July 28, 2016 @ 6:00 pm – July 31, 2016 @ 2:00 pm
WHERE
1425 E 27th St
Tacoma, WA 98421
USA
**Registration for the full workshop is now closed.
We have a special treat for this event: Senior Tor/Forge editors, Beth Meacham and Claire Eddy, are both joining us as group leaders! What this means is that they will be critiquing eight people each in the standard critique portion, AND you are guaranteed a flash fiction edit by one of these editors whether or not you make it into their group. A flash prompt will be given at the beginning of this event, then writing time allotted for, and upon deadline, each editor will take twenty attendees and edit on the fly. Flash will be limited to under 1k, and again, the prompt given during the event, but this is an amazing offer by our fearless leaders!
Agent Lucienne Diver will also be leading a critique group of eight people! That’s 24 attendees that will be critiqued by either an editor or agent!
This will be a craft heavy event, working toward strengthening your novels or short stories, connecting with an agent, and learning the ins and outs of the industry from pros. Whether you’re just beginning your journey of the written word, are advanced and looking to polish, or even just network, we are a great community of authors and pros that support, nourish, and encourage one another. Hope you’ll join us this summer!
Submissions: This is a Milford-Style critique. You will be critiqued by your fellow group members and leader, and you’ll be critiquing their submissions as well. Word count of 4k max, submissions need to be in standard manuscript format, and if you submit a chapter that isn’t the first, please include a brief synopsis. Novel chapters or short stories welcome. Submissions due by June 30, 2016. Registration will be in touch with how to submit closer to the due date.
Workshop Leaders: Beth Meacham (Senior Editor, Tor/Forge Books);Claire Eddy (Senior Editor, Tor/Forge Books); Lucienne Diver (Agent with The Knight Agency).
Workshop Speakers: Rhiannon Held (author); Matt Youngmark (author); Manny Frishberg(editor/author); Anthea Sharp(author), John (J.A.) Pitts (author); Spencer Ellsworth (author); Randy Henderson (author); Tod McCoy (editor, author, publisher); Lee Moyer (Illustrator).2016 Programming
Programming is up! Some of the speakers are still doing final tweaks on their panels/talks/classes. We’ll update this page as those tweaks come in.
Thursday
6pm – Registration in Hotel Lobby
7pm – Meet and greet in Restaurant/Bar
Friday
8:00am – 8:20am Morning Yoga – Oak room (Nancy Wright)
Join Nancy for morning yoga, focusing on relaxation and creative visualization flows.
8:30am Morning Meeting – Flash Challenge Prompt – Oak room
9am – 11am Critiques
Claire Eddy – Oak room
Lucienne Diver– Oak room
Beth Meacham – Cedar room
11am – 1pm – Lunch on your own
1pm Metaphors – Oak room (With Rhiannon Held)
Rhiannon will take us into the macro-level metaphor (or theme, to broaden it) within a story or novel and share how to identify, refine, and change it if need be. Being able to spot times you might be saying something problematic is vital to success! Come hear her advice on how to be aware of when you might be unconsciously projecting a more cliched metaphor/theme on a story.
1pm Level Up as a Writer – Cedar room (With Randy Henderson)
Randy will cover the more common issues and challenges that genre writers face, and the “level up” revelations he had, at each stage in a writing career from beginning writer through published pro, with handouts and exercises. The goal is to help you identify what will help you reach your own next “level up” as a writer.
2pm Author Collaborations – Oak room (With Anthea Sharp, Spencer Ellsworth, and John Pitts)
Writing collaborations can be fantastic, or maybe a nightmare if not done properly. Hear these pros talk about the process of writing together, to doing multi-author promotions like boxed-sets, taking part in anthologies, using Facebook parties, coediting and so on.
2pm Q&A with Lee Moyer – Cedar room (With Lee Moyer)
Q&A with artist/illustrator Lee Moyer. Ask about character creation and how images help, whether for RPGs or stories. Ask about book covers. World creation through geography. Or any other industry related question!
3pm -5pm Critiques
Claire Eddy – Oak room
Beth Meacham – Oak room
Lucienne Diver – Cedar room
5pm – 7pm – Dinner on your own
7pm Writing a Feeling – Oak room (With John Pitts and Manny Frishberg)
Show don’t tell! We’ve all heard this at some point in our development, but how do we go about this? How do we show a feeling? Come learn the tricks for showing from the wonderful John Pitts.
