Less than two weeks till SD28 and so much good “muse” to report. For starters, Tonilyn Hornung’s How to Raise a Husband: A Whole Bunch of Ways to Build a Strong and Happy Marriage—recipient of the SCWC*LA8 Outstanding Non-Fiction Award—is set for release April 1 from Conair Press. As you regulars might recall from this post last summer, the always keen-eyed-for-talent literary agent Sally van Haitsma scooped Tonilyn up at the time and went on, as usual, to find yet another precious baby a home. Congrats to both. Another book birthed!
Slated for April 15th, SCWCer Lynne Martin’s travel memoir, Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World, will be delivered by Sourcebooks. Our own Robert Yehling worked with Lynne to shepherd it to placement. Quite busy working on multiple projects, Bob himself has two titles dropping this year: Just Add Water: The Biography of Autistic Surfer Clay Marzo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and, just in time for our fall conference in Newport Beach, When We Were the Boys: Coming of Age on Rod Stewart’s Out of Order Tour, ghostwritten for musician Stevie Salas (Rowman Littlefield), out Sept. 4th. Always on point, Bob will be conducting a new workshop at SD28, “Co-, Ghost, With or And: Succeeding as a Collaborative Writer.”
Other SCWCers with new books: Claudia Whitsitt’s Internal Issues, third in her popular Samantha Mystery Series. She’ll be joining international thriller writer Dennis Bowen—The Blackstone Perfection is his latest—in the third installment of author/editor Laura Taylor’s popular Indie Excellence workshops: “Do I Really Want to Sell My Books?”
Ever-versatile hybrid-author and workshop leader Michele Scott, taking a deserved break from this year’s winter event, has Dark Harmony, book two in her Fairmont Riding Academy Mystery Series, launching May 20. . . And David Putnam, another SCWCer, retired sheriff’s deputy, has his debut novel, The Disposables, coming out in hardcover from Oceanview on May 6. T. Jefferson Parker (The Jaguar) calls it, “a dark and disturbing insider’s novel that may not make you feel safer on the mean streets of L.A.”
That’s quite a gob of good “muse.” Still there’s more: venerable veteran author/workshop leader Matthew J. Pallamary just released the audio edition of his award-winning memoir, Spirit Matters. Discussing the book’s themes during a recent 2-hour Inner Journey radio program, the podcast unexpectedly went viral resulting in some 10,500 podcast downloads in 12 hours. In addition to his regular workshops at SD28 Matt will introduce a new one, “Using Audio as an Income Stream.” (As audio book sales are soaring, this is sure to be a popular session.)
Finally, in another unexpected coup, author/workshop leader Gayle Carline, whose latest, seventh book, From the Horse’s Mouth: One Lucky Memoir, the story of her horse Snoopy as told from his perspective, is bound to get a bump real soon. The America’s Horse magazine editor-in-chief recently interviewed Gayle about the book, and the magazine goes out to every member of the American Quarter Horse Association in the world. Gayle will be conducting two workshops at SD28: “Self-Publishing Savvy: Why, How, Where, What You Need to Know” and “Storytelling is Murder, She Wrote.”
The Weekend Schedule
What with the site rollover to the new format and other tech gremlins of late, am not embarrassed to say it’s been a tough conference to wrangle together this time around as so many important aspects of the industry need to be authoritatively addressed, from the inevitably essential issues of quality craft execution and the practical aspects of navigating current business modalities of self-, indie-, traditional publishing to the philosophical pugilism being waged from all four corners of the ring about the legitimacy & benefits of self-publishing vs. going legacy. There is no right or wrong in this fight. In fact, there shouldn’t even be a fight. There are only options and wise—or not—choices to be made. The big knuckle in the mitt is what it ultimately drills down to, individual author by individual author.
That said, now that the schedule has been posted our hope is that by weekend’s end every individual writer attending will be able to determine what the best, most ideal path to pursue publication success is right for them. As usual, we’ll likely throw in some ad-hoc sessions based on expressed interest during conference weekend.
Check back for more soon, and don’t forget to join the conversation on the SCWC Facebook page.
Now go forth and write well. More importantly, have something worthy to say. (Or at least tell a whoopingly entertaining, snot-snorting good story!)
–Michael Steven Gregory
Executive Director, SCWC
