FFnP Workshop - EXAMINING ONLINE MEDIA: How to Build Your Audience Before Your Book is Sold!

\\***** Permission to Forward Granted and Encouraged *****//

The Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal Chapter of RWA Presents

In order to ensure proper credit when paying for a workshop registration fee by PayPal, you must indicate what the payment is for in the message portion of the PayPal transaction at the time you pay. Thank you.

What:  EXAMINING ONLINE MEDIA: How to Build Your Audience Before Your Book is Sold! -- Pat Hauldren

http://my.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=291

This class will examine how to write for online media such as Examiner, Demand Studios, Suite 101, eHow, etc., to build a writer's platform to help the author get published. We will examine the benefits for writers, especially for those who write fiction, what skills are needed, where to find the media, and how to get started. * Intro * Benefits of writing for online media * Skills needed for online media * What’s out there? * How to start * Article writing * Writing venues * Business $ense * Q&A

Where:            FF&P Yahoo Loops

When: June 4, 2012 through June 17, 2012

Registration Costs:   

This workshop will be conducted via a Yahoo! email loop. Email invitations will be sent 48 hours prior to the beginning of the workshop. Just register for the workshop and complete the payment process via PayPal. The cost is $15.00 for FFnP members and $20.00 for non-FFnP members.

Join FF&P:   http://www.romance-ffp.com/join.cfm

Speaker Information:          

Pat Hauldren is a book editor for Cyberwizard Productions and a freelance writer and editor whose articles have appeared in over 600 print newspapers nation-wide and millions online. Pat has published articles, short stories, poetry, and Japanese Noh Drama. She's working on her 3rd novel and teaching writers workshops locally, online, and overseas. Pat is a member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA®), DFW Writers' Workshop (DFWWW), North Texas Speculative Fiction Workshop (NTSFW), Writers' Guild of America, Frisco Writers' Group, and more online writing groups than can be mentioned here. Find out more about Pat Hauldren at www.pathauldren.com or write her at Pat@PatHauldren.com.

FFnP Workshop - How To Write An Easy Tell-All Synopsis

\\***** Permission to Forward Granted and Encouraged *****//

The Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal Chapter of RWA Presents

In order to ensure proper credit when paying for a workshop registration fee by PayPal, you must indicate what the payment is for in the message portion of the PayPal transaction at the time you pay. Thank you.

What:  How To Write An Easy Tell-All Synopsis -- Presented by Raquel Rodriguez

No need to fear writing that synopsis. With my easy construction technique, utilize worksheets, easy to answer questions plus your characters' goals, motives, conflicts to tell everything about a story. And a character's emotional and romantic journey are as important as the main story. In this workshop I'll show you how to define each element and turning point from beginning hook to the Happily Ever After. Include all essential information and plot points up to the story climax and Big Black Moment. Never again be confused or dread this essential part of selling your story!

http://my.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=288

Where:            FF&P Yahoo Loops

When: June 4, 2012 through July 1, 2012

Registration Costs:   

This workshop will be conducted via a Yahoo! email loop. Email invitations will be sent 48 hours prior to the beginning of the workshop. Just register for the workshop and complete the payment process via PayPal. The cost is $20.00 for FFnP members and $30.00 for non-FFnP members. Refunds / credits are determined on a case by case basis. If a class should be canceled, then participants have a choice of a credit to be applied to a future workshop or a refund.

Join FF&P:   http://www.romance-ffp.com/join.cfm

Speaker Information:          

Growing up with ghosts, native Texan and author Raquel Rodriguez is used to things that go "bump" 24/7. With a passion for Science Fiction, anything paranormal, Space Opera, and romance, she blends these elements into passionate stories with twists of action and suspense. Raquel has studied, taught and lectured about Parapsychology for over 25 years and loves to add touches of the unusual to her stories. Her personal motto is, "Never give up, never surrender!" from one of her favorite movies, and when not teaching fitness, Belly Dance, or plotting, planning, or writing stories (where her cat usually supervises from her lap), she can be found at SciFi conventions, Renaissance Faires, performing, or experimenting with a new chocolate recipe. FMI, please visit www.RaquelRodriguez.com.

Good Tuesday Morning!

I hope everyone is having a great week! After our holiday this past weekend, I put up a couple of reviews on my blog, Star-Crossed Romance ( http://www.star-crossedromance.blogspot.com ) and I've got a couple more to go. I confess, I got behind schedule with the edits I'm doing on the latest Great Escapes story but that's how it goes.

