MAY 2010
MAY 2010
Spokane Authors and Self-Publishers (SASP) began in 1998 when Chuck O’Conner, Elmer Freeman, Joe Meiners,
and Dan Vollmer, Spokane area authors
formed a club in order to share their knowledge and experience with those
interested in writing and alternative ways of publishing. Today, SASP is a large non-profit
organization dedicated to anyone with interests in any aspect of writing and
art. Members now include aspiring (and
successful) authors, poets, journalists, illustrators, editors, publishers,
printers, writing instructors, and many others.
Monthly luncheon meetings provide inspiration and education by way of
knowledgeable and entertaining guest speakers, and the cheerful camaraderie of
people sharing common interests and goals.
Membership is open to all who love writing, art, and interesting people.
Spokane
Authors and Self-Publishers meets
the first Thursday of each month, September through May, in the banquet (back)
room of the Old Country Buffet
(509) 484-5026
Speakers’
presentations begin at NOON. The room opens at 11:00 AM to allow members and guests to dine, converse, join, pay
dues, browse, and perhaps buy other member’s books that are on display. Generally a short business meeting is held,
either before or after the formal presentation.
New members and guests are introduced, members relate their
accomplishments, and various door prizes are awarded.
All
members and guests are requested to buy lunch upon entering the establishment,
and to leave an appropriate tip for the waiter/waitress.
Members
need to be present to win door prizes.
Current
membership benefits include a
listing on the SASP website, www.spokaneauthors.org. Many
members provide short biographies and links to external personal websites,
creating more marketing exposure.
Current members may list and describe their published works on the SASP
website and offer their work for sale at meetings.
Guest speakers at our monthly meetings
inform, inspire, and entertain members and guests with a variety of topics, all
designed to provide knowledge pertinent to writing and publishing.
SASP
members are encouraged to purchase or trade completed works of and with fellow
members. They are also encouraged to
donate examples of their work for use as door prizes. Those who win other members’ works are
expected to provide a review of that work.
Dues for SASP membership are $15.00 per
calendar year. Dues may be paid directly to our Treasurer at our monthly
meetings. Alternatively, you may remit
your dues to:
2010 Officers
President:
Dave McChesney (509) 325-2072
Vice-President:
Bob Weldin (509) 327-2897
Secretary:
Robert Pillsbury (509) 842-6803
rvpsasp07@comcast.net
Treasurer:
TBA
Public-Relations:
Russ
Davis (509) 768-6206
Newsletter Editor:
Jim
Parry 509)
325-9922
Web Master:
TBA
Advisory Board:
Jolene Feher (509) 489-0544
fehersong@yahoo.com
Gail Mangano (509) 535-1434
mamamia3224@comcast.net
Bob Manion (509) 448-2901
gunnerbob@comcast.net
OUR
NEXT MEETING!
Please join us for our fifth meeting of
2010 on Thursday May 6 at 12
noon. We’ll be at our usual location
(Old Country Buffet,
The
President’s Page
April 2010
Our Last
Meeting
On
April 1st, fellow SASP member James B. Parry enthralled us with the
story behind BOOK ALL THE TEACHERS, his tale of teaching junior high/middle school
for the majority of his career.
Mention
was made of changes to the recently instituted Peer Review Program. With the latest revisions, the program is set
up to simulate an author’s submission of a query package to an agent or editor. To prevent personal likes and dislikes from
entering into the review process, all submissions are anonymous, which gives it
a literary contest flavor as well. It
was suggested that if there was sufficient interest in members exchanging works
directly, that perhaps SASP could act as a contact point.
Our
guests included L. McLaren, Rod Stackleberg, and Bob Magart. We welcomed new members Juanita Prince, Vikki
Madsen and Bob Kowal.
John
Heffernan donated a copy of his book, NOT ONE DROP OF BLOOD as a door
prize. Damon Bauer had the matching
ticket and took the volume home with him.
Jim Parry also donated a copy of BOOK ALL THE TEACHERS, which Michael
Marsden won.
On
Thursday May 6th, Russ Davis of Gray Dog Press and fellow SASP member will speak on MARKETING
YOUR BOOK.
Thoughts and
Observations
As
you can see, I am trying something a little different with this month’s
column. I want to separate the news
about our meeting from the opinions and musings I have regarding our
organization. This may also make it easier
for Jim when putting the next newsletter together, as he is certainly welcome
to place either section where he will.
Being
that we are well into 2010, time has come to clean up our roster and ensure
that only paid members are reflected upon it.
Those who are not paid up for 2010 can expect to see their names removed
from the web-site members’ list over the next couple of weeks. Those who were not members in 2009 and who
have shown no interest in rejoining our organization will be removed from the
master roster. That means they will no
longer receive e-mailed meeting announcements, the newsletter, nor any other
communications routinely sent to SASP members.
Those who were members in 2009, but have not renewed for 2010 will
continue to receive all communications under the concept that they are still
members who haven’t yet had the chance to renew.
Of
course, membership and renewing the same equates to DUES, a sometimes touchy
subject in any organization. Some
complain that dues are too high; others feel they are at a justifiable level,
while some even think the cost of membership should rise dramatically. Regardless of the amount, dues play an
important role in groups such as Spokane Authors and Self-Publishers. First and foremost, payment of one’s dues
indicates a willingness to belong to, support, and be a part of the group. Secondly, dues collected provide the funds
that the group uses to pay the expenses that occur during the year. Among those expenses are post office box
rent, the organization’s web-site and domain registration, and an annual filing
fee with the Washington State Secretary of State. We also buy lunch for outside or guest
presenters and provide them with an honorarium for speaking to us. Finally, there are the costs associated with
printing and mailing copies of our recently revived newsletter. (If you have e-mail and aren’t receiving
announcements and the like from SASP, please make sure we have a usable
e-address for you. The fewer hard copies
we have to send out, the less our costs for that endeavor.)
