Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Colorado Gold Conference Workshops:

I volunteered as a moderator at the Colorado Gold Conference, hosted by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. That means that I had the privilege to introduce some mighty fine speakers.

On Friday I introduced, Playing Spider: Enticing your Web Audience, hosted by Ron Heimbecher. Ron has been in my critique group for years, so it was a great pleasure to introduce him. He’s a wonderful writer with two published works; an illustrated poetry collection and a suspense novella. His background in computers made him uniquely qualified for this workshop which he created. We learned about many aspects of the web like, where to go, what to do, what to add to your site, and much more. The good news is that you can link to Ron’s website, Playing Spider.com from here and check it out for yourself.

On Saturday I introduced two workshops. The first one called: Writing About Characters with Psychological Disorders, with Lynda Hilburn. I know Lynda as well and was pleased to introduce her. Lynda writes vampire books, titled: The Vampire Shrink and Dark Harvest, they can be found on Amazon as well as at your local bookstore. Click the titles to go to Lynda’s website and learn more.

Lynda is a psychotherapist, a hypnotherapist and a professional psychic/tarot reader. That alone is mind boggling. We learned about several disorders and received a great hand-out that listed the new names for old illnesses with a brief description. This is very handy when your characters are suffering from a psychological illness. Lynda opened the workshop up to discussion and many people shared about their characters and asked pertinent questions. I truly enjoyed it.

Later on Saturday I introduced three speakers who shared a panel form discussion titled: The Future of Technology and Publishing; hosted by Eric Sidle, Janet Fogg and Kristin Nelson. Eric is a writer as well as a website designer. Janet has a published time-travel novel out titled Soliloquy, and Kristin is an agent here in Denver, the Nelson Literary Agency and she has a blog site; http://pubrants.blogspot.com/. The discussion ranged from current events with e-publishing to the reactions that major publishers had, to ridiculous offers said major publishers were offering to authors and, beyond all this to the future. A real eye-opener, if you will excuse the cliché. (I linked to all their sites, just click their names).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend all the workshops; for every workshop in each hour of the conference, there where three others being held in additional rooms. We were a loud and happy bunch and our brains where on overload.

Friday evening I was the host author at one of the tables where we all shared a nice meal. This was a great treat for me and I met some wonderful new fantasy and urban fantasy writers.

Does this help give you an idea about a writer’s conference? Would you enjoy coming next year?

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I would have loved to listen to the discourse on psychological issues. How fascinating.

CD

N. R. Williams said...

It really was Clarissa.
Nancy

Judy Croome | @judy_croome said...

I'd love to come next year...only it's a bit far! :)
Judy

(from all the way in sunny South Africa!)

Anonymous said...

I had really wanted to attend the "psychological disorders" workshop because I seem to have a character with some serious issues playing a major role in my story. But, as you said, we were only allowed one body per person at this event (hmm... I am thinking of a story from that :-).

DL Curran said...

Each of the three workshops you mentioned sound very interesting. We have a fledgling fiction group in our small city and your topics have sparked a few ideas for guest speakers. Great post... thanks!

N. R. Williams said...

Judy, I'd love to come to South Africa. But seriously, there maybe something closer for you and if not. Start a group of fiction writers that might develop into something more.

Marilyn, you could order a tape.

DL, I'm glad I gave you some insight.

Thank you all for stopping by and commenting.
Nancy

Ron at CM said...

Thanks, Nancy! It was fun to have you moderating.

@Marilyn... maybe we should ask them to set up a clone concession at the entrance. B^)

Ron Heimbecher

N. R. Williams said...

Thanks Ron