2011 Meetings

December 11,2011
Katherine Ellison, “From the Global to the Personal”
one writer’s journey from investigative reporting to memoir

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist, former foreign correspondent, writing consultant and author of four books. Her latest book, a new memoir titled Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention(Hyperion Voice), is an engaging and humorous account of life with a high-spirited child, combined with a scrupulously reported journalist’s overview of the controversies surrounding Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and how best to manage it. Hers is an informed and entertaining perspective as both an investigative journalist and a parent of a child diagnosed with ADHD who was diagnosed as having it herself. Ellison’s previous books include “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes You Smarter,” “The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable,” and “Imelda: Steel Butterfly of the Philippines.” From 1987-99, she was chief of Knight Ridder Newspaper bureaus in Mexico and Rio de Janeiro.

 November 13, 2011
Terri Farley, “Writing a Series isn’t Child’s Play”

Terri Farley, a cowgirl at heart, grew up in Los Angeles, and saved her allowance for rides at nearby stables. Terri’s PHANTOM STALLION series is set in today’s Nevada. WILD HORSE ISLAND takes place on a fictional Hawaiian island and SEVEN TEARS INTO THE SEA weaves the north coast of contemporary California with ancient Celtic legends of the selkie. It was nominated as an ALA best books for young adults. Terri’s fact-based fiction is equal parts investigation and imagination and she doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty. She’s ridden across the Nevada desert in a Pony Express reenactment, spent ten days in the saddle for a Nevada-California cattle drive. Terri has studied wild horses on the Nevada range and acted as a humane observer during BLM helicopter round-ups.  In March 2010, she broke the story that captive mustang foals’ births and deaths were not recorded by BLM. Now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior, she’s joined in asking a court to order the Bureau of Land Management to obey the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 and return 1,800 mustangs from the Calico Mountains (setting for her PHANTOM STALLION series) to their native lands.  For more information visit her at terrifarley.com

October 9, 2011
Joan Frank For My Brothers and Sisters in the Rejection Business.

After twenty-two years of writing, Joan declares herself rejection’s “longterm mistress,” and that she well knows “all the old roué’s tricks.” She’ll discuss the (often hilarious, often bittersweet) language of rejection letters, the emotions they inspire, and most important, through a few attitudinal tricks, how to take hold of our own development as writers in handling rejection. Joan is the author of four books of fiction, with a fifth, a novel called Make It Stay, slated for publication in early 2012. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, winner of the FOREWORD Book of the Year Award, Richard Sullivan Prize, Dana Award, Michigan Literary Fiction Award, Iowa Writing Award and Emrys Fiction Award, finalist for the 2011 California Book Award, and recipient of grants from several literary foundations. Joan was also named the 2011 Literary Artist of the Year by the Sonoma Arts Council. She has taught Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, and now lives and writes in Santa Rosa. For more info visit Joan’s website here or enter in your browser her website which is www.joanfrank.org

September 11, 2011
Joan Price, “What I Learned about Book Publicity after Wasting
 $1000 of My Publisher’s Money.”

Author and speaker Joan Price calls herself an “advocate for ageless sexuality.” She has been called other things by the media: “senior sexpert,” “the beautiful face of senior sex,” and—her favorite—“wrinkly sex kitten.” At age sixty-one, Joan wrote Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty (Seal Press, 2006) to celebrate the delights of older-life sexuality—especially her spicy love affair with artist Robert Rice, who became her husband. She followed that book up five years later with Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sexafter hundreds of readers sent her questions about improving their own senior sex lives.

Formerly a high school English teacher, Joan is also a fitness professional who believes that exercise should be a treat, not a treatment. She has written several books about health and fitness, including The Anytime, Anywhere Exercise Book: 300+ Quick and Easy Exercises You Can Do Whenever You Want. Joan teaches popular contemporary line dance classes (which she calls “the most fun you can have with both feet on the floor”) in Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, California. Visit Joan’s website at www.joanprice.com and her zesty blog about sex and aging at www.NakedAtOurAge.com.

August 14, 2011
Linda Joy Myers, “Writing Memoir”

July 10, 2011
Congratulations to our Published Authors 2011!
Redwood Writers annual Author Launch Celebration

June 12, 2011
Mark Coker, “Find Your Audience by Using 21st Century Technology”.

