California Writers Club, Sacramento Branch

Dedicated to Educating Writers of all Levels

Luncheon, Mar 17 – Why Write at All?

Why Write at All?

The Story, the Essay, and the Poem: the Quest for Examples and Answers

featuring

Steven Nightingale

Novelist, Poet, Essayist, Short Stories, Historian

 Saturday, March 17

11 AM–1:00 PM

(10:45 Early-Bird Session TBA)

Cattlemens, 12409 Folsom Blvd, $15 members/$20 guests (includes lunch)

 Come hear Bay Area’s Steven Nightingale, one of the most talked-about motivational presenters on writing, share lucid and graceful language from many sources and centuries.

Takeaways:

—beautiful sentences to hold in mind

—the most enlivening & surprising way to practice

—ancient tricks of the trade

Steven Nightingale is the author of ten books: two novels, six books of sonnets, a long essay on the city of Granada, Spain, and a book of short fiction. His interests include the medieval art of Spain and Italy, the wild country of the American West and the Caribbean, cooking for his wife and daughter, astronomy, venture capital, and Emily Dickinson, whom he loves. Chief among his pleasures is teaching by invitation in schools and universities in Nevada and California.

He is a graduate of Stanford University, and divides his time between Palo Alto, California, his beloved home state of Nevada, and the beautiful Albayzin, a barrio in Granada, Spain.

 

 

Luncheon 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Early Bird special 10:45 – TBA

 

Luncheon Information

  • Monthly Luncheons are open to the public
  • Cost is $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers
  • The meeting fee includes speaker,  lunch and beverage
  • Cattlemens Restaurant, 12409 Folsom Blvd., Rancho Cordova, CA

The restaurant is located just east of Hazel Ave. at the northeast end of the Nimbus Winery complex along Highway 50. Cattlemens offers CWC a spacious meeting room with free WiFi, quality AV equipment, free off street parking and excellent food.


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First Friday, Mar 2 – Creating Story from Real Events

FROM FACT TO FICTION:

CREATING STORY FROM REAL EVENTS

with

Anne da Vigo

Friday, March 2, 2018

9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights

 

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.”

The California Writers Club–Sacramento Branch Networking Meeting is held the first Friday of every month at Coco’s Restaurant, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights, at the corner of Madison and Sunrise,  starting at 9 a.m. Meetings are free. Attendees pay for their own breakfast.

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.

Luncheon, Feb 17 – Marketing for Low-Key Authors

Relationship-Based Marketing

featuring

Cristina Deptula

Literary Publicist at Authors, Large and Small

 Saturday, February 17

11 AM–1:00 PM

(10:45 Early-Bird Session TBA)

Cattlemens, 12409 Folsom Blvd, $15 members/$20 guests (includes lunch)

 

Do you cringe at the thought of being perceived as a self-promoter? Would you rather be perceived as “humble” than unabashed? Then Bay Area’s Cristina Deptula will deliver an important message to you.

Christina believes in relationship-based marketing, getting to know particular, influential people, and sharing information and resources with them in a way that’s mutually beneficial over a long period of time. Book promotion doesn’t have to mean “making a big deal out of yourself, but sharing what you have learned with others in order to help.”  She advises authors to view their books in terms of what they offer: information, insights, beauty, perspective or just plain fun and entertainment.  Christina knows how to take the focus off ourselves and put it into our work and message. This shift in approach makes it easier to promote – because we are talking about something beyond ourselves.

Cristina is a literary publicist with Authors, Large and Small (authorslargeandsmall.com), providing affordable outreach and marketing for writers. She helps to find audiences wherever they gather and to reach them in the manner in which they communicate. She’s the founder of Synchronized Chaos Magazine (synchchaos.com), publishing art and writing from around the world and developing a monthly theme based on the submissions received. Cristina has also reported on science and technology topics for the California Aggie.

You will come away from Cristina’s presentation knowing:

-the definition of relationship-based marketing

-why it’s more successful in the long-run

-the confidence that comes with marketing “humbly,” avoiding the reputation of unabashed self-promoter

– Ways to share with, not show off to, an audience.

