March 1

An elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Mike Cox is the author of 20 non-fiction books with another two currently under contract. Over a freelance career of more than forty years, he also has written hundreds of articles and essays for a wide variety of publications. In September 2011, at the West Texas Book Festival in Abilene, he was recognized with the A.C. Greene Award for lifetime achievement.

His best-selling work has been a two-volume 250,000-word history of the Texas Rangers, published by Forge Books in New York in 2008 and 2009. His most recent book is Big Bend Tales, a collection of history and folklore.

A former award-winning reporter, Cox was a longtime spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety and, later, communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation before retiring in 2007.

He retired from retirement in 2010 to go back to work for the state as a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. When not working or writing, he spends as much time as he can fishing and hunting. He lives in Austin with his wife Linda and daughter Hallie.

February 2

SGWL’s own Janet Kilgore will be presenting our program this Thursday night. Her topic is Writing Humor. Anyone who knows Janet, knows that she enjoys a good laugh. She’s bound to have a good sense of humor, to be willing to step in at the last minute.

She asks that we bring pen and paper–so please do so, and look forward to her tickling our funny bone.

(The talk by Ann Seaman will be rescheduled.)

January 5, 2012

Animated Film Production:
From Conception to Hollywood Premier

Cindy Weigand is the author of one book and several articles in local, state, and national publications.

Cindy is also a representative of OntaireMedia, a company that finds funding for animated feature films. In her talk, she will take attendees through the process of producing an animated movie.

In 2004, her book, Texas Women in World War II, Republic of Texas Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, was a finalist in the Violet Crown Writing Contest for Nonfiction sponsored by the Writers’ League of Texas. Her article, Yankee Doodle Gals’ of World War II” published in the June 2002 issue of Texas Co-op Power, received an
Award of Merit, Writing-Personality/Profile Category in the 2003 Dalton Pen Writing Contest sponsored by Warwick Publishing. She continues to write on various projects including a biographical novel.

Cindy represents OntaireMedia, www.ontaire.com, a company that assists individuals and groups find funding for animated films and television shows as well as live action movies. In her presentation, Cindy will describe the steps to making an independent movie from pr-eproduction to post-production.

A DUMMY DOES EPUB

presented by Earl Staggs at the November 3rd Meeting!

A few months ago, I wanted to select some of the short stories I’d had published over the years, put them together as a collection, and make it available as an ebook. They were good stories and I was proud of every one of them. Every one of them had been published, some of them reprinted two and three times. I hated having them gather dust on my hard drive.

I considered querying publishers large and small, but learned they were not interested in a short story collection from a writer a few miles short of being a household name.

That left self-publishing. In the past, self-publishing meant paying a vanity press a few thousand dollars to print a few hundred books for us. No longer. Now, with digital printing and electronic readers, we can do it all ourselves – at no cost — through Kindle, Smashwords, Lulu, and a few other outfits.

How hard could it be? A lot of writers were doing it with novels, and doing a collection of short stories wouldn’t be any different. I figured I was as smart as any of them. It didn’t take long to realize I was a complete dummy. But being a dummy has never stopped me from doing anything before. So I set myself to the task. When it was all over, I still had some sanity left, and my collection of short stories was available as an ebook as well as a paper and ink printed version.

Now I’d like to share with you what I went through, what I had to learn through trial, error and do-overs, and how many times I wanted to scream, “What was I thinking?”

I’ll also show you the results, tell you if it was worth what I went through, and if I’d do it again.

–Earl Staggs

Bio

Derringer Award winning author Earl Staggs has seen many of his short stories appear in magazines and anthologies. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine and as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His novel MEMORY OF A MURDER earned thirteen Five Star reviews on Amazon.comand BN.com. He is also a regular blogger at: makeminemystery.blogspot.com and murderousmusings.blogspot.com

Earl also writes a regular column called “Write Tight” for APOLLO’S LYRE, an online magazine. In each issue, he offers suggestions for self-editing your writing to make it tighter.
Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net Website: earlstaggs.wordpress.com

October 6

Getting Your Name Out There:

Hints and Help for Self-Promotion

a talk by Kaye George

How do you let people know you’re there, and that you’ve published a
book? The publishing world is changing quickly and it’s hard to keep
up. Kaye will give some hints on how to use the tools available today,
with samples of how others have done it.

