|
Members Only
Our Next Open Office Hours:
October 9, 2014
Meet one-on-one with a WLT staffer (in person or call in). Click HERE for guidelines and to sign up. Current members only.
Interested in reviewing books? Contact us at [email protected] with "Members Review" in the subject line and we will respond with more details.
 Click HERE to read WLT member Mary Bryan Stafford's review of Caught in the Middle by Regina Jennings.
Want to be profiled on our blog? We are looking for willing subjects for our weekly Q&A posts with current members. If interested, write us at
|
|
Last Chance!
Only 4 spots left!
Online Registration Closes Sept. 17, 2014
"Writing the Successful Query Letter and Synopsis for Fiction"
with John Pipkin
Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014
9 am to 12 noon
St. Edward's University
Trustee Hall, rm. 303
Learn how to highlight your project, summarize your story, and attract an agent.
|
|
Last Chance!
Online Registration Closes Sept. 24, 2014
"Self Publishing: Writing What You Love in Marketable Packages"
with Deanna Roy
Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014
9 am to 12 noon
St. Edward's University
Trustee Hall, rm. 303
Tips on getting your story published, noticed, and into readers' hands.
|
|
Member News
Cathy Chapaty (Austin) will be reading from her book, No Pouting in the Dojo: The Imperfect Journey of Teaching Children Character through Martial Arts, at 4 PM, Aug. 31 at BookWoman. In an insightful and inspiring memoir, Chapaty shares how she's mentored students in lessons that go beyond kicking and punching.
Carolyn Banks (Bastrop) wrote a personal essay that was published in Texas Coop News.
Eakin Press has released the seventh book in author George Arnold's (Garland) adventures for juvenile readers. Kremlin Kerfuffle: Koshki of the CIA, set in Moscow and featuring an extensive vocabulary and pronunciation guide in Russian, joins earlier CIA Cats' adventures in Germany, France, Italy, Mexico and Argentina, containing vocabulary-guides in those countries' languages.
Creativity coach, author, and actor Ron Seybold (Austin) leads a Creativity Kickstarter Day Retreat Oct. 24-26 at the studio of the Writer's Workshop in Austin. Based upon training from the Creativity Coaching Association, it's a great way to tune up for NaNoWriMo! Details here. WLT members get discounts.
Jeanne Guy, (Austin) a 20-year journaling and self-awareness teacher in Austin, offers this Whidbey Island, Washington LifeWriting Retreat for women. Using a "re-story" reflective writing process, deep sharing, humor and fun, you'll have the opportunity to get in touch with what you really want your life to be and start crafting your next chapter.
Award-winning author Debra Winegarten (Austin) kicks off the Austin Jewish Book Fair on September 18th, with tales of Texas Jewish history. Details here. September 21st finds her closing the AHC's Women in Politics exhibit with a presentation at 2:00 pm on Oveta Culp Hobby: Colonel, Cabinet Member, Philanthropist, (UT Press) Q&A and book signing.
Cindy Huyser's (Austin) chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems, has been named co-winner of the 2014 Blue Horse Press Poetry Chapbook contest, and is now available at BookWoman, Amazon and her website. The contest was judged by 2008 Texas Poet Laureate Larry D.
Thomas.
* * *
Have news you want to share? Read and follow the guidelines on the right before submitting. Thank you!
|
|
|
|
|
Our Next Third Thursday
Emotional Research:
Mining Your Own Mental States for Stories
Thursday, September 25*, 7 pm
(*Due to schedule conflicts, our Third Thursday will take place next week on the fourth Thursday of the month. We will return to our usual schedule in October.)
BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd., 3rd Floor
Free and Open to the Public!
please take elevator (in back of store) to the third floor
How does a writer achieve emotional resonance in his/her narrative? How can one attain the mindset to accurately convey a tone or a character's depth of feeling? Authors often mine from their own lives -- tapping into emotions, experiences, or memories in order to recreate the right mood or state of mind on the page. But how? And at what cost?
Join us Thursday, September 25 when four distinguished authors share their thoughts and advice on this difficult but important process.
 Katherine Catmull's middle-grade fantasy Summer and Bird (Dutton Juvenile/Penguin) was named one of Booklist's 2012 Top Ten First Novels for Youth, received starred reviews in Kirkus and Booklist, and was an IndieBound New Voices Pick and Amazon Editors' Pick for fall 2012.
She is one of four co-authors of a collection of scary middle-grade short stories, The Cabinet of Curiosities (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, May 2014), which received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Her YA novel is due out from Dutton in 2016. Katherine is also a playwright, actor, and arts writer.