I did take a little while this morning to put my garden in...yeah, not the big one but the containers that I've used for a couple of years. Last year, between cutting out a gi-normous bush (which laughed and grew back even bigger!), putting in the big garden and trying to walk our Zuzu (who passed earlier this year but who was very strong last Spring), I damaged my shoulder. I'm just now getting back to being able to raise my arm, carefully, over my head and I don't want to re-damage it. Well, not if I can help it ;-)

Time to get back to work. You all have a great one!

Today's Star-Crossed Romance Guest Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

We have Linda Thomas-Sundstrom visiting Star-Crossed Romance today. She's talking about building a world within a world as she does with her terrific paranormal books. She's also offering a giveaway so make sure to check out the details.

http://star-crossedromance.blogspot.com/2012/05/guest-linda-thomas-sundstrom.html

Have a Blessed Day!

A Brief Fling into My Past Guest Blogs

A Brief Fling into My Past Guest Blogs (For those who may have missed them)

While I love to read and write about the future, my writing career began way back when I fell in love with science fiction. I was between 11 and 12, visiting my uncle’s family. He had a book, a battered paperback, titled The Foundation and the Empire. That book was a science fiction novel penned by the great Isaac Asimov. It had everything a young pre-teen would want – adventure, danger and, surprisingly, romantic elements. It set me on the path of loving science and astronomy and loving adventure and romance. But even more, it made me want to write my own adventurous romances. And so I have.

Who first introduced you to the love of reading?

This may sound corny and old-fashioned but my mother introduced me to the joy of reading. She only had a 6^th grade education but she was an avid reader and she encouraged me to read everything that came my way. She often said you could do anything or go anywhere if you could read.

She was right. I’ve been to alternate Earths, alien planets, the past, the future. I’ve performed archelogy, surgery, and forensic police work. I’ve lived on a prairie on a planet with a lavendar sky. I’ve survived cryogenic freezing to wake up in the distant future as the sole survivor of some unknown catastrophe. Yes, some of this was written by other authors and some of it by my own hand.

Who influenced your decision to become a writer?

I don’t remember her name, but it was my 4^th grade teacher. She had us write a story about a magic door set in a tree trunk. This was the first time I ever had FUN doing homework. It excited my imagination and opened neural pathways that just exploded with more and more and more ideas. I was hooked. From that time on, I wrote story after story.

Finish this thought. “If not for Isaac Asimov, I would be a nurse.“

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a nurse. Honestly, it’s one of the most honorable, courageous professions there is. It takes a special kind of person to be a nurse. Unfortunately, I’m not that kind of person but I did kick the idea around quite a lot. Then I read that old battered copy of The Foundation and the Empire by Isaac Asimov. It was the very first Science Fiction I’d ever read and, even more importantly, there was a love story in it. It also awakened my interest in science, and astronomy and engineering and computers…which is where I ended up on my day job as a computer programmer/analyst.

But I never quit writing. I wrote on lunch hours and breaks. I wrote at home after work. When I wasn’t writing, I was reading. But the books I read, while excellent, lacked a certain spark if there wasn’t at least some romantic elements. Then I read Witch World by Andre Norton. Fantasy with romantic elements? I now had a new genre to glom and I began including Fantasy in my writing. I mainly wrote short science fiction and had a few sales under a different pen name.

Then I met some lovely romance writers online. And they, though they were contemporary romance writers, told me about paranormal romance. They told me that I was practically writing paranormal romance and that I should read some to see if they weren’t right. For an avid reader like myself, this was like manna from heaven. This genre gave me the Science Fiction and the Fantasy that I loved AND the full blown romance that, for me, makes the book a complete journey. After I indulged in all these lovely paranormal romance books, I realized that my friends were right. I was just a fingernail away from writing Science Fiction/Fantasy Romance instead of Science Fiction/Fantasy with romantic elements.

On that all important DEDICATION PAGE who did/will you thank?

My very first published book thanked my lovely romance writer friends, of course. Had it not been for them, I’d still be writing and keeping my work to myself. I also thanked my crit group, who while not romance writers, were excellent critiquers in their own right. And, of course, I thanked my family without whose support the book would never have been written. Family and friends and good books to read…what more can you ask?

Interview by Cynthia Woolf

I've been interviewed by Cynthia Woolf and I'm giving away a pdf copy of Altered Destiny.

 http://www.cynthiawoolf.com/blog

Stop and say hi!