The founder, CEO and Chief Author Advocate of Smashwords, Smashwords.com he will talk about ebooks and the future of publishing. Mark founded Smashwords to change the way books are published, sampled, marketed and sold. Mark is co-author along with his wife, Lesleyann, of Boob Tube, a novel that explores the behind-the-scenes world of daytime television soap operas. It was Mark’s frustration trying to get Boob Tube published that inspired him to start Smashwords. He believes Smashwords holds the promise to make publishing more enriching for authors, readers and publishers.

For Smashwords updates, follow Mark on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/markcoker

May 15, 2011
Persia Woolley, “How Many Times Can You Publish a Book? or Keep Track of Those Rights!”

RW member, Persia’s  presentation recounted her experiences both in the reselling of her Guinevere Trilogy and in the delights and disasters of creating her own CD, MP3 and/or eBook from one book which was originally published in traditional format. ”It’s a second harvest that never used to be available to us, and not something to be overlooked,” she points out. These books (Child of the Northern Spring, Queen of the Summer Starsand Guinevere–the Legend in Autumn) were originally published in 1987, 1990 and 1991 by Poseidon Press, a division of Simon and Schuster.

By the mid-’90’s Poseidon Press claimed her Trilogy was out of print, and at the end of the ’90’s she was able to get a ‘rights reversion’ letter on each. In 2008 Sourcebooks tracked her down through her membership in RWC and offered her a contract for re-issuing the Trilogy. She decided to get the rights to her “How To Write and Sell Historical Fiction” back from Writer’s Digest Books who had published it in 1997.  Since then she has produced her own CD of that work, and is about to release it as an e-book and in pod cast form as well as a CD.

April 10, 2011
Pamela Gray, “Having Conviction:  A Screenwriter’s Survival Guide”

Pamela Gray will talk about the joys (sometimes) and challenges (always) of life as a professional screenwriter, the craft of screenwriting, and the exhilarating journey from script to screen. Pamela Gray wrote the screenplay for CONVICTION, starring Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell, which had Gala Premieres at both the 2010 Toronto and London Film Festivals, was the opening night film at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and was chosen Best Picture at the Boston Film Festival.  Pamela’s other credits include MUSIC OF THE HEART, which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination,  and a WALK ON THE MOON, which stars Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, and was named #9 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the “50 Sexiest Movies of All Time.”

March 13, 2011
Ransom Stephens, “The God Patent and the Future of Publishing”
Secrets from the First Debut Novel to Emerge from the New Paradigm of Publishing

Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., writer, physicist, and public speaker, has been involved in three industry upheavals: as a particle physicist he saw the established computer industry crumble under Apple and Microsoft; he was one of the first 10 people in the USA to use the World Wide Web; and, as a technologist, led an engineering commando team in solving the key problems that enabled the development of 3G and 4G technology. He is now a novelist and sees the publishing industry responding to change in much the same way that killed the established players in other industries that have faced disruptive technology. Ransom’s first novel is the future of publishing incarnate; The God Patent was a huge e-novel success at scribd.com and is now in print from a new order publishing company, Numina Press and available from his website here.

February 13, 2011
Matthew Gollub, “Earning a Living (No, really!) as a Children’s Book-Author Publisher”

Matthew Gollub is a multitalented children’s author whose numerous works have garnered dozens of national awards and distinctions. As an author/publisher, he has created 15 picture books which together have garnered 25 national awards and distinctions. Having started his career as a “typical” author, publishing works through large commercial houses in New York, he later gravitated toward smaller publishers before founding his own company, Tortuga Press, in Santa Rosa. He speaks English, Spanish and Japanese, all of which have helped him collaborate closely with illustrators from around the U.S. and abroad. Currently, Matthew’s most popular books feature his rhythmic, musical narrations on audio CD which he packages with his illustrated picture books. Favorite titles include The Jazz Fly, Jazz Fly 2: The Jungle Pachanga; and Gobble, Quack, Moon. (Slide shows, video clips and audio clips of his books at www.matthewgollub.com).

January 9th, 2011
Patricia V. Davis, “So, How’s Your Book Doing?”

This talk is a condensed version of an eight hour seminar given by Patricia that covers everything from publication of your work, to getting reviews, to branding yourself, to blogging for sales, to getting your book into bookshops.

Patricia V. Davis is the author of the award-winning, Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece, and the upcoming “The Diva Doctrine: From an Older Woman to a Younger One,” which will be published by Cedar Fort Press Spring 2011. For more information about Patricia, visit her website at www.patriciaVdavis.com. and www.harlotssauce.com