Power Launch Your Book on Facebook

 

with

Christine Villa

Publishing Services Consultant, Author and Poet

Are you worried that you don’t have the budget to throw a big book launch party? Or, are you anxious about how many people will show up on your book launch? No need to fret or frown! You don’t have to spend a fortune or leave the comfort of your own home to get people excited about your book. I will give you some tips and guidelines to host a successful virtual book launch party on Facebook.

About the speaker:

Christine “Chrissi” L. Villa, founder of Purple Cotton Candy Arts, started a small business to explore her own creativity in arts and crafts and is subsequently expanding into publishing children’s picture books. Christine has published nine book titles since 2014, two of which won first place in the 2018 and 2019 Northern California Publishers and Authors (NCPA) Book Awards Competition.

Christine is also an award-winning tanka and haiku poet published in respected online and print journals. Her collection of Japanese short-form poetry is entitled The Bluebird’s Cry. She is the founding editor of Frameless Sky—the first DVD haiku and tanka video journal that is a collaboration of art, poetry, and music.

 

First Friday Network Meeting, July 5, 2019
9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights
Bring Market Leads & Marketing Tips

 

 

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.

Beyond Social Media —

Marketing with Free Fiction Sites

with

Brittany Lord

Author of books, short stories, and comics

 

When many authors think of marketing their book, they think of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But what if you’re not confident using these sites? Is there anything else you can do? Maybe there’s a way where you can use more of your writing to sell yourself? Well I’m here to tell you there is. Come learn how to use free fiction sites like Wattpad, Deviantart, and Fanfiction.net to find readers.

About the speaker:

Brittany “Tealya” Lord has been writing stories since she was two years old and has worked hard to perfect the art of storytelling. She is an active participant in the July Flash Fiction Month annual event and has received several awards for her flash fiction.  Her first book, Kithryn Mythrin, is available through Smashwords.com. You can also view some of her work at https://www.deviantart.com/tealya

 

First Friday Network Meeting, June 7, 2019
9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights
Bring Market Leads & Marketing Tips

 

 

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.

A Real Winner of a Bad First Sentence

with

Jim Guigli

Author and Annual Judge, Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

 

Jim Guigli began writing with single sentence entries for the 2005-2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. From thousands, one of Jim’s 63 entries was selected as the Grand Prize winner. It was about a beautiful, mysterious woman visiting the small office of an impoverished private detective, Bart Lasiter. Benefits from winning the Contest included world-wide notice, print, radio, and TV interviews.

Though the Contest is about writing a bad opening sentence to a non-existent novel, people kept asking, “What about the rest of the book? What happens to Bart Lasiter?”  After hearing those questions too many times, Jim took that one sentence and created the Old Town Sacramento fictional world of Bart Lasiter, and Lasiter Investigations. Since then, Jim has published a Kindle novelette, Bad News for a Ghost, and written unpublished short stories and a novel. Many of these stories have won awards.

In this presentation, Jim will reveal the secrets to winning the Contest. Jim will read examples of winning sentences, and use the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest as an example of the value in writing and perfecting one sentence at a time, whether bad or good.

 

First Friday Network Meeting, May 3, 2019
9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights
Bring Market Leads & Marketing Tips

 

 

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.

How to Write and Self-Publish a Book of Family Stories

with

Kathy “Kanika” Marshall

Author and Artist

 

In 2017, Kathy “Kanika” Marshall wrote The Ancestors Are Smiling! which is a collection of uplifting, funny, touching, maddening, and sometimes harrowing real life stories, creatively told by Marshall’s ancestors and their descendants.

In 2018, she published a research-oriented storybook investigating her enslaved ancestors from Maryland, entitled Finding Otho: the Search for Our Enslaved Williams Ancestors. These true stories are woven by Marshall with the African fabric of American historical events. Marshall has been exploring her family roots off and on since 1976 and is a self-avowed missionary for family history, encouraging others to write their own family history stories NOW!

Marshall was a researcher, analyst, and technical writer for the California Highway Patrol for 36 years. In addition, she has been the owner/artist for her Kanika African Sculptures business since 1993, sharing her love for African fabric, clay, welding, and ethnic-inspired, indoor-outdoor sculptures.

This presentation will provide attendees with a useful list of hints, tips and examples that will give them the tools to write and successfully self-publish their own family history book. Attendees will learn how to plan their own book, set up an effective book framework, gather information, write their book, and self-publish their own masterpiece.

 

First Friday Network Meeting, April 5, 2019
9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights
Bring Market Leads & Marketing Tips

 

 

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.

Magazine Writing: Then and Now, Print to Digital

 with

Sigrid Bathen

Sacramento Journalist

 

Sigrid Bathen is a Sacramento journalist who was a staff writer for the Sacramento Bee for 13 years and has written for numerous publications (see website www.sigridbathen.com).  She will discuss the changing face of journalistic writing, as lines become blurred among the various forms of journalistic writing (e.g., newspapers, magazines, newsletters) and other types of public-policy and PR writing.  She will also introduce us to the many options open to freelancers in the publishing and media world today, and will bring examples of different forms of magazine-writing.

 Sigrid has been an adjunct professor of journalism and communications at California State University, Sacramento, since 1988.  She has served as the communications director for three state agencies.  She has also taught journalism at California State University, Chico, and in the Los Rios Community College District. In 2013, she was honored by the Sacramento Press Club with a scholarship in her name. Her writing has won many awards, including several for outstanding contributions to public understanding of mental health. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her Bee coverage of conditions in Stockton State Hospital. She was the first chair and co-founder of the Women’s Caucus of the Sacramento Newspaper Guild and was the first president of Sacramento Women in the Media. Her Master’s thesis, “The Girls on the Bus,” about women political reporters, has been excerpted in several magazines and is available in the CSUS Library and on her website.

twitter: @sigridbathen

First Friday Network Meeting, March 1, 2019
9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights
Bring Market Leads & Marketing Tips

 

 

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.