Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time

Jordan Rosenfeld

Jordan Rosenfeld

Jordan E. Rosenfeld will be the guest speaker at our next monthly meeting on Saturday, June  15, 2013, at the Four Points by Sheraton, 5115 Hopyard, Pleasanton.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld, author of the popular writing guide Make a Scene and the debut novel Forged in Grace, will teach you how to activate your writing, creating the page-turning energy of blockbuster fiction by mastering the essential building block: the scene. You’ll learn how to “demonstrate” not “lecture,” crafting compelling, textured, memorable scenes. You’ll never write the same way again.

Ms. Rosenfeld’s essays and articles have appeared in such publications as AlterNet.org, Publisher’s Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The St. Petersburg Times, The Writer and Writer’s Digest magazine. Her book commentaries have appeared on The California Report, a news-magazine produced by NPR-affiliate KQED radio. She lives in Northern California with her Batman-obsessed son and Psychologist husband. Find out more at www.jordanrosenfeld.net

April 20, 2013: The Eight Elements Every Writer’s Website Must Have

Linda Lee-photo 2Linda Lee will be the guest speaker at our next monthly meeting on Saturday, April 20, 2013 at the Four Points by Sheraton, 5115 Hopyard, Pleasanton.

What should a great author’s website look like? Linda Lee will discuss the key components of a website including social media badges, a sales page for your book, sample book content, Media/Press kit, and more!

Ms. Lee is an experienced speaker and trainer. She is a recognized expert in WordPress and Social Media and runs a web design business helping organizations and authors build and manage their websites. Linda is also the founder of Smart Women Stupid Computers, WordPress Bootcamp and Askmepc-Webdesign. Find out more about Linda at http://askmepc-webdesign.com.

April 6, 2013 Robert Dugoni Workshop: Creating Plots and Playing God

Robert Dugoni

Robert Dugoni

We are proud to sponsor a workshop conducted by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni, “Creating Plots and Playing God” on Saturday, April 6, 2013, 12:30-4:30 p.m., at the Four Points by Sheraton, 5115 Hopyard in Pleasanton. Check in begins at 12:00 p.m. Snacks and beverages provided during break.

Does your novel or story keep your audience hungry for more? Do your characters resonate with your readers? If not, you won’t want to miss this event with Mr. Dugoni as he delves into ‘Creating Plots for Page Turners’ and ‘Playing God: Creating Memorable Characters’.

Cost: CWC member $60, non-member $70. Reservations and payment required by April 1, 2013.  Reservations closed.  

Please confirm your reservation with Deborah Bernal at reservations@trivalleywriters.org.

Mail check to: CWC Tri-Valley Writers  Attn: Workshop, 4682 Chabot Drive #10953,  Pleasanton, CA 94588 or choose PayPal option.

Robert Dugoni is the author of The Cyanide Canary, The Jury Master, Damage Control, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One, and The Conviction. His books have been published in 18 foreign countries. In addition to writing novels he teaches the craft of writing throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. He has been a featured speaker on more than two dozen radio and television programs. Robert was raised in Burlingame, California, and now resides in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.robertdugoni.com website for more information about this very accomplished author.

Watch an exclusive three-part Tri-Valley Writers interview “Dugoni on Dugoni” Video 1, Video 2, Video 3.

 

February 16, 2013 Self-Publishing: Set Yourself Up for Success

Jennifer Basye Sander will be speaking about avenues for becoming published at our next monthly meeting on February 16, at 2 pm at the Four Points Sheraton on Hopyard in Pleasanton. She is the author of more than 50 books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published, the bestseller Christmas Miracles (1997) and her most recent anthology, A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree: Real Stories of Hope, Faith and the True Gifts of the Season (2012). Jennifer has decades of experience in the publishing business. Visit her website to learn more about writing retreats.

January 19, 2013 Winterfest Celebration: Blending Artists and Authors

TVW logoThe annual Winterfest celebration of CWC Tri-Valley members will blend talents of artists and authors. The sixteen art pieces and submission guidelines for this Winterfest Ekphrasis are available HERE.

Members are encouraged to select one or more of these visuals to inspire their poetry and prose. Send your entries to  submissions@trivalleywriters.org by midnight, January 10, 2013.

The artwork and related writings will be displayed at the January 19, 2013 meeting where authors will have the opportunity to share brief readings from selected entries.

 

December 15, 2012 Meg Waite Clayton presents Getting to Yes: The art of polishing and submitting a manuscript

Meg Waite Clayton is the national bestselling author of The Four Ms. Bradwells, The Wednesday Sisters, and the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light, published by Ballantine Books, a Random House imprint, and acclaimed by all major national book club picks. Clayton’s books have been published in six languages. Her fourth novel, The Wednesday Daughters, will be released in 2013.

 She hosts the blog, “1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started,” which features award-winning and bestselling authors sharing stories about their paths to writing and publishing. Clayton also blogs on the Huffington Post. Her essays and stories have aired on public radio and appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The San Jose Mercury News, Writer’s Digest, Runner’s World, and The Literary Review.

