Fresh off the LA12 weekend, we begin the countdown to our winter conference. Our second Special Guest Speaker to be announced is wildly prolific and popular indie novelist Bethany Lopez. A former conferee, Bethany’s gone on to become a multiple award-winning, best-selling author with a devoted fan base for her Friends & Lovers trilogy and Stories about Melissa series. A terrific writer savvy to all things indie, Bethany elected to pursue the author-as-publisher path in June of 2011 and hasn’t looked back. She returns to the SCWC with 42 Hours, book three in her Time for Love series, and has plenty of in-the-trenches perspective to share. Plus, she’ll be conducting some needed new workshops.
Speaking of workshops, many session leaders are already confirmed for SD29, including Frederick Ramsay. As usual about this time, Fred’s got another new one slated for release. The Wolf and the Lamb, the third in his Jerusalem Mysteries series, is out December from Poisoned Pen. Next update we’ll start listing what other familiar friends and new will be on staff, but right now…
We Got “Good Muse”
Author/workshop leader Laura Taylor steams ahead with three new releases, Seduction, Surrender, and Sublime… NovelCram track guru Drusilla Campbell’s latest is In Doubt. Of it RT Book Reviews lauds, “Campbell draws the reader into an ugly world in her excellent take on the many lines between right and wrong.”
Launched at LA12’s Friday night mixer, author/workshop leader Matthew Pallamary’s latest is now available. Eye of the Predator, a phantasmical thriller, tells the story of a brilliant young zoologist thrust into the murky world of magical plants and ancient shamanic rituals, in effort to confront the enigmatic mystery of his past. Matt was joined on his official drop by SCWCer Doug Bornemann with his debut, The Demon of Histlewick Downs, the first in his Dreamweaver Chronicles fantasy series.
Other spanking new SCWCer releases include Andrew Peterson’s Ready To Kill (The Nathan McBride Series); Teresa Burrell’s The Advocate’s Felony; Levi Stack’s The Magic Trick (The Card Game, Book 2); and Tameri Etherton’s The Stones of Kaldaar. We have many more recent SCWC successes to report, but all in due time. Congratulations, everybody.
The Rejection Wall
This photo on the left? That was taken at the offices of publisher Greenleaf Book Group and comes to us courtesy of author/workshop leader Darlene Quinn (the next installment in her Webs series is out next year). And those are just some of the self-published books that authors have submitted to the house for acquisition consideration and were rejected. Why rejected? Where to begin . . . How ‘bout at the conference come February!
Along with our formidable slate of craft, execution and troubleshooting workshops, at SD29 we’ll again be dealing with many of the latest and most vexing challenges writers face today. Whether to wait out legacy publishing odds, go with a boutique house, trust one of the predatory pay-as-you-print outfits that claim to have “standards” and are “selective” about what they’ll publish, or just assume full authorpreneurial control of your book(s), no matter which way you go, at the end of the day your success will ultimately boil down to one individual: You.
To that end, the SCWC community is here to inform and assist in accomplishing your publishing objectives. Expanding on our regular “Do Yourself Independence” sessions, real-world professionals currently walking the talk will address issues of premature ePublication, social media self-sabotage, marketing strategies, tactics, myths and more.
Advance Submission Reader selection will open up late October. With so much more to announce as we begin building the schedule, finalizing Special Guest Speakers and adding workshop leaders, agents, editors and other publishing professionals to the roster, do check back often, and be sure to join our extremely active SCWC Community Facebook wall to be a part of the conversation.
The $75 Early “Bard” Discount off Full Conference registration is now open. Pre-registrations are unexpectedly up more than usual this far out, so keep it in mind.
–Michael Steven Gregory
Executive Director, SCWC
