SCRIBE meeting on December 11th, 2010

This Saturday, December 11th, will be the final SCRIBE meeting for 2010. What a great year it's been! I hope you can join us at 10:00am in Quad 4, when our guest author will be PJ Pierce. PJ will have copies of her book, "Let Me Tell You What I've Learned: Texas Wisewomen Speak," a collection of her interviews with some of the most notable women in the Lone Star State, including Barbara Jordan, Liz Carpenter, Jody Conradt, Linda Ellerbee, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Ann Richards and others. PJ is currently working on two projects: a biography of Liz Carpenter and a biography of Barbara Jacket, Olympic Track & Field coach. PJ has been a high school teacher and a public relations person. She is a wife and mother, an avid long-distance bicyclist, a master swimmer, and she has hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim. Come and hear what she has to share with you this Saturday.

SCRIBE meets on November 13th

All writers and those who would like to be writers are encouraged to attend the regular meeting of SCRIBE this Saturday, November 13th. Our guest author/speaker will be Dr. David Ciambrone. David is a retired scientist, professor, U.S. Treasury commissioner, and award-winning, best-selling author. Dave writes "Ask Uncle Dave," a helpful hints and science newspaper column for the Williamson County Sun. He has published 10 books: six mysteries, three management books, and a non-fiction reference book on poisons. Dave was a professor at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and is president of the San Gabriel Writer's League. He is also a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the Writers' League of Texas. Dave is a professor and dean in the Georgetown Library's Writers' College and a speaker at writer's conferences around the country. He lives in Georgetown with his wife, Kathy.
Our meeting begins at 10:00am in Quad 4. We'll save you a seat.

Write something down...quick!

This Saturday, October 23rd, join us for SCRIBE meeting at 10:00am in Quad 4. This is the critique/workshop meeting, so we encourage you to bring something you've written or something you're currently working on and share it with your small group to get valuable feedback. We won't be having the critique meetings in November or December, because they would conflict with Thanksgiving and Christmas. So this is your last chance in 2010 to hear your fellow writers respond to your creative output.
We will, of course, have our other meetings in November and December. On November 13th, our guest will be author David Ciambrone, and on December 11th, we will welcome P.J. Pierce.
There's always a good reason to attend SCRIBE. I'd love to see you there!

Shameless self-promotion

Fellow SCRIBErs, if you missed the meeting last weekend (and many of you did), you missed a good time with our guest, Donna Ingham. At that meeting, I also announced that I had decided to try self-publishing an ebook version of my novel. It is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. One of the reasons I wanted to do this--aside from wanting people to read my book--was to learn about the process so I could share it with SCRIBE members. We're in an exciting time right now when publishing is going through all sorts of changes. In many ways, it has never been easier to publish your work for an audience to purchase. We will be talking about this in future meetings, too, but I set up another blog to record my experiences in working through the self-publishing maze; I suggest you start at the bottom (oldest) post and work your way up. I'm also dipping a toe into the "Publish On Demand" waters which will allow authors to sell actual printed copies of their books without having to pay to have them printed. And yet another exciting possibility is a Texas publisher I've learned about which accepts many books from Texas authors. We're going to have a couple of those authors as guests in future meetings, so we'll find out if this publisher is right for YOU! There is much to learn about the changing marketplace for writers, but I'm going to try to keep you up to speed. In the meantime, though...you gotta write something!

October 9th meeting...thereby hangs a tale!

Two things you need to know about the next SCRIBE meeting, coming up on Saturday, October 9th:
1. We've changed our start time to 10:00am. Now you can always remember when SCRIBE meetings are by picturing the old Dr Pepper logo: 10-2-4. Our meetings are at 10 on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month.



2. Our guest speaker for this meeting will be Donna Ingham. Donna is a renowned storyteller, the winner of the 2007 John Henry Faulk Award "for outstanding contributions to the art of storytelling." She's also a former college professor and the author of four books, including her latest work, Mysteries and Legends of Texas: True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained. Donna is a past board member of the Tejas Storytelling Association and edited the state storytelling newsletter for three years. She served as artistic director for the 2009 Texas Storytelling Festival. A member of the National Storytelling Network, she is the NSN Texas state liaison. A sought-after performer, she is listed on the Touring Artists Roster of the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. She is a willing mentor for storytellers and writers and a tireless supporter of storytelling and literary events. She says she has found her "calling." We are grateful that her calling includes speaking to our SCRIBEs. Don't miss hearing this award-winning storyteller and getting some tips on how to better tell your own story.

And here's a third thing: Check out our "build-a-story" in the post below this one. Add a paragraph of your own and let's see how long a tale we can spin. Just click on the "Comments" link to read the story thus far.

Help build this story:

Dana Hood had a fun idea. She wrote the first two paragraphs of a story and posted them in the comment section of an earlier entry. The idea was for other SCRIBE folks to add to the story a paragraph or two at a time. But nobody joined in! So I'm bumping it up into the main page in hopes that some of you will participate. Read what's been written so far and then add to it by clicking on the "Comments" link. A new window will open; write your stuff and click the "Post Comment" button. I'll put Dana's original opening in the first comment spot. Let's see how long a story we can write as a team!

DON'T MISS THIS MEETING!

This Saturday, September 11th, do whatever it takes to be at our SCRIBE meeting. Our guest will be author/comedian/actor/screenwriter Owen Egerton. I just finished Owen's latest book, The Book of Harold, and I liked it better than hot breakfast. Owen is a fascinating fellow who loves Austin and loves writers and in last week's Austin Chronicle "Best of" awards, he became our "Best Local Author." He knows funny, yet he can do poignant, philosophical and thought-provoking, too. Hearing and meeting him will be more fun than is normally allowed within church walls. You can learn more about Owen by visiting his website. As usual, we start up at 10:30 Saturday morning in Quad 4. Be here and bring along someone who's interested in writing. Our group is becoming more wondrous all the time!