News And Announcements

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

There is no single right way to write a great book, only an infinite number of wrong ways. Today the same holds true for publishing a great book. Of the countless decisions the modern author must make during the crafting of her book, both creative and practical, tiny and great, perhaps none carry more weight than that of choosing to pursue a traditional print publisher or electing  to self-publish. “Publishing” an e-book seems so easy, so fast, so affordable that anybody can do it. And it seems like almost everybody has.

For the traditionally established author with a backlist whose rights have reverted perhaps the choice is obvious. But for the emerging author, unknown in an ever-increasingly competitive marketplace already saturated with titles, the decision often is not. Crafting a great story, writing a great book, is hard enough. Self-publishing a great book, regardless of how well written? Well, more and more writers suffering from premature e-publication are discovering just how hard it is. Next month we’ll deal a lot with the challenges of self-publishing in effort to enable those considering doing so to make an informed decision. After all, as with your craft, you should settle only for excellence in your publication.

New Year, New Site, New Deadlines [WHOOSH!]

The latest iteration of WritersConference.com is here and you’re looking right at it! Faster, more streamlined, easier to navigate on tablets and smartphones, we’d love to get your feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what more you’d like to see on the site. While there’s still some tweaks to make, one of the coolest additions in functionality has to do with the conference schedule page. There, once the workshops and events are plugged in, you’ll be able to select individual sessions you’re interested in attending and add them to your own, personalized SD28 program for printing prior to the conference. You can thank Jeremy Lee James for that.

Advance Submissions . . . The deadline for getting Advance Submission material to us is January 14. Given the unprecedented ten weeks of technical meltdowns—both main SCWC computers died, total database corruption, answering service inaccessible, email accounts down and most all correspondence from early October to the first week of December lost—please be mindful of the deadline as some of the readers got hit pretty hard without our knowing it.

“Best Foot Forward: Polishing to Impress 1 & 2” . . . Jean Jenkins’ popular genre-crafting workshop is limited to 12 participants only and requires pre-registration, along with written materials, by February 1. Notify the conference by email if you’ve already registered and would like to get in.

Discounted hotel lodging . . . Crowne Plaza San Diego resort is the site of the conference. The deadline for SCWC conferees to receive discounted lodging rates is January 26th. For online hotel booking click here, or call the hotel at (619) 297-1101 (and mention the SCWC).

We still have plenty of workshops to add and the schedule to fill out. Check back regularly for updates, and don’t forget to join the WritersConference.COMmunity discussion on our SCWC Facebook page.

In the meanwhile . . . go forth, write well, and Happy New Year!

Michael Steven Gregory
Executive Director, SCWC

First off, congratulations to SCWCer Amanda LaPera. Having attended both our San Diego and Newport Beach events, this past week saw the launch of her compelling Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family’s Search for Hope (Adamo Press). A passionate mental health advocate, Amanda’s debut title broke into the top 100 in mental illness in both paperback (#90) and e-book (#59) format on Amazon, as well as #42,951 out of all paperbacks (over 8 million) and #67,130 out of all e-books the day after its release. Of it Xavier Amador, Ph.D. (I am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help!) declares, “Beautifully woven between the facts are the feelings. [Amanda] shows that behind every severe mental illness there is a human being.” Great job and utterly fascinating story. But wait! There’s yet another recent conference success to report:

LA11 conferee Sandra Montanino. Not only did she score an Outstanding Fiction Award for her historical family saga Of Brick and Salt at this past September’s conference, but two attending agents subsequently offered to represent her. A good, albeit stressful, spot to be in, after protracted deliberation Sandra has finally made her choice and signed on with Babette Sparr of Sparr Literary. It’s a powerful manuscript. Much success to both.

Staff Additions and Workshops Galore

The fourth Special Guest Speaker to be announced is none other than Janis Thomas. A regular SCWC workshop leader, this past September Janis offered up one of the most singularly meatiest workshop morsels that I’ve heard in years. Janis has had a very busy year and a bit, what with the release of her laugh-out-loud debut novel, Something New, in 2012, followed by Sweet Nothings this past summer (“A breezy read,” declared Publishers Weekly), both by Berkely Books. Now, eschewing legacy publication for her latest, a departure from the chick-lit genre she’s known for, Janis is releasing a crime thriller called Murder in A-minor, A Sam Wedlock Musical Murder Mystery, under a pen name. She’ll explain the logic behind the decision at SD28, as well as why telling a woman you like her pants can speak volumes to writers.

Agents-wise, on board so far is Terri Baranowski of Gateway Literary (joining us in an official capacity for the first time so she doesn’t have to lurk undercover in read & critique workshops like so many reps and acquisitions folk sometimes do), Anne Bomke of Bomke Literary, Clelia Gore, who’s heading the newly-launched children’s/YA branch of Martin Literary & Media, Linda Langton of Langtons International Agency, and van Haitsma Literary’s own ever-intrepid founder Sally van Haitsma.