 Nan Cuba's novel Body and Bread (Engine Books), won the PEN Southwest Award in Fiction and the Texas Institute of Letters Steven Turner Award; it was listed as one of "Ten Titles to Pick Up Now" in O, Oprah's Magazine, and was a "Summer Books" choice from Huffington Post. Cuba co-edited Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists (Trinity University Press), and published other work in Quarterly West, Columbia, Antioch Review, Harvard Review, and storySouth.
Nan is founder and executive director emeritus of Gemini Ink, a nonprofit literary center, and teaches in the MA/MFA Program in Literature, Writing, and Social Justice at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, where she is writer-in-residence.
Helen Ginger writes both nonfiction and fiction. She has authored three books in TSTC Publishing's TechCareer series. Her first novel, a USA Best Book Award winner, Angel Sometimes, is available on Kindle and in print. Helen's latest book, Dismembering the Past, is a suspense starring PI Matti McAllister.
Helen has served as a Board member and Executive Director of the Writers' League of Texas. She is also an Owner/Partner of Legends In Our Own Minds�. What she gets asked about most often are her three years swimming as a mermaid at Aquarena Springs.
 Suzy Spencer is the author of five nonfiction books, including Breaking Point, the story of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children; Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality, a memoir about her journalistic research into Americans' alternative sex lives that was named a Barnes & Noble Editor's Recommendation, Publishers Weekly Fall Pick 2012, and was featured on Katie Couric's talk show, "Katie;" and Wasted, a New York Times bestseller about the murder of a young Austin woman. Suzy holds a Master of Professional Writing in fiction, a Master of Business Administration in marketing and finance, both from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Baylor University.
|
|
Spotlight on Fall Classes
White-Knuckle Fiction:
Creating Suspense in Stories and Novels
with Michael Noll
October 4, 2014 - 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
$99 Members / $159 Nonmembers
St. Edward's University, Austin, TX
Chances are, you've stayed up too late at night reading because you couldn't put the book down. But have you studied those white-knuckle passages to understand how they work? This class will look at examples from crime fiction, genre thrillers, and literary fiction in order to understand the techniques that writers use to create suspense and how you can use those same strategies in your own writing.
In this class, you will bring material (ideas, notes) and leave with sketches and outlines for suspenseful scenes. The class will use guided writing prompts and exercises, analysis of published work, and a Q&A session.
This full-day class is perfect for
* Writers working on a novel (genre or literary) and trying to increase the tension of the plot.
* Writers who want to raise the stakes in their short stories.
* Any writer who wants a stronger approach to plot and tension.
* Readers who want to know why their favorite books can't be put down easily.
.jpg)
Michael Noll teaches writing at Texas State University and edits Read to Write Stories, a site that offers writing exercises based on published stories, novel excerpts, and essays. His work has been published in American Short Fiction, Chattahoochee Review, Narrative Magazine, Huffington Post, and The Good Men Project. He was formerly the writer in residence at the Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle, TX. He's currently at work on a story collection set in rural Kansas and a novel, Seven Attacks of the Dead.
|
|
Spotlight on Fall Classes
The Ones You Love to Hate:
Writing a Good Bad Guy (or Gal)
with Lee Thomas
October 11, 2014 - 9 a.m. to 12 noon
$49 Members / $109 Nonmembers
St. Edward's University, Austin, TX
From Shakespeare's Othello to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, exciting villains have wowed readers for centuries, often remaining more memorable than the heroes they tormented. Hannibal Lecter, Annie Wilkes, Voldemort, Nurse Ratched, and Anton Chigurh are just a few of the baddies who've leapt off the page and landed in the social consciousness. What makes them, and other villains, work so well?
Whether you're writing a crime thriller, a family drama, a work of the fantastic, or even a romance, the way you create your "heavy" is an essential key to the success of your story. By understanding the appeal of the villain you'll be better able to create compellingly dark characters that grab hold of your readers, and engage their imaginations well after your stories have ended.
You will need:
- Your preferred writing utensils - laptop, pen, paper, etc.
- A favorite villain (or two) to discuss.
This half-day class is ideal for writers at all levels with interests in an array of genres.
Lee Thomas is the two-time Lambda Literary Award and the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of more than 20 books including The Dust of Wonderland, The German, Like Light for Flies, and Butcher's Road. Under various pseudonyms he has authored several suspense thrillers for young adults, including Mason, Shimmer, and the Wicked Dead series (co-authored with Stefan Petrucha).
|
|
Send Us Your Member News
"Member News" is a perfect way for WLT members to share their news about signings, appearances, book releases, publications, etc. At least two weeks before desired publication date, please send your 50-word blurb to: [email protected]- You must be a current member of the Writers' League.
- Describe success story or upcoming event in 50 words or less.
- Urls and websites can be hyperlinked, if provided.
Items might be edited for style and publication dates will be determined by the Footnotes editor. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
