League of Utah Writers - Quills Conference

I attended the Quills Conference this past Friday and Saturday. I took lots of notes from several amazing presentations. One of the anthologies I'm in (Apocalypse Utah) won the Silver Quill award, so now my short stories have won multiple awards either for the story itself or for the collection it's in. It's great for feeling validated as an author. Will it turn into fame or fortune? Nah. Most awards won't do that, and for those who do, it's not guaranteed. Would I ever give up the award as useless? Of course not! Awards are cool!

Me with the Apocalypse Utah award.

I took a couple different classes from Maria V. Snyder who was one of the special guests at the conference. One was on properly portraying emotions, and the other on believable YA voices. Both classes were excellent.

I also took a class on deconstruction and criticism (the academic kind) from Johnny Worthen who moved from President-Elect to President within the League last night. (More on that later.)

David R Slayton (another special guest) talked about building worlds with a fatal flaw, something that leads to conflict within the world.

Theresa Braun talked about book reviews and how Amazon treats books differently based on when you get reviews and how many you get.

James A. Hunter talked about more details of how Amazon treats metadata, and how you can get the most out of it by understanding how it's used. It's important to get your first reviews from a relevant source to help Amazon put your book in front of the right buyers.

Classes covered a wide range of topics. Two or more talked about tax and IRS issues as they apply to authors. I attended one by Therese Francis on how to look like a business.

Aaron Michael Ritchey talked about story arc and character arc and how they interact, and we ended the class with a storyline brainstorm to apply the principles. It was a lot of fun and might result in some short stories or novels from the attendees.

Lyn Worthen taught about sharpening short story skills. I've team-taught with her before and she's an expert in the field, having written a huge number of short stories and been the editor for multiple anthologies. One of her latest anthos (Mirages and Speculations) won an award last night.

I also attended a class by a local editor, Callie Stoker, on how to find and train alpha and beta readers.

All in all, it was an excellent conference. I went to great classes, hung out with old friends and new, and enjoyed the two days.

But then...

You see, I've been a local chapter president in the League of Utah Writers for two and a half years. Last night they announced me as the new President-Elect of the state-wide organization, elected by the board from a field of three candidates. That means I have one or two years to learn the ropes under the current president, then one or two years as President, then one or two years as Outgoing President. It's kind of a long-term commitment to a statewide organization with hundreds of members. It will be a learning experience, and it will require me to hone my time management skills if I'm to do the job justice. I still have the day job to take care of, still have a trilogy to finish and another series to start, and someone has to do all that yard work.

Salt Lake Comic Con 2015 Day 1

It took a few texts and wandering around before all the passes were in the right hands to get in to set up the Xchyler Publishing author's table. (Not an official table for the publisher, but a bunch of their authors getting together since we're mostly locals.)

Here's Jay Barnson manning our table, photobombing himself.

We were next to the Curiosity Quills and Space Balrogs folks, so we had several book-laden tables in a row. I was able to get away from the table for a few panel discussions, which is always fun. I was rushing from one thing to another, so I didn't get as much time to talk to people as I would like.

Writing Advice: The Good, The Bad & The Very Ugly

It was fun to hear several people describe the best and worst writing advise they've received. Michaelbrent Collings is a strict and disciplined moderator, and helped things move along smoothly. One thing in particular which came out is that any time someone expresses an opinion on how to write with "always" or "never" they are most likely wrong.

Outlining Vs. Discovery Writing

Outline vs. Discovery is also known as Plotter vs. Pantser. Do you outline everything, or do you write by the seat of your pants? It turns out that it's more of a broad spectrum with those two cases being the extremes. Professional authors tend to do more plotting since they have deadlines and schedules, and need to be able to write to deadlines. Newer authors tend to do more free-form writing. Neither is an absolute though, and everyone tends to do a mix of some kind.

Creating Horror: How to Scare the Crap out of People

I'm writing a short horror story, so I figured I'd spend some time listening to successful scary story writers. Michaelbrent Collings is a complete loose cannon when not moderating, and is loads of fun to listen to. :) You tend to need to write about what scares you personally, and to broaden it out from there to take in the fears of more than just yourself. Most of these authors claim a Stephen King book as the scariest they've ever read, but I don't think they doubled up on any single book.

Writing a Book Series

Dave Farland (AKA Dave Wolverton) moderated this one. Writing and pitching books as a series can save a lot of time once you've built a reputation up to where you can approach agents and publishers that way. If you have the reputation for dependability, a series can keep you going on a project for a lot longer than single books can. It's not quite so good as a first entry out of the chute if you're a new author, just because it's hard for a publisher to trust someone that's an unknown.

Now I'm looking forward to Friday and Saturday. Today I forgot to take a notebook so I had to run from memories jogged by my pictures. Tomorrow will be better.

Salt City Steamfest 2015

Last year, I attended only Saturday at the Salt City Steamfest. This year my wife and I were able to be there for both days.

We had Victor Chopine take some pictures, which was lots of fun. He has a great eye for poses.

I helped out a bit at a booth full of authors associated with Xchyler Publishing. That's Candace Thomas, Sarah E. Seeley, and Jay Barnson pictured, and we had Scott Taylor and Scott Tarbet there as well.

We even had this cool online poster put together.

I also attended quite a few panels, mostly on writing, pitching your writing (to editors and agents, not into the trash), and storytelling in general. Our friend Julie Barnson told ghost stories, which are her specialty.

One of the panels consisted of these three ladies ( Terra Luft, Christauna Rose Asay and Callie Tolman Stoker), which was great fun.

Scott Tarbet played moderator for their panel.

There was a writing contest hosted by Curiosity Quills Press, where James Wymore was supposed to announce the winner at the conference. Unfortunately, James had a schedule conflict and had Jason King fill in for him. Due to unforeseen complications, the announcement was moved around and rescheduled, so a troop of us were constantly asking Jason if he knew when we would hear about the contest. He was constantly apologizing for delays that were not his fault, and bore up well under our constant barrage. Finally, the announcement was made!

I didn't win.

But the best part of the contest was yet to come. The gal who won had just been in a round table discussion with me and a few other people a few minutes before. Several of us held our own impromptu session talking about how to approach publishers. The speaker had been a no-show, so everyone just shared what they knew about both short story and novel submissions and publishing methods. When I saw her next she was sort of bouncing and floating down the hall, bordering on giddy because she had just received the good news.

That's when Terra, Christauna and Callie started to talk to her. (You know, I should find out her name,but haven't yet.) They invited her to dinner. I'm not sure how many of the three had been beaten by her in this contest, but I heard one of them had been in 2nd place. They were all nearly as excited for her as she was for herself.

The contest winner is second from the right. This picture is from Terra Luft's Facebook page. The struggling new author was taken under the wing of this fine group of writers. It was great to see her adopted into the community, where even those whom she beat out in the contest were not just happy for her, but went out of their way to be inclusive.

I've felt this same thing in how I have been adopted into the Utah writer's scene. I know several local authors now because of conferences and events over the past year, especially after being included in a Xchyler anthology. Some of them even remember my name. :) I really appreciate my new friends, and their willingness to share, support, and help others.