Texas High Plains Writers

THPW March 21 Meeting is Cancelled. 

Jodi Thompson has graciously offered to reschedule, with more details to follow.

Be careful. Be safe. Be smart. Be kind.

Because of construction, the Edward Davis Room is not available for our March 21st meeting. Instead, we will have our regular meeting at the Amarillo Downtown Library, 413 SE 4th St, between Pierce and Buchannan. We will meet in Rooms A and B. The rooms will be open for us at 9:00 and our program will begin at 10:00 am.

Our March speaker will Jodi Thompson, of Fawke’s Press. More information will follow in the coming weeks.

Make plans to attend and invite friends.

For a map and directions to the Downtown Libray, CLICK HERE!

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Kick-off the new year with a day of workshops!
Guest presenters include local authors
Jennifer Archer, Ryan McSwain, and KR Brorman.

The Edward Davis Room
9th Floor

First Bank Southwest Tower (formerly Chase Tower)
600 S Tyler St., Amarillo, TX 79101

8:30- 9:30- BOD meeting

9:30- 10:00- Registration

10:00-10:15- Business Meeting/ Game

10:15- 11:00- Kristine Brorman- “Co-Writing Fiction – Are you sure you want to do this?”

11-11:10- Break

11:10 – 11:55- Rick Treon – “Picking up the Pace- Tricks to keep your readers turning the page.”

11:55-12:30-  Break/Game

12:30- 1:30- Ryan McSwain- “How to Finish Your First Draft or Die Trying.”

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Bethany Claire is a USA Today bestselling author of swoon-worthy, Scottish romance and time travel novels. Bethany loves to immerse her readers in worlds filled with lush landscapes, hunky Scots, lots of magic, and happy endings.

Bethany represents a true success story for independent and local authors. She’s also an excellent speaker, and we look forward to her valuable insights!

Visit her website to learn more about Bethany and her books.

Your Book Marketing Recipe for Sizzling Sales

From social media to your website to an email list, we’ll cover everything you need to know so you can create an authentic platform and do the author thing forever!

An expert editor, seasoned writer, and author-centric marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with authors and business owners every day. A lifelong lover of books, she has edited over 400 books and has launched several Amazon bestsellers for her clients.

Her award-winning blog teaches new and established authors how to write, publish, and market their books.

She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, The Rotting (in Shivers in the Night), and The Suicide Tree. In her not-so-free time, she acts as organizer for the Yukon Writers’ Society, volunteers at the Oklahoma County Jail, and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her dogs, Chanel, Wednesday, and Baker.

https://shaylaraquel.com/

Authors Revolution: The Hidden Cost of Being a Published Author

B Alan Bourgeois has been a writer for 30 years and during this time, he has also been a book publisher for 5 years producing 60 books for authors around the world. Since 2011, Bourgeois has also worked with Authors to help develop marketing tools to help them to build a platform that allows them to succeed in their career as a writer.

During this time, Bourgeois continues to see how authors give away their income and rights as writers in a variety of ways. As a published writer himself, he knows the difficulties involved with selling books. From this experience, Bourgeois has begun to work on a concept and platform that will help empower authors to reclaim their income and their power as authors. He is calling it the Authors Revolution.

In this session of the Authors Revolution, an author will learn the hidden cost of being a published author, tips & tools to reduce the cost and to become more profitable.

At this special session, Bourgeois will also be doing 1 min live Facebook Interviews for any published author. In 2018, the average view count for these videos was over 500 per author. Interviews are left up so that thousands more over time can learn about the author and their books.

SUBTEXT: The Often-Missing Ingredient That Can Make Your Fiction Richer

While carefully cooking up an intriguing plotline, true-to-life characters, and conflicts with obstacles at every turn, authors often don’t think about one very delicious storytelling ingredient that can take their writing to a higher, more complex (in a good way!) level. That ingredient is subtext, and it has the capability of drawing readers more deeply into the text, to a place at which they become involved with the writer in creating the story’s meaning.