7pm Resources for Authors – Cedar room (With Anthea Sharp, Rhiannon Held, and Randy Henderson)
Finding a critique group that knows how to give good, constructive feedback. Author resources online, like agent query sites and places to find open call submissions. Taking part in contests. Which might be good for your career and which might be a waste of time?
8pm Personal Weakness and How to Exploit it – Oak room (With Spencer Ellsworth and Randy Henderson)
Every writer gets a couple things free. Shakespeare got character and language–plot, not so much. (Pirates, Will? Really?) Every writer also has a couple of built-in blind spots. Spencer & Randy teach you to find your blind spots & take you through exercises designed to get around & over your weaknesses.
8pm – 10pm Open Flash Writing Time – Cedar room
This is an optional time to work on flash for those that prefer writing in a group setting.
Saturday
8:00am – 8:20am Morning Yoga – Oak room (Nancy Wright)
Join Nancy for morning yoga, focusing on relaxation and creative visualization flows.
8:30am Morning meeting
9am – 11am Critiques
Beth Meacham – Alder room
Lucienne Diver – Alder room
Claire Eddy – Oak room
11am – 11:10am Picture
11:10am – 1pm – Lunch on your own
1pm Planning for Pantsers – Oak room (With Manny Frishberg)
Manny has been a confirmed “organic writer” his whole career, but he had to learn how to plan to write in order to complete a mystery novel. Listen as he shares his techniques for incorporating more advanced planning without ruining the fun that pantsers so often enjoy.
1pm Dialogue – Alder room (With Spencer Ellsworth)
Dialogue is part storytelling, part character reveal, and part poetry! How do you write dialogue that can do several things at once?
2pm Agent relationships – Alder room (With Lucienne Diver)
The relationship between agent and author can make or break a career. Do you have the same vision? Do you want the same things? What kinds of things can an agent do for you and what can you do for your agent?
2pm Self Publishing – Oak room (With Anthea Sharp, Tod McCoy, and Matt Youngmark)
Are you venturing into the Indie or Self-publishing realm? Listen to authors talk about how to get started, best practices, and resources. Including marketing, advertising, multi-author collaboration, newsletter building, and how to use various social media as an Indie or Self-Pubber.
3pm Craft of the Short Story – Alder room (With Anthea Sharp, Rhiannon Held, and Manny Frishberg)
Listen to pros talk about how short fiction works, pitfalls to watch out for when writing short, why short stories are currently in a renaissance. Where should the arc be in a flash vs. short vs. novella or novelette?
3pm – 4pm – Flash Edits – Oak room (With Claire Eddy and Beth Meacham)
Each attendee taking part in this will be assigned a time to come in and meet with the editor for their mini-crit. Schedules will be posted later for these times. Make sure to show up five minutes before your turn.
4pm Branding – Alder room (With Tod McCoy and Lee Moyer)
Branding—whether for yourself as an author or a self-published book series—is vital to success. Readers need to know that it’s you they’re following and liking. They need an easy way to recognize your projects even if it’s something slightly different. The same author tagline, use of a logo, or repeated book cover style really stands out for readers. Help readers connect to you.
5pm – 7pm – Dinner on your own
7pm Writing YA, Urban Fantasy and More – Alder (With Anthea Sharp and Manny Frishberg)
Some markets have a lot of competition whether you’re self-published, Indie, or with a large press. How can you succeed in a market with so much competition?
7pm Pacing – Oak room (With Spencer Ellsworth)
Learn to use dialogue and narrative to move characters in and out of their problems. How to throw your characters into the crucible and forge!
8pm Kissing vs Sex – Alder (With Sienna Saint-Cyr)
Where is the line between romance and erotica? What if you need intimacy, but don’t want the romance or sex? Discussion on the differences between sex scenes and full on erotica as well as how to create intimacy in non-romantic relationships.
9pm Night Owl Writing
Sunday
8:30am – Morning meeting– All in Oak room this day
9am – 10am One on One Meetings (times will be announced at event)
10am – POV and Tense (With Matt Youngmark)
Which point of view to choose can be difficult to decide, as well as tense. While so many novels and short stories are written in 3rd person, past tense, Matt will discuss how 2nd person, present tense can also work for you! Compare 1st, 2nd, 3rd, past, present, and even deep POV.
