January 23, 2010

Main speaker: Kate Wells

A Fresh Start to Success

The New Year is time for new challenges, new focus, and new goals. Not flimsy resolutions, but big dreams with tunnel vision focused on eliminating the road blocks we allow to slow us down. No matter what your excuse for not writing, not mailing out a manuscript, or not beginning the next project, there is one culprit: attachment to outcome. You thought it was the family responsibilities, the job, fear of rejection, or the weather? It's not. Those are excuses we use rather than accept that we are attached to the outcome of finishing our books. It is time to dream big, release the outcome, and drive to success as you define it in 2010.

Kathleen Wells, Ph.D. has written and shared character driven fiction for over fifteen years. She creates with words and appreciates the power of intention in each one. In addition to being internationally published in romance fiction, she is turning her creative gift in another direction, one of service and encouraging others to achieve their full potential. As a professor for the University of Arizona, Kathleen uses her academic background in anthropology and psychology for teaching and for creating stories. One of her favorite things is teaching creative writing and sharing her love of craft with new writers. As the co-founder and director of the Winged Heart Foundation, Kathleen supports bereaved parents, grandparents, and guardians who have lost children. Her mission is to empower them to choose life after loss.

Kathleen writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and self-help nonfiction. She lives in southeast Arizona with her husband and two dogs, but loves spending time in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. She invites readers, writers, and would-be writers to email her at katwells@powerc.net.

Nuts & Bolts speaker: Kris Neri

The Secrets of Successful Mystery Writing

Award-winning mystery author and writing instructor Kris Neri will share her unusual approach to planning mysteries and discuss the problems she often sees in works from newer mystery writers and ways to avoid them. Her approaches work equally well for traditional mysteries and suspense, cross-genre romantic mysteries and romantic suspense, as well as novels with mystery elements.

Kris Neri is the author of the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity Award-nominated Tracy Eaton mysteries, Revenge of the Gypsy Queen, Dem Bones' Revenge, and Revenge for Old Times' Sake (March, 2010), a standalone thriller, Never Say Die, as well as the romantic urban fantasy, High Crimes on the Magical Plane. She has published some sixty short stories, is a two-time Derringer Award winner and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for short fiction, and has stories included in the collection, The Rose in the Snow: Tales of Mischief and Mayhem. Kris teaches writing online for the prestigious Writers' Program of the UCLA Extension School. She and her husband own The Well Red Coyote bookstore in Sedona, Arizona.

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