Kaye George, an Agatha nominated short story writer, is the author of
CHOKE: An Imogene Duckworthy Mystery (Mainly Murder Press), as well as
A PATCHWORK OF STORIES, a collection of her previously published
stories, and THE BAVARIAN KRISP CAPER, available at Untreed Reads.
FISH TALES: The Guppy Anthology contains her story, “The Truck
Contest”. She serves as President of the Guppies chapter of Sister in
Crime, reviews for “Suspense Magazine”, and writes for several
newsletters and blogs. She, her husband, and a rescued feral cat named
Agamemnon live together in Texas, near Austin.

For more about Kaye George:

Homepage: http://kayegeorge.com/
Blogs: http://travelswithkaye.blogspot.com/, her solo blog, and
http://allthingswriting.blogspot.com/.

Tom Mitchell Speaks at September Meeting

By Tom Mitchell

Bread Loaf:  A Writer’s Brigadoon

Tom Mitchell will speak at the September SGWL meeting about his experience at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, held annually on the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College inVermont.

Tom relaxes in front of the Bread Loaf Inn

Brigadoon rose from the Scottish mists for one day, once every one hundred years.  Fortunately for writers everywhere, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference returns every year, and lasts for nine days.  In 1915, a wealthy horse breeder donated thousands of acres of forest land and an old Victorian inn in the Green Mountains of Vermont to Middlebury College.  For ten years, the college couldn’t figure out what to do with the inn, but at the suggestion of Robert Frost, they established a graduate school of English and a “Conference on Writing” to be held at the inn each summer.  The first session of the writers’ conference convened in 1926 and has been held there every summer since, including the WWII years.

In the words of the director, Michael Collier, “Bread Loaf is not a retreat – not a place to work in solitude.  Instead it provides a stimulating community of diverse voices in which . . . we seek advice about our progress as writers.”  Each year more than one thousand writers apply for two hundred workshop seats in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.  Participants are selected by an admissions committee, based on the strength of a writing sample submitted with their application.  Tom was selected to attend in nonfiction the past six years, and in fiction in 2011.  He will speak about what it takes to get into Bread Loaf, the faculty and guests at the conference, a typical day on the mountain, friends and contacts he has made there, classes and workshops offered, and dances and cocktail parties.

Tom holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from LSU, and MS and Ph.D. degrees in Oceanography from Texas A&M.  He wrote countless reports and other technical works in his forty-year career in the aerospace and oil industries, but has devoted himself to creative writing since he retired.  He began preparing for his retirement career years before he actually left the working world by taking continuing education courses in writing at Rice University, and participating in Bread Loaf and other writing conferences, and in programs of the Writers’ League of Texas.

Tom has ongoing projects in fiction and nonfiction.  His Bread Loaf fiction submission this year was the first three chapters of a novel titled Awl in Loozyana.  This is the story of the inevitable and irreversible changes a small rural community foists on itself when oil drilling brings dreams of great wealth.  His nonfiction manuscript is Winds, Waves, and Warriors, in which he combines his oceanographic and Army Reserve experience to examine the ocean’s influence on foot soldiers of the Army and Marine Corps in WWII amphibious landings.

Homework assignment:  Review Bread Loaf’s web site http://www.middlebury.edu/blwc

Past Programs  -  2011

• January 6th – Tax Talk 101 by Melody Lovett
• February 4th – Who Originated Valentine’s Day? by Robert Fears
• March 3rd – Internet Trends for Authors by Cindy Lafrance Phillip
• April 7th – Double Life of a Genre-Crosser: From Fiction to Non-Fiction Crime by Diane Fanning
• May 5th – Selection of Poems to be Published by Scott Wiggerman
• June 2nd -  Attack Out of the Sun by Durwood Heinrich
• July 7th - Writing, Editing and the Long Road to Getting Published by James Parker
• August 4th – Program by Preston Stone, new owner of the Hill Country Book Store
• September 1st – Bread Loaf: A Writer’s Brigadoon by Tom Mitchell
• October 6th – Getting Your Name Out There:Hints and Help for Self-Promotion by Kaye George
• November 3rd – A Dummy Does Epub by Earl Staggs
• December 1st – Christmas Party