Have you ever read a gripping news story or had a fascinating experience and thought, “This would make a great novel?” Anne Da Vigo, author of the new thriller, Thread of Gold, will show you how to craft a fictional work using actual people, events, and settings. This presentation, offered recently by Anne and other panelists at Florida’s Other Words conference, will include examples from her novel, inspired by a decades-old clipping from the New York Times. Bring paper and pen for a short writing exercise.

Anne Da Vigo is a former police reporter and newspaper feature writer. She is also a long-time short story writer and critique group participant. Her work has appeared in literary journals and won prizes for another upcoming thriller. Her first novel, Thread of Gold, was acclaimed as follows by Kirkus Reviews, “Stop the presses! An appealing crime fiction heroine is born.”

Linda Champion knows how to invite people into her book. You know her when you see her, because she is often in costume.  With her husband Ken, a poet and musician, she has participated in dozens of book and craft festivals, and other special events. Among her appearances: Orange County Children’s Book Festival, Great Valley Bookfest, Fairytale Town’s Children’s Book Festival, and the California Author’s Invitational-State Fair. She has made several TV and radio appearances.

Linda’s Fairy Tales for Life:  A Collection of Fourteen Original Short Stories won First Place in Children’s Books at the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival and First Place in Children’s Books, at the 2016 Amsterdam Book Festival.  Earlier this year she was invited to visit the Hans Christian Anderson Museum in Denmark. She maintains a close relationship with this museum.

A retired high school teacher, Linda (ChampionWritingCreations.com) is a CWC Sacramento board member and District Winner of Toastmasters, International Club, “Spellbinders.” She has made several presentations on the subject of fairy tales, most recently at the North State Writers Branch of CWC.

Linda is currently working on a second book of fairy tales. She has also written a memoir called Conversations with My Auntie Margaret About Sporty Dog.

“There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart,” wrote Samuel Johnson, “a desire of distinction, which inclines every man to hope, and then to believe, that nature has given himself something peculiar to himself.”

What better distinction on display than in a book? Maryellen Burns will guide a conversation on how to write, edit, design, publish, and market a book in 12 months, and why it is important to every writer, regardless of genre. She is the author or editor of multiple books through traditional publishers and her own Indie press including Lost Restaurants of Sacramento and Their Recipes; Extracts – Mostly True Stories; and Whip Up a Cookbook. She has been a ghost writer, set up author tours and west coast promotions for Ten Speed Press, Simon and Schuster, Chronicle and Prima Publishing. She also teaches and produces books with the I Street Press and more recently facilitated a series for Indie Writers and Publishers for the Renaissance Society at CSUS and Morning Coffee Press in Midtown.