Thursday, October 22, 2015

October 16, 2015 Meeting Minutes

East Beach Writers’ Guild
October 16, 2015
Meeting Minutes
Submitted by Sally Parrott

In attendance: Michelle Davenport, Karen Harris, Skip McLamb, Sally Parrott
New Business:
·         Anthology
1.      Available for purchase at East Beach Sandwich Company, SandFiddler, Sun Kiss, Creative Wedge, Tidewater Collection  Please encourage people to go to these places to buy a copy.
2.      Appearances:
                                            i. Book launch write-up and pictures published in EBPL magazine
                                  
        ii.Anchor Scholarship was cancelled
                                        iii.Sinkenson Foundation on a rainy Wednesday by Jenny, Karen & Mary-Jaq.  Karen reported that no books were sold, not mentioned during the program, and kind of out of the way.  Suggest future events we make sure we get on the agenda for the evening and in the program, if applicable. 
                                        iv.SOS Book club attended by Sally, Jenny, Michelle and Gina.  Michelle reported that while light attendance, all were excited to meet the authors.  Also a thrill for the authors to hear how people interpreted their stories.
                                          v.EOV Civic League November (Sally and Will to attend 1st R in Nov)
                                        vi.Nov 7th, Norfolk Library NANOWRIMO month…Sally, Will, Pat, Maybe Karen, Michelle and MJ
                                      vii.Authorfest 2015 November 14th (Mike and Sally)
3.      Possible appearances/sales outlets:  Book Exchange, East Beach Company, Royal Chocolate
4.      Sales thus far: 
Hardcover through our sales channels: 324, 2 lost, and 2 donated to libraries
Hardcover through Create Space: 33
E-books: 16
KENP read: ~350 (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages)
5.      Royalties to date (to be disbursed as soon as the Amazon payment comes in end of October): Difficult to calculate at this point since we have so many sales points but I will soon!
6.      What we need now…still participate on the blog and on facebook.  Encourage people to leave reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads.  On Amazon, once we get 50 reviews we get bumped up in the search.
7.      Michelle needs ideas to keep the blog Fresh.
8.      Will try to plug into Book Club pages.  Need everyone to submit two discussion questions for their story.
·         Anthology 2 announcement!
Schedule
Feb 28, 2016                                   submission deadline
Mar1-April 30, 2016                     acceptance process
May 1-July 31, 2016                     1st round edits
Aug 1-Sep 30, 2016                      author corrections and resubmit
Oct 1-Nov 30, 2016 2nd                                2nd round story edits
Dec 1, 2016-Jan 31, 2017            author corrections and resubmit
Feb 1-March 31, 2017                                 Spelling/grammar edits
April, 2017                                       final copy and author party
May 15, 2017                                  RELEASE AND SIGNING PARTY

Acceptance Criteria
*Story must be between 3500-7000 words, fiction or non-fiction.  It can be a sequel to the first story, but is not required to be so.
*Story must show EB in a positive light, and EB must be central to the story.
*Story should be G-rated, or light PG
*Author must live on the EB Peninsula or be a member of EBWG.
*Author must agree to lead and/or participate on one (or more) of the committees required to publish and promote the book:
·         Charities (identify and communicate)
·         Promotion/Marketing (traditional for book launch and book signings—to include but not limited to Pilot, EBPL magazine, local print magazines, perhaps a news release to radio and TV stations, also promo items such as bookmarks etc, maybe something on Goodreads, too?)
·         Inventory (requires handling books at all signing events and making sure that stores carrying the books do not run out of inventory)
·         Social Media—Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat/Tmblr and anything else new
·         Blog
·         Author event (party to celebrate amongst authors)
·         Book Launch event
·         Book Reviews—work to remind people and writers we need reviews! 

·         Discussion of another anthology that has a broader reach throughout all of Tidewater.  All in favor, but with a 3-4 month lag behind East Beach Stories.  Will need someone to volunteer to take the lead on that.
·         Join writing groups!  Sally reported being included in a cookbook with 87 other authors. The invitation to submit came off an Sisters in Crime listserv.  Get plugged in to other writing groups and take advantage of all opportunities that come along. 
·         Hampton Roads Writers will be having a self-editing workshop on October 24th.  Info link will be posted on our facebook page. 

Old Business:
·         Hampton Roads Writers Conference—Skip shared that he attended Thursday night’s talk on Dialogue and learned some things.
·         Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival—Sally reports a great turnout and a lot of fun.  Mystery writers and readers are the greatest!

Writing Quick Tip—
            Ten Commandments of Writing Fiction

Upcoming meetings:
·         November-- Show Us Your Space—Member Participation Meeting facilitated by Jenny Sparks…also bring books for donation to Toys for Tots
·         December Holiday Party…read an excerpt from the favorite thing you read during the year
·         Plans for 2016 Videos and critique sessions, will be posted on website

Starter Sentence: 
·         October starter sentence from Vickie…”Even though I’ve done this many times before, my heart is racing as I step onto the stage.”
·         November starter sentence from Jenny… The alphabet game! Write a story about anything. It must be 26 sentences long. Each sentence starts with the next letter of the alphabet. If your story starts with a B: “Being that he was dead, Dracula didn’t require food.” the next sentence has to start with a C: “Considering that, he passed on the plate of bacon offered.” So on and so on with the last sentence starting with the letter that preceded the first one. In this example, that would be A.  OR  You are ten years sober and about to take a drink. What lead you to take the drink?

·         Up next is Skip (then Sally, Mary-Jac, Pat, Mike, Gina, Karen, Will, Michelle, Vickie, Jenny) Am I missing anyone?  I kind of lost track.


Today’s Program:  Critique

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