-Build authentic relationships through outreach

 

Luncheon 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Early Bird special 10:45 – TBA

 

Luncheon Information

  • Monthly Luncheons are open to the public
  • Cost is $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers
  • The meeting fee includes speaker,  lunch and beverage
  • Cattlemens Restaurant, 12409 Folsom Blvd., Rancho Cordova, CA

The restaurant is located just east of Hazel Ave. at the northeast end of the Nimbus Winery complex along Highway 50. Cattlemens offers CWC a spacious meeting room with free WiFi, quality AV equipment, free off street parking and excellent food.


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First Friday, Feb 2 – Book Salesmanship

Book Salesmanship

with

Linda Champion

Author and District Champion at Toastmaster’s International

Friday, February 2, 2018
9-11 AM Coco’s, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights

 

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.

The California Writers Club–Sacramento Branch Networking Meeting is held the first Friday of every month at Coco’s Restaurant, 7887 Madison Avenue, Citrus Heights, at the corner of Madison and Sunrise,  starting at 9 a.m. Meetings are free. Attendees pay for their own breakfast.

Questions? Ask via our Contact page.

Luncheon, Jan 20 – Love and Sex on the Page

Love and Sex on the Page

featuring

Joey Garcia

Award-Winning Writer, Columnist & Relationship Expert

Feel free to bring short examples, 3-4 sentences good and bad!!!

 Saturday, January 20 11 AM–1:00 PM (10:15 Early-Bird Session TBA)

Cattlemens, 12409 Folsom Blvd, $15 members/$20 guests (includes lunch)

 

Photo credit: Kendall Tobe

Joey Garcia tells it straight – her writing contains scenes that illuminate relationships. It’s up to the writer to learn how to do it effectively. Joey promises to plunge in – providing examples to the Ca Writers Club Sacramento.

As Sacramento’s best-known “relationship” columnist, Joey draws on 21-plus years of dispensing relationship advice to 300,000 weekly readers in in the Sacramento News & Review. Her book, When Your Heart Breaks, It’s Opening to Love: Healing and finding love after an affair, heartbreak or divorce, was selected as a 2014 CSUS Summer Read . A year later, the book – published by a company Garcia started — won a national Bronze Living Now award that recognizes books that inspire tolerance and forgiveness.

 Joey has been featured in the Huffington Post, Sacramento Magazine, Sacramento Bee, Good Day Sacramento, Capital Public Radio’s “Insight,” KQED radio, KFBK radio, KCRA-TV, and ABC10-TV.  She’s currently the Relationship Expert for Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto Fox 40 News and fills in as a host for The Pat Walsh Show on NewsRadio KFBK.

Her poems, essays, and short stories have been published in literary journals and received international awards. In 2014 her poem, “After 9/11,” was nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. She has received poetry fellowships in Spoleto and Paris.

In 2004, Joey created Rise Up Belize! Advancement through Education, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of over 1,000 children and more than 500 teachers in her native Belize, Central America. She also launched a leadership program that has trained more than 100 Sacramento-area teen girls in skills that translate to workplace success. Joey has taught relationship education programs in schools, shelters, jails and the Learning Exchange.

Joey founded the Belize Writers’ Conference with an inaugural date of April 23 -28, 2018, for memoir, fiction, and nonfiction writers who are ready for manuscript critiques by two New York literary agents and a writing coach/author.

 

Luncheon 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Early Bird special 10:45 – Common Query Letter Mistakes, presented by Ted Witt

 

Luncheon Information

  • Monthly Luncheons are open to the public
  • Cost is $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers
  • The meeting fee includes speaker,  lunch and beverage
  • Cattlemens Restaurant, 12409 Folsom Blvd., Rancho Cordova, CA

The restaurant is located just east of Hazel Ave. at the northeast end of the Nimbus Winery complex along Highway 50. Cattlemens offers CWC a spacious meeting room with free WiFi, quality AV equipment, free off street parking and excellent food.


View Larger Map