2011 Avondale Writer's Conference

The Second Annual Writer's Conference in Avondale, Arizona, took place last Saturday, and there was a nice turnout.
I would have taken some pictures, but not having a camera pretty well prevented that. My personal involvement was attending some of the lectures and eating lunch.

The first class was on "How to get your book published - No Nonsense Advice" by James Best, a local author. I enjoyed listening to Mr. Best tell us how to do this and came away with my head buzzing with ideas. I'll have to see if any of them work out. Mr. Best has written fiction and non-fiction and his fiction books are Westerns and Mysteries and sounded very readable. His titles include The Shopkeeper, Leadville, Tempest at Dawn, Murder at Thumb Butte, and The Shutmouth Society in fiction. The one non-fiction book is The Digital Organization. 


The Second seminar was "How to Develop Believable Characters" by Laura Brown. I found this class interesting and hope that I absorbed enough to put her ideas to good use.

Number three was "3 Deadly Sins that will Keep you from getting published," by Betty J. Webb, a local mystery writer and former Arizona Republic journalist. I appreciated Mrs. Webb's advice and will keep it handy in my mind when I get back to working on my novels.

And the fourth was "Starting a Web site" by Signe Nichols. I didn't get too much out of this one, since most of the items covered I had already known about, but it was still worth my time.

There was one more, but I decided to go home. That one was "E-pubication. What you need to know," with Carol Webb.

Oh, yes, there were several agents in attendance to pitch to, but none that promoted Westerns according to the pre-conference literature, so I passed up that chance. Maybe next time.

All in all, I would say that the day was well spent. Just have to put my new info to work.