NTSFW

NTSFW Workshop
Saturday July 12, 2008 at 6pm
Barnes & Noble, Hurst

Visitors welcome!

LAZY DRAGON CON
Quality Inn
McKinney, Texas

JULY 18 — 20, 2008

Lazy Dragon Con is a science fiction & fantasy themed convention held at the Quality Inn in McKinney, Texas.

A few of the special guests include actor Richard Kiel (The Spy Who Loved Me, Happy Gilmore, and more), author Beverly Hale, Brad Foster, and many more!

See you there and help Alley celebrate her birthday!

TOO MANY CURSES 

The latest book from A. Lee Martinez from his new publisher, Orbit Books.

Release Date: Sept 2, 2008

Pre-order it now from Amazon.com!

One of our members, Bill, sold his story titled “Over the Moon and Running” to a South African magazine called Something Wicked

Congrats Bill!

NTSFW member CrystalWizard has her newest short story published in “Bewildering Stories” titled:

Best Laid Plans

Congrats CrystalWizard!

Our next NTSFW meeting will be the usual 2nd Saturday of the month — June 14th — at the usual 6pm at the NEW location of Barnes & Noble across from the NorthEast Mall (next to Bed Bath and Beyond). 

New address for B&N:

Barnes & Noble Bookstores
861 