Therefore,
if you haven’t yet renewed your membership for 2010, but feel that Spokane
Authors and Self-Publishers is a worthwhile organization to belong to, please
bring your dues to our next meeting on May 6th. If it is more convenient, you may send a
check or money order to SASP,
Lastly,
I’d like to point out that we have a large number of members who do not have a
biography posted on our web-site. If you
find yourself in that situation, please see what you can come up with and
forward it to me via e-mail (daveeva@comcast.net)
so I can post and link it to your name on the web-site’s membership list. Write on,
Don’t forget to bring your submissions for the:
SASP Volunteer Peer Review Program
Paul Lecoq
Rationale:
Self-publishing allows you to avoid the
arduous job of making your writing great – if you so choose. To go beyond family journals, to compete in
the marketplace, you must become competent. Having others evaluate your work,
bringing others into the process of creating, builds that competence.
Process:
By now everyone should have
received a copy of, and be aware of, the Peer Review Rules. If not, we’ll have
extra copies at the next meeting.
Reading the reviews:
Don’t take criticism personally; it’s the quickest way to learn. There will be differences of opinion and style. If someone wrote something, he must think it’s important. Pay attention even if you don’t take the advice. Don’t just look at it as editing; apply what you learn throughout your manuscript.
For What
It’s Worth
(formerly, From the
Editor)
by Jim Parry
So is everyone tired of that
third-person guy? Me, too. From now on it’s just me.
Went to a small gathering of retired
teachers last week supposedly to discuss my book, but it soon became a
reminiscing session – with each person
telling his or her own war stories (which, incidentally, may be fodder for my
next book). There were many, many
different experiences shared, but I quickly realized that, yeah, they’re
different experiences, but really it’s just different minutiae. Though the details were not the same, every
attendee could have written a book eerily similar to mine.
All of this got me to thinking
(Finally!): There’s much more that
connects us than separates us – in all areas.
There are more shared experiences than differences.
So share your experiences (or
fiction) with the world! What da Vinci
said about paintings can be applied to manuscripts: “A painting is never finished, just
abandoned.” At some point you have to kick it out the door. Get it out there. Set it free, my friend – for the world to
experience and enjoy. Jim
News
Listed below are acknowledgements of our
member's accomplishments, book signing dates, locations, and other items of
note:
Recent Newsletters now on Site
The six issues of our recently revived
SASP Newsletter are now posted and available on the web-site. Simply go to the Newsletter Tab on our home
page and click on the month you are interested in. All the content of the e-mailed or
“snail-mailed” versions are there.
Format has changed somewhat.
Publishing Accomplishments
Jim Parry’s book, Book All the Teachers, is now available on most major bookstore
web-sites (Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
New “LINKS”
We’ve recently
added several “general interest” links on the web-site page of the same name. Amongst
the new links is one to a “writers how to” site by Australian science fiction
and fantasy writer Richard Harland.
See it at:
Contest
New Letters
2010 Awards for
Writers. Call for Fiction, Poetry, and Essays. Offering $1500 for the best in
each category.
Enter online at:
Deadline:
postmark by May 18, 2010
Congratulations
Spokane
Authors and Self-Publishers member
James Vasquez has
been designated as the
Lilac Poet of
2010 by the Poetry Scribes of
A Local Publisher
Recently, Ditto’s Print and
A Most Generous Offer
Writer Kirt Hickman has generously
provided SASP with several “how to” articles on various aspects of
writing. He has also arranged to provide
a copy of his book to the group when it is released latter this year. It will make a great door prize for some
lucky SASP member. We are now posting one of Kirt’s articles on the WRITER’S
TOOLS page of the web-site each month. Each will remain for approximately
one month or until replaced by the next. Kirt’s book, REVISING FICTION: MAKING
SENSE OF THE MADNESS has been released. An
autographed copy has been received by
This month we will be rerunning another
of the articles Kirt sent us. If you
would like copies of any of the articles, contact daveeva@comcast.net
If there is sufficient interest amongst
SASP membership, we will see about ordering copies of Kirt’s book for those who
would want it.
A New Publishing Company
Hello Spokane Authors & Self-Publishers, My name is Bob
Griffin. I have just started a small publishing company that will be publishing
fantasy, science fiction and horror stories. Below is my company's first press
release. If anybody is interested in submitting their works of fiction, please
visit us at
Publishing Company.
Rick Decost & Bob Griffin
Absent
MFA
Request brochure
FA35 by email: mfa@spalding.edu, by phone: (800) 896-8941, ext
2423, or see our website: www.spalding.edu/mfa.
And Yet another Contest
The second
annual "Scare The Dickens Out of Us" ghost story contest offers
$1000.00 first place, $500.00 second place and $250.00 third place prize money
this year for a new, original ghost story up to 5000 words. Any
genre is welcome.
This literary
contest is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in
Full rules are
available at www.clarklibraryfriends.com
or .org. Entries will be accepted from July 1 to October 1 2010.
We are also
supporting a "Junior Scare the Dickens Out of Us" ghost story contest
with a $250.00 first prize. This is for ages 12-18 and requires a $5.00
entry fee.
And thank
you. We appreciate your time.
Roxanne and
Gretchen Rix, contest coordinators "Scare The Dickens Out of Us" 2010