This week at In the Your Write Mind.
For many years, I had the pleasure of serving as one of the residency writers at Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction, and this week I get to return to the campus as one of the featured presenters at their annual In Your Write Mind Writers Workshop.
Organized by Writing Popular Fiction alum Sally Bosco, the workshops will feature four days of readings, panels, book pitches, and generally an opportunity for writers to step away from the keyboard and network with like-minded scribes.
Reading: Poe and Visions Redux
My first event will be a reading on Thursday, where I plan to present a few monologues from my play Mr. Edgar A. Poe Presents and a complete short-short story from my collection Visions.
Those are the same selections I presented at StokerCon earlier in the month. They seemed to go over well, and I’m eager to share them again.
Panel: Pacing & Panic
The following afternoon, I’ll be joining panelists Scott A. Johnson, Jamie Ridenhour, and Kosoko Jackson on a panel moderated by Sally Bosco. Titled Pacing and Panic, the talk “will analyze tension, pacing, when to let readers breathe, and how to create end-of chapter hooks that are not clichés.”
Like the Frankenstein panel at StokerCon, the Pacing and Panic discussion will be recorded. More information on that in a future post.
Presentation: Growing a Novel
Also being recorded will be my Saturday talk titled Growing a Popular Fiction Novel: from Pitch to Publication (and Beyond).
The presentation will consider why writers should begin planning their books’ marketing campaigns before they start writing them. Along the way, we’ll discuss the importance of drafting compelling loglines and synopses. We’ll also look at how using index cards to outline a book (a method practiced by Vladimir Nabokov and others) can help avoid the dreaded second-act slump … and the even more deadly unworkable ending.
Book Signing
Finally, I’ll also be taking part in the annual In Your Write Mind book signing on Saturday evening, where I’ll have plenty of copies of Minute Men: Execute & Run as well as many of my previous book. And as I haven’t attended this even in a while, it will be a good chance to pick up some titles by other Seton Hill writers.
The signing is open to the public. If your in the Greensburg area Saturday evening, I’ll hope to see you there.
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