11am – 12:30pm – Lunch on your own
1pm – How to be an Editor (With Beth Meacham, Claire Eddy, and Manny Frishberg)
Editing someone else’s creation is hard enough, but just like authors must work their way up, so must editors. Suggestions on where to start, when to say yes or no to a project, getting credit for your editing job, and more, will be discussed in this panel.
2pm – Board Meeting
All are welcome to stay for this. Give feedback and listen to our annual Board Meeting.Go to top
Location: La Quinta Inn & Suites1425 E. 27th Street Tacoma, WA 98421 – (253) 383-0146 (Ext. 6 for reservations) – La Quinta Tacoma.Hotel Information
Still have questions? See our July 2015 Workshop FAQs page
WORKSHOP LEADERS
Click the names below for photos and information.Beth Meacham, Editor
Beth Meacham has been a science fiction and fantasy editor for more than 30 years. She has worked for AceBooks, Berkeley, and Tor, where she was editor in chief from 1985 through 1989. She now works as an Executive Editor for Tor, from her home in Arizona.
Among the authors Beth has worked with are, Piers Anthony, Orson Scott Card, Cecelia Holland, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Ken Scholes, Will Shetterly, John M. Ford, Michael Cassutt, Pat Murphy, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tim Powers, Mike Brotherton, William Gibson, David Brin, Pat Cadigan, Storm Constantine, Lisa Goldstein, Steven Gould, Nancy Kress, Melanie Rawn, Charles Sheffield, Randy Henderson, Judith Tarr, Jack Vance, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Jane Yolen.
Twitter: @bethmeacham
Go to topClaire Eddy, Editor
Claire Eddy is a senior editor at Tor/Forge Books and has been with the company for 30 years. She began editing science fiction and fantasy early in her career and worked with such authors as Orson Scott Card, Gordon R. Dickson, Fred Saberhagen, and Jack Vance, as well as launching the careers of Jacqueline Carey, Sara Douglass and Juliet Marillier. While she still edits these genres, she has broadened her projects to include historicals, thrillers and mysteries. On the mystery side, she has worked with Stuart Kaminksy, Carole Nelson Douglas, and Sharan Newman. She’s spent the better part of her adult life working with authors to make their stories and dreams be the best they can be, becoming that “third eye” and nudge to accomplish this feat.
Go to topLucienne Diver, Agent
Lucienne Diver joined The Knight Agency in 2008, after spending fifteen years with Spectrum Literary Agency in New York. Over the course of her dynamic career she has sold over seven hundred titles to every major publisher, and has built a client list of more than forty authors spanning the commercial fiction genres, primarily in the areas of fantasy, science fiction, mystery/suspense, romance, and young adult fiction. Her authors have been honored with the RITA, National Readers’ Choice, Golden Heart, Romantic Times, Colorado Book Awards and others, and have appeared on theNew York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Clients include such bestsellers as Rachel Caine, Chloe Neill, Faith Hunter, N.K. Jemisin, Ramez Naam, Christina Henry and many others.
She’s also an author in her own right with her Vamped young adult series and the Latter-Day Olympians urban fantasy series, the fifth of which, BLOOD HUNT, was released this past fall. Her short stories and essays that have appeared in the Strip-Mauled and Fangs for the Mammaries anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen Books), in Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperTeen) and Kicking Itedited by Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price (Roc Books).Go to top
WORKSHOP SPEAKERS
Rhiannon Held, Author
Rhiannon Held is the author of the urban fantasy Silver series from Tor. She lives in Seattle, where she works as an archaeologist for an environmental compliance firm. Working in both archaeology and writing, she’s “lucky” enough to have *two* sexy careers that don’t make her much money.Go to topMatt Youngmark, Author
Matt Youngmark is the author of “Zombocalypse Now,” “Thrusts of Justice,” and “Time Travel Dinosaur,” full-length choose-your-own-ending novels (for grownups!) from Chooseomatic Books. He’s currently working on his first non-Chooseomatic novel, a comedic fantasy titled Spellmonkeys.
Matt also writes and draws the daily webcomic Conspiracy Friends at secretwebcomic.com. Back in the day, he worked the newsprint mines at Tacoma Reporter and Pandemonium Magazine.
