Progress Report #3 - SF Writer's Conference

SF Writer’s Conference

Last weekend, and through Monday, I attended the SF Writer’s Conference in San Francisco at the Mark Hopkins. For three days we wandered about the rabbit-warren of conference rooms and stairs, attending a strange but incredibly interesting collection of seminars and how-to’s. Go to their site for more info and to get a taste for next year. It was really a two part conference – one part dealing with the art of writing and publishing and the other about the need for authors to be an integral part about marketing their books and products (poems, short stories, thrillers, etc.). I could write three blogs about Facebook (I am currently Friendless), Twitter, blogs, websites, going viral, and all the other social media necessities. The bottom line is – you have to be there in social media, all over it, rolling in it, up to your neck in the stuff of it. But then again, you would never have time to write - there are choices to me made. I’ll see how it works out. Thank you Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada and your team, it was excellent. And a prize for the first person who knows what steam-punk is.

One of the best parts of the conference is to touch base with annual friends, (who should be more than once a year acquaintances). One gentleman who lives down the road in Danville, Kent Killmer, last year was flogging his book Red House, this year he had books, hard and soft, in hand and was self-published. The first paragraph sucks you in, check out his movie trailer here. Good book, buy it!

I also had the pleasant opportunity to sit through three lectures on the thriller/suspense style with Bob Dugoni and Sheldon Siegel. The intense, almost one-on-one, lectures gave a select few of us time to focus on what’s next for our books. Thanks to both.

The Next Sharon O’Mara Chronicle (Book 3)

Well, it’s started. Goosed in the butt by Sheldon and a comment he made, I found my opening line: “The village was dead.” Now Bob and others said the open will change, but I don’t think so, it captures the tone I was looking for, and since the story begins in eastern France and Germany in 1944, there were many villages that were destroyed and dead.

Like a racehorse in the gate, I was pawing and snorting to get started, just waiting for the bell, the lecture on Monday was the bell. It’s now Thursday and I’m 3000 words into it. A good start and only 21 days ahead of schedule, we’ll see how the race goes; the first turn is ahead.

Marketing is critical and my other books are in need of help, we are reorganizing and getting our schedules and to-do lists written and done. I will keep you posted, for those interested, on how we revive our publishing company and make it more dynamic in this every-writer-for-himself world.

More Later . . .