Conducting a workshop both staffers and conferees have emphatically expressed an interest in, Ara Grigorian will address the why’s and how-to’s of using Scrivener, the immensely powerful content-generation software for writers… Richard Craig Anderson is back with a new real-world scenario law enforcement role playing workshop after a couple-year hiatus. His latest novel is Cobra Clearance, a contender for best new thriller of the year…

In a surprising move, given how work-intensive it is, Jean Jenkins will be conducting her wildly popular 2-part “Best Foot Forward: Editing for Success.” Limited to only 12 participants, if you’re writing genre fiction, you do not want to miss this. Along with Drusilla Campbell’s “NovelCram: Building the Better Book,” BFF requires advance sign-up.

As always, several other friends familiar and new will be joining us as we hone in on what specific issues, beyond craft, are most in need to be addressed. As we’ve long observed, between each SCWC event a whole strata of changes in the rapidly morphing publishing world require constant adjustments in thinking and approach. We’ll again be devoting a “Do Yourself Independence” (DYI, not DIY) track specifically geared to bringing all up to speed on the latest strategies and tactics. What we will not be doing is declaring any writer with a Twitter feed or Facebook account an authority on the time suck for most that is social media just because they have one. Speaking of which…

Blast to the Future Past

2014 marks the 10th anniversary of our “Storytelling and the Future of Content” event that was SCWC*LA4. Our one and only event held in Manhattan Beach, it’s where we accurately identified the forthcoming technological trends, conceits and opportunities lying just a smidge ahead for writers of the time; introduced them to the concept of transmedia storytelling, of it’s intrinsic value and virtually limitless possibilities. Then we drilled in deeper to explore what then-available tools and strategies could be called upon to better forge the way to success.

We did it long before it became trendy among writers’ conferences. We continued to when it did, but always with our eye on the outer edge of the envelope; the telling crest of the incoming tide.

Several conferees’ first published books came out of that conference, and while preparing to introduce a new iteration of the WritersConference.com website (coming soon), we came across the following copy written for it. An excerpt from our archives, I believed it when I wrote it then. I believe as I read it today. My hope is that you do too.

The world has changed. Or have we changed the world? As writers, change is the very fabric of our existence. As storytellers, our charge is to engage the audience with tales of characters overcoming obstacles that result in purposeful change. Regardless of genre, from international thrillers to intimate portraits of personal transformation, our stories offer visceral validation of who we are, or who we are not, or who we most aspire to be.

Transformational media and the newly modern storyteller is what the [SCWC] is about. The elevated awareness of conscious creativity, coupled by an exponentially expanding transmedia marketplace — from movies and interactive entertainment to graphic novels and print on demand — has afforded writers and media makers today more opportunities to reach the audience of their choice than at any other time. For the committed author whose will is to positively impact lives, to entertain and inspire, to evoke and enthrall with words, these are indeed the best of times…

Taisen Deshimaru once said that:

“Time is not a line, but a series of now points.”

Well the time is now… Now is the time for you to write!

That was back in 2004. Thankfully, how some things never change. Craft matters.

Early “Bard” Discount Registration on Full Conference or NovelCram/Conference attendance is now open. Remember that the SCWC is limited in size to ensure maximum accessibility to staff and attention paid to attending writers.

Still plenty more to announce, including our fifth Special Guest Speaker. Be sure to join the conversation on our SCWC Community Facebook page. Also, enjoy this preview below of the stage adaptation of author/workshop leader Matthew J. Pallamary novel, Land Without Evil, documented by PBS’ “Art in Context” TV show, the episode of which was recently nominated for a Lone Star Emmy Award.

–Michael Steven Gregory
Executive Director, SCWC

Boo! We’re back. Despite considerable technical challenges (addressed below the jump), SD28 is shaping up nicely. Our latest Special Guest Speaker to announce is Laurence O’Bryan, winner of the SCWC*SD21 Outstanding Fiction Award for the manuscript that became his debut international conspiracy thriller, The Istanbul Puzzle, the first in a multi-book deal with HarperCollins UK. The Jerusalem Puzzle followed and now the third in the series, The Manhattan Puzzle, has just been released, along with a special e-book edition that includes interactive links that allow readers to further explore the story beyond its pages. Larry is traveling all the way from his home in Northern Ireland to join us again, and we’re happy to welcome him back.

 What’s Up with SCWC Communication?

It’s fitting that this update falls on Halloween. What we thought would be a fairly routine move of the SCWC’s physical offices following September’s LA11 event has turned out to be pretty much a nightmare. For well over a month now we’ve been besieged by ghosts in the machine and gremlins on our wing, all as a result of the move. Picture pretty much every technical problem imaginable and we’ve been tackling it.

While we’re almost fully back online today, only email addressed directly to SCWC directors Wes Albers and Chrissie Barnett is reliable and secure. Michael’s address remains un-functional, though will likely be fixed by next week. Also next week, should all go well, our phone answering system will be properly ported and operational. If you’ve called and left any messages over the past month, there’s a very strong likelihood that we haven’t and cannot retrieve them.