Go to topManny Frishberg, Editor/Author
Manny Frishberg was born just south of New York City and has made his home on the West Coast for over 40 years. His articles have appeared on the pages of numerous magazines and websites. For the past several years he and his partner have made their home in the shadow of SeaTac Airport, where he writes alone and in collaboration with Edd Vick.Go to topAnthea Sharp, Author
~USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of YA Urban Fantasy ~
Growing up on fairy tales and computer games, Anthea Sharp has melded the two in her award-winning Feyland series, which has sold over 200k copies worldwide and garnered over a million reads on Wattpad. Often ranked in the Amazon Top 100 Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors, Anthea’s novels have won or placed in the PRISM, the Maggie, the National Reader’s Choice Award, the Write Touch Reader’s Award, the Heart of Excellence, The National Excellence in Romance Fiction, The Judge a Book by its Cover, and the Book Buyer’s Best contests. She has sold short fiction into numerous pro markets, and is a member of NINC, RWA, and SFWA.
In addition to writing fantasy, Anthea also writes award-winning, RITA-nominated historical romance under the pen name Anthea Lawson.
She makes her home in the Pacific Northwest, where she writes, hangs out in virtual worlds, plays the fiddle with her Celtic band Fiddlehead, writes a lot, and spends time with her small-but-good family. Find her at http://antheasharp.com/ and http://anthealawson.com/Go to topJohn (J.A.) Pitts, Author
John (J.A.) Pitts resides in the Pacific Northwest where he hunts dragons, trolls and other beasties among the coffee shops and tattoo parlors.
Check out his award winning Sarah Beauhall series from Tor books, or his short story collection, Bravado’s House of Blues, from Fairwood Press.
johnapittswriter on Twitter
johnapitts on FacebookGo to topSpencer Ellsworth, Author
Spencer Ellsworth writes. His work has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and many other places. He has won several awards that you probably haven’t heard of, and eaten things he really shouldn’t have. He lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife and three children.Go to topRandy Henderson, Author
Randy Henderson is an author, milkshake connoisseur, Writers of the Future grand prize winner, relapsed sarcasm addict, and Clarion West graduate.
His “dark and quirky” contemporary fantasy novel, FINN FANCY NECROMANCY, is available from all major booksellers, and was published by TOR (US) and Titan (UK). http://www.randy-henderson.comGo to topTod McCoy, Author
Tod McCoy is a Seattle-based writer whose work has appeared in the anthologies The People’s Apocalypse and in Bronies: For the Love of Ponies, as well as on AntipodeanSF.com, Qarrtsiluni.com, and The Gloaming. He is a Clarion West graduate and current board member. He’s also the publisher behind Hydra House, a small press dedicated to West Coast speculative fiction, including the Faerie Tales from the White Forest series by Danika Dinsmore, Near+Far, a collection of short stories by Cat Rambo (which generated her a Nebula nomination), and Telling Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow, an anthology of work by Clarion West alumni.Go to topLee Moyer, Illustrator
American Designer & Illustrator based in Portland, Oregon
Moyer’s work blends classic painting, pop culture, and naturalist illustration – evoking intensity and impish humor.
His art has been exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution and galleries in New York City, Los Angeles, and London. Among his acclaimed posters are world premieres for Stephen Sondheim, John Mellencamp, and Stephen King, as well as art for Tori Amos, Amanda Palmer, and the von Trapps.
Moyer’s approach to collaboration is rooted in deep knowledge of design history and respect for the subject matter, no matter how outré. His film work includes six Laurel & Hardy titles, Spider-Man 2, and H. P. Lovecraft’s classic Call of Cthulhu. In collaboration with Ray Bradbury, George RR Martin and Neil Gaiman, Moyer designed and painted a trio of literary calendars that not only illuminated their distinct visions, but also raised six figures for charity.
A popular speaker at colleges and conventions, his essay The Elements of Illustration and his Kickstarter White Paper are widely read. His work is featured in many Illustration anthologies and annuals.
Moyer’s game book 13th Age debuted in 2013 and his board game The Doom That Came to Atlantic City was released in 2014. A book of his daily Small Gods paintings, a pop culture abecedarium, and several illustrated children’s books are forthcoming.
Twitter: @lccmoyer
Website: www.leemoyer.com
