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October 18th 2009

Our next meeting will be held on Sunday, November 15, 2009, at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN from 12:30 to 3PM.

Present today: Scott, Mike, Judy, John, Christine, Deb, Niomi, Jodi, and Sharon.

BOOK EVENTS
For our last meeting in September, we just held a brief meeting on Saturday Sept. 26, right ahead of our book release party for Talking Stick 18. We had an excellent event with 60-70 people in attendance. We sold lots of books. The Northwoods Press in Nevis wrote a nice article about us. It was also in the Menahga/Sebeka paper.

The Lake Region Writers Network held a conference in Fergus Falls on Saturday Oct. 3. Marilyn, Tarah, Scott, and Jerry all attended. This is Luke’s new group. They said many nice things about our group. We sold books and met lots of writers.

Recently, the Brainerd Writers Alliance held a workshop and announced their winners. Several of the Jackpine Writers, Niomi, Luke, and Judy, all did well in their contest. The speaker at the workshop was Bruce Hendrickson and the topic was Voice.

MISCELLANEOUS
www.winningwriters.com/index.php is a place to go for contests and writing opportunities. There is a fee to belong.

Screenwriterpro is a good program for writing screen plays.

Lost Hills is a small press you might want to check out.

Check out deviantart.com for photography and writing.

Pastiche–writing a story using an existing character from some popular book or movie.

We discussed the fact that because of texting and blogs, people seem to enjoy short novels more than longer ones now. Because of the economy, the big publishers are sticking with their tried and true best selling authors. It may be that small presses will be the way to go.

NANOWRIMO
The November Write a Novel in a Month event will be starting up soon. Cindie will be gone for part of the month, so Christine and Jennifer will be handling the event, emailing, getting writers signed up. They hope to also send a press release to Northwoods Press.

OUR WRITERS
Judy has been having great success with various chapters in her book. One of them won second place in the fiction category for TS18. One of them won the fiction contest in Northwoods Woman. Another won first place at Brainerd Writers Alliance contest. Congrats, Judy!

Jodi got a story published recently in a book called Angel Horses. Jodi is moving to Colorado to a better opportunity for her daughter. We will miss you, Jodi.

Hope to see you all next time!