[Coweta Arts Tidbits] Three Cowetans To Be Presenters at Southern Writers Conference

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Composed By:  Forrest W. Schultz  770-583-3258     schultz_forrest@yahoo.com

 

June 10, 2008

 

Three Cowetans To Be Presenters At Southern Writers Conference

 

     Coweta County is very important for the first ever Southern Writers Conference, which will be held on Saturday July 5, 2008.  Not only will the Conference be held in Coweta (at the Holiday Inn Express in Newnan) and not only is the organizer a Cowetan (Vickie Kennedy of Newnan) but three of the Presenters at the Conference are Coweta residents:  Vickie Kennedy and Christina Barber are from Newnan, and Forrest Schultz is from Grantville.

 

     Vickie Kennedy is the founder and director of the etreasures publishing company, which is a co-sponsor of the Southern Writers Conference. Her talk, the opening one, which will run from 10 AM until about 10:30, will explain how electronic publishing works, with especial emphasis on exactly what happens at her own company, etreasures.  Kennedy also runs the Newnan-based Writers Block permanent writing workshop.  She is the author of the EPPIE award winning science fiction story The Hidden Truth of Cytech's Randall 40, a romance novel Strong Arms of The Law, a Newnan-based story called A Writers Dream and A Cowboy's Heart, and she is currently working on a horror story based in Grantville Natalie's Curse. 

 

     Christina Barber won the 2006 Dream Realm Award for Best Speculative Fiction Romance for her paranormal thriller Greystone.  Recently her urban fantasy work Seely's Pond  and her non-fiction book Spirits of Georgia's Southern Crescent  were published.  Therefore it is not surprising that she will be giving a talk on "Urban Fantasy".  That session will be held from 6:30 PM through 7:15 PM.  Barber's other session, which will last from 10:30 - 11:15 will be a How-To talk on the author's self-promotion.  She is very qualified to do that because she is always busy doing something to sell her books.  Forrest Schultz, the leader of the Coweta Writers Group, has said "She has followed every single suggestion I have given her for promoting her book."

 

     Schultz will be talking about the writing of news releases at his session, which will be held from 1:30 - 2:15.  Although this will be his first speech to writers on this subject, he has already presented this topic twice via the internet to the first and second Muse Online Writers Conferences in 2006 and 2007, and will be doing so again later this year.  Schultz says that there are many very good fictional writers who do not have a clue about how to write a news release!  "This is surprising,"  he says, "because the rules for writing a good news release can be explained in about five minutes.  Actually, my session is really a supplement to Christina's because writing news releases is one of the forms of the author's self-promotion."  Schultz writes the Coweta Arts Tidbits news releases about the Coweta arts scene as well as news releases for the Coweta Writers Group and the Grantville Day Committee.