The SCWC prides itself on good communication. We apologize for the breakdown and all frustration it’s causing. Please be patient.

More to Come

There’s lots more staff announcements to come, along with the opening up of the Advance Submission Readers and posting of the preliminary schedule. In the meantime, be sure to visit us on the SCWC Community Facebook page to keep up to speed and join the conversation.

Following the whirlwind that was last weekend’s LA11 event, we now begin the countdown to our winter conference, SD28. Our second Special Guest Speaker to be announced is Bhava Ram, formerly known as NBC war correspondent Brad Willis, whom at the peak of his journalistic career suffered a broken back and failed surgery leaving him permanently disabled and condemned to life in a body brace. Worse, then came a diagnosis of terminal, stage IV throat cancer. Bhava’s new memoir, Warrior Pose, chronicles his remarkable personal transformation following a decision to abandon Western medicine and embrace the most esoteric practices of Yoga, ultimately leading to a fully restored spine and cancer-free recovery.

Among the many workshop leaders confirmed for February are Frederick Ramsay, whose latest Ike Schwartz mystery, Drowning Barbie, is out just before the conference; fantastical YA author Mary G. Thompson (Escape from the Pipe Men and next year’s Evil Fairies Love Hair); writer provocateur Judy Reeves; historical fictionalist Laurel Corona; paranormal romance author Linda Thomas-Sundstrom; horror writer Mark Clements; transformative narrative guru Matthew J. Pallamary; celebrated author and editorial consultant Laura Taylor and many, many others.

We’re happy to report that NY Times bestselling author Drusilla Campbell will also be returning with another round of NovelCram: Building the Better Book. As usual, this stand-alone immersive track is limited in attendance and will likely sell out.

There’s several agents aboard, along with some of our favorite, trusted editors. We’ll start rolling them out next update.

Settle for Exceptional

Along with our formidable slate of craft, execution and troubleshooting workshops, at SD28 we’ll again be dealing head-on 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 who they’ll publish, or just assume full, entrepreneurial control of your book, no matter which way you go at the end of the day your book’s success will ultimately come down to one individual. You.

To that end, the SCWC community is here to inform and assist in accomplishing your publishing goals. Expanding on our previous “Do Yourself Independence” sessions, we’ll again be dealing extensively with issues of premature e-publication, social media self-sabotage, marketing myths and more. True, it will be work. And yes, it will be worth it. Why aim for mediocrity when you can settle for exceptional?

Latest Good “Muse”

The follow up to SCWC Outstanding Fiction Award winner Laurence O’Brien’s The Istanbul Puzzle and The Jerusalem Puzzle is out Oct. 10 from HarperCollins. The Manhattan Puzzle promises yet another smart, international conspiracy thriller in the vein of Dan Brown. There’s also going to be a special e-book available with the story’s locations linked to an inline map and other background information… And this just in from conferee Barbara Garren: a 3-book deal with Entranced Publishing. Way to go!

More to Come

Advance Submission Reader selection will open up late October. As there’s much more to announce while we begin working on the schedule, finalizing the Special Guest Speakers and adding more workshop leaders, be sure to check back often and join us on the SCWC Community Facebook page to keep up to speed.

The $75 Early “Bard” Discount on Full Conference or NovelCram/Conference registration is now open. Registrations are up a little higher than usual this far out, so keep it in mind. In the meantime, enjoy our latest book trailer, this one created for Darlene Quinn’s most recent release.

2013 has been a banner year for SCWCers with several fine books representing the gamut of genres being published via traditional houses, boutique publishers and indie alternate methods. Though regular updates for SD28 won’t begin until October, we’re excited to announce one of our very Special Guest Speakers all ready confirmed. Citing the SCWC as the first conference she attended when starting out writing, author Suzanne Redfearn proclaims it “an integral part of my journey to getting published.” Come Oct. 8, 2013, published she will be as Grand Central releases Suzanne’s debut thriller, Hush Little Baby. Kirkus hails it, “A compelling tale of the deceit, violation and anguish that undergird the myth of suburbia.” #1 NYT bestselling author Alyson Noël effuses, “[B]eautifully nuanced prose and taut pacing.” And Jane Porter (Brennan Sisters Trilogy) declares, “[A] brilliant debut. Powerful and compelling.”

As usual, our winter event will feature plenty of read & critique workshops conducted by working authors, along with our uniquely tailored slate of interactive troubleshooting and craft-centric sessions. Our popular DYI (Do Yourself Independence) track will return, geared to address the latest trends and further empower today’s entrepreneurial authors with the vital information required to thrive in today’s ever-expanding transmedia publication industry.

Early “Bard” Registration is now open. Do so by Sept. 15 and save a whopping $100 on Full Conference or NovelCram immersion track participation.

Up next, of course, is our fall conference in Newport Beach. If we don’t see you there, we look forward to hooking up February in San Diego.