the biggest jerk, deserves happiness, that even the most broken and bitter souls can find their way back to the light. That beauty and beast dynamic is so uplifting and reassuring to me, because when I’m having a rotten day, when the world seems like nothing more than a bleak hellscape studded with bigots, cretins, and pharmaceutical ads, a juicy “rake redeemed” story reminds me that inside all of us hides a spark of joy that just needs to be fanned into flame. Frankly, that’s
why romance is the literature of hope, that belief in human relationships and emotional possibility.
What is your favorite love declaration in a movie?
This one’s a bit of a cheat for me, because my favorite love declaration in a movie is also my favorite declaration in a novel: It’s Captain Wentworth’s panicked letter from
Persuasion: “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” The best cinematic iteration is the 1995 Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root version,
obviously, because that movie is flat-out stunning. The filmmakers managed to keep the moment internal and epistolary while the (impeccable) actors unpacked all the history and emotion crackling between them in real time. It’s simultaneously classic cinema and classic Austen. If you haven’t seen it, put this down and go watch it right now. No, really …
right now!