In this program, Amarillo writer and editor Jennifer Archer will discuss:

• The two different types of subtext.
• The purpose(s) of subtext for plot, and the purpose(s) of subtext for characterization.
• How to create subtext in your stories.
• How subtext makes readers co-creators
• Why readers love subtext (even if they don’t know it).

An eclectic writer of women’s fiction, young adult fiction, and non-fiction, Jennifer was a finalist twice for Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart Award and was a finalist for that same organization’s Rita Award. She is the author of eleven novels, three novellas, several non-fiction works, and has edited and helped to develop numerous written projects for other writers. Her debut novel for teens, Through Her Eyes, was selected by the Texas Library Association for their TAYSHA reading list and for the Spirit of Texas Reading Program – Middle Grade. She is co-owner of Archer Editing & Writing Services, where she writes and edits stories for clients. A native Texan, she received a business management degree from West Texas A&M University.

Freelance Writing with Dee Burks

Dee Burks has worked in publishing more than 25 years and owned a publishing company in Texas for ten years that specialized in personal development and business books. Dee has worked with authors such as Bob Proctor, Joe Vitale, Mark Victor Hanson, David Oreck, John Maxwell and many others. Dee is a #1 bestselling author and taught continuing education classes on writing at Amarillo College for several years. She now concentrates most of her time on her own books many of which are set in beautiful Northern New Mexico. She also freelances and teaches writing classes.

This publishing professional will speak with us about the exciting world of freelance writing. Whether you’re currently freelancing or are interested in new ways to expand your writing income, join us at 9:30 on March 16. We’ll be meeting in our usual location, the Edward Davis Room on the 9th floor of the First Bank Southwest Tower (formerly Chase Tower), 600 S Tyler St., Amarillo, TX 79101. Click here for a map.

If you’re not already a member of the Texas High Plains Writers, we’d love for you to join us. Learn about the benefits of THPW and how to become a member here.

Marketing and Book Promotion with Barbara Brannon

Finishing your book is a huge accomplishment, but the job isn’t finished. Whether you work with a publisher or self-publish, authors are expected to work as hard promoting their books as they do writing them. In our next program, Barbara Brannon will walk us through the steps of marketing our books. Join us on January 19 to learn how to reach a larger audience and improve your sales.

Currently the executive director of the Texas Plains Trail Region, Barbara Brannon has served as the head of the ground-breaking Publishing Laboratory at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and as marketing manager of Texas Tech University Press. A writer, photographer, and editor, she is a veteran of publishing and marketing in higher education. Her poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including the Asheville Poetry Review, Cenacle, the South Carolina Review, and Yemassee. She also writes on the subjects of travel and history, such as her book The Ferries of North Carolina: Traveling the State’s Nautical Highways.

Barbara Brannon has helped many authors successfully market their books, and we’re excited to hear her speak at the next meeting of the Texas High Plains Writers.

Clarity in Writing by Bill Briscoe

Is your story clear and the reader able to understand what’s going on? Or is it convoluted and muddled? If it’s the latter, do you know how to fix it?

Bill Briscoe, our November speaker, will share things he’s learned through his own writing process that may be helpful to you. He encourages you to bring a couple of pages of your work to check for clarity as he goes through his presentation.

His lovely wife, Liz, will also share what she’s done to increase his social media presence that may spark ideas. After all, if you’ve put a book out, what good is it if no one knows about it? So many busy authors overlook the importance of a social media platform and of studying various ways to market.

Author of the successful Pepperman Mystery Series, Bill Briscoe, grew up in the oil refinery town of Phillips in the Texas Panhandle. After a career spent working for a major insurance company, he turned his focus to writing the stories that had been rumbling around in his head for years. He’s published the first two mysteries in the series thus far with a new one set to release. When he’s not writing, you can find him watching baseball and football.