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
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
No comments:
Post a Comment