A graduate of the University Michigan Law School, she lives with her family in Palo Alto. Visit her website and read her blog. Make your reservation to meet her at the California Writers Club Tri-Valley Branch December meeting .

Beyond Google: Better Fact Finding for Fiction Writers

Geri Spieler is an internet research guru. She is the author of Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman who Shot Gerald Ford. This book has won four awards including the Smart-Writ Best Non-fiction award at the 2010 Mensa Annual Conference. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and Forbes and has been a journalist and investigative reporter. As the research director at Gartner Group, she has advised major corporations and published 150 research notes on emerging technology.

Spieler says “Never underestimate your reader. Accurate fiction does not release a novelist from fact. Inaccurate details will sink a book into the chasm of sloppy writing and lazy work habits. Learn the skills for fast, accurate and reliable Internet search techniques that boost your book out of the slush pile.”

Visit her web page at www.gerispieler.com

October 2012 Martha Engber Writing Workshop: Enough with Show, Don’t Tell Already!

Martha Engber, a professional journalist is the author of Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up: A Thorough Primer for the Writers of Fiction and Nonfiction. She received a 5-star “original-and-highly-recommended” rating from the Midwest Book Review for her literary novel, The Wind Thief. She has an article in Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing and an essay in Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages. She has had a full-length play produced in Hollywood and fiction published in Watchword, Anthology, Bookpress, Berkeley Fiction Review and other literary magazines. She also maintains Growing Great Writers From the Ground Up, a blog for writers.

Martha will present “Enough with Show, Don’t Tell Already!,” a hands-on workshop from both perspectives; showing and telling. Participants should bring up to twenty pages of a writing project, either in printed form or via a laptop computer. Cost is $25 for CWC members; $30 for nonmembers. Advanced reservations required by Tuesday, October 16.

Author Victoria Zacheim: The Power of Creative Nonfiction

California Writers Club Tri-Valley Branch invites you to meet acclaimed author, Victoria Zacheim. She is the author of the novel, The Bone Weaver, and editor of five anthologies: He Said What?: Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed, The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal, For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, The Face in the Mirror: Writers Reflect on Their Dreams of Youth and the Reality of Age, and Exit Laughing: How We Use Humor to Take the Sting Out of Death. Her play, The Other Woman, based on her first anthology, is now in development at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Zacheim’s first screenplay, MAIDSTONE, was optioned by Identity Films for a feature film.

She is story developer and writer of the documentary film Tracing Thalidomide: The Frances Kelsey Story, and writer of Where Birds Never Sang: The Story of Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camps, which will be aired nationwide on PBS in the coming months. Zacheim teaches Personal Essay in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and was a 2010 San Francisco Library Laureate. Visit her website http://www.victoriazackheim.com/

Tri-Valley Writers High School Writing Contest Reception at Towne Center Books

Congratulations to all the participants in, and especially to the winners of, the first Tri-Valley Writers High School Writing Contest. Students in grades 9-11 from ten area high schools competed for prizes in fiction, essay, and poetry.

A celebration for the winners was held Saturday, June 30, at Towne Center Books, 555 Main Street, Pleasanton. Winning students received certificates and monetary awards and read their writings.

The winning writers are:

Poetry
First Place – Hans Lee, “Book’s Dream”
Second Place – Enikoe Bihari, “Oblivious”
Third Place – Enikoe Bihari, “Moonslaves”

Honorable Mention
Jazmin Almeida, “Hang Your Raincoat on the Moon”
Brenna Botzheim, “I Can See the Stars”
Jessica Wright, “Cries of a Sober Teenager”
Tiffany Zheng, “Like Fireflies”

Essay
First Place – Ke Zhao, “Glass Hearts”
Second Place – Katie Chan, “Mommy and Baba”
Third Place – Kristie Becker, “Broken Butterflies”

Honorable Mention
Tori Knuppe, “A Sculpted Child”
Maekhila Koppikar, “Shades of Gray”
Hayley Revells, “The Piano Keys”
Aryo Sorayya, “The Chains of Man”
Ke Zhao, “Kaleidoscope”

Fiction
First Place – Claire Zasso, “Crash”
Second Place – Angie Kang, “You Know”
Third Place – Nick Livson, “The First Storm”

Honorable Mention
Tiuli Kulshi, “Escape”
Tarun Reddy, “Across the World in a Second”
Sijing Xie, “Curious George”
Qianying Zhang, “Regaining Her Balance”

Tri-Valley Writer member Lynn Goodwin led a committee of judges that included Fred Norman and Marilyn Slade (poetry); Cindy Luck and Kathy Urban (essay); Juliana Kleist, Lani Longshore and Ed Miracle (fiction). In addition, Goodwin was also a judge in the essay category. The contest was organized by Paula Chinick, Vice President/Community Liaison.

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