Next HSW Meeting
Saturday December 14th at 10 am at
Raleys ONE Supermarket on Wedge Parkway in the Community Room
| Our next meeting is a surprise! Well, at this point the details aren’t worked out, but basically, Matt, Troy, Lynda and Rene will each talk about some aspect of the business for fifteen minutes. It will be a little of this and a little of that, but we hope to impart some useful information in the process. We will also do a chapter critique, so if you have one you’d like the group’s feedback on, please submit to Lynda or Matt by Thursday, Dec.12th. We will also do First Pages if you have one of those. Please email to Matt by the same date. |
From the President:
TO LAUNCH OR RELAUNCH; THAT IS THE QUESTION
Do you wonder how to make a splash with a book you’re about to publish?
Or how to revive sales of an older book or series?
We’re going to present an idea that will help every HSW member. Step by step, we’ll go through a marketing strategy that some of Amazon’s most successful authors use. But we’re going to do them one better. Our Christmas gift to y’all. Don’t miss it!
GUEST OR TOPIC IDEAS!
If you have a topic area you’d like covered or know of someone you’d like to have as a guest speaker at an upcoming meeting, please drop a line to board@highsierrawriters.org
Critique Groups Update
Reminder: You must be a current PAID member of HSW in order to participate in one of our critique groups.
If you’d like to join a group or have general questions about critiquing, contact Linda Enos at lynda.r.bailey@gmail.com
MYSTERY WRITERS (and more) WANTED!
The Mystery and More group is looking for authors! If you write mystery, or any genre other than romance or children’s, let Linda know. She’ll put you in touch with the group leader, Ron, so you can learn more details.
HSW CRITIQUE GROUP AT B&N
President, Matt Bayan, has reestablished the B&N critique group. For more info on how this group works, email Linda.
PLEASE REMEMBER…
If you have a few pages you’d like the HSW members to critique cold, don’t forget to send your submission (max of 6 pages, double spaced with New Times Roman, or similar font, 12pt) to Linda at least 3 days before the monthly meeting so hard copies can be made.
FYI…
The After-the-Regular-Meeting (ATRM) critique group will not gather following the meeting on December 14th. We will resume in January.
Don’t forget to contact Linda Enos at lynda.r.bailey@gmail.com with any questions or concerns!
Change in Price for 2025 Dues
Annual dues are $5 for 2025
Our dues are climbing back up for 2025 and will be $5 for the year. We need to pay for the coffee somehow!
You can pay them online using this payment link for PayPal: $5-for-25
or send a check to:
High Sierra Writers
PO Box 12241
Reno, NV 89510
(Please let us know by email to board@highsierrawriters.org if you mail it in, so we can check the mailbox.)
Drop-in Critique Group at B&N
Matt hosts a drop-in critique meeting at the Barnes & Noble cafe on S Virginia Street from 6 PM to 8 PM. Meetings will be held on the FIRST and THIRD Wednesdays of each month.
Drop-in means no prep and no homework. Just bring 5 or 6 pages on which you want feedback and read them to the group. If you want, someone else can read your material out loud. If you’re really ambitious, you can bring hard copies, but that starts to look like homework and we really want to avoid work of any sort.
Your material can be a chapter or a passage you want to test, like an action scene, or dialogue, or something you’re just not sure about. Fiction or nonfiction.
You don’t need to be there for the whole meeting. If you can’t make it until 7 PM, no big deal.
You don’t have to bring material. These sessions are a great way to build up your editing muscles by analyzing work of other writers.
See you there.
HSW Writers’ Success Stories
High Sierra Writers has quite a few published writers in the group. We have a page featuring the various books grouped by author under genre. These are under HSW Authors link. As our authors release new books, we’ll feature them here. If you have a release coming up, send me your press release to RPAverett@gmail.com.
The only release I have information on at this time is the second The ACES Anthology book of short stories. This volume just came out and includes several HSW writers, including Rene Averett, Teresa Breeden, L.F. Falconer, Kelli Heitstuman-Tomko, Angela Laverghetta, and Ken Sutherland. The book features stories from northern Nevada writers.
It is available from Amazon here.
The second released is a book years in the making, but it marks the debut novel for Nicole Frens. A thrilling speculative fiction, CryoShift takes the reader into the future with a man from the past.
Here’s the sales blurb for it:
He died in 2010. They reanimated him in 2123.
Joseph’s gamble paid off, and now he has it all – cool new tech and the ultimate life do-over.
When a family tragedy mucks up his plans for a normal second shot at living, he’s forced to
focus on triggering a supernatural ability instead.
Which is sort of cool. Sort of terrifying.
Definitely not how he’d anticipated spending his Life Take Two.
In a time when not everyone welcomes the New Revives, Joseph must discover where he fits in while opposing forces push him forward.
Caught between the love of his past and the thrill of the present, will Joseph unlock a power beyond belief and find his role in society, or will his hesitation cost him and his family everything?
CryoShift is a new release on Amazon.com and available in Kindle Unlimited.
Congratulations to both authors. As always, please read and review books by your fellow writers. We all need all the support we can get. Thanks.
Another Bonus for Ken Sutherland
Besides his newly released book, his first release, Balance, got a bit of a bounce when a publisher chose a section from it to be included in a short story anthology! In his recent newsletter, Ken wrote: I just got word from Living Springs Press that they are ready to publish their anthology, STORIES THROUGH THE AGES. It contains an excerpt from my novel BALANCE: The 200-Year Journey of Andrew Crawford. As it turns out, the backstory for Michael McGhee, one of the characters in that book, works well as a stand-alone short story. Look for STORIES THROUGH THE AGES this fall.
Ken will also have a new short story in the upcoming ACES anthology, which is a good reminder to get your short story submission to Dragon Crown Press for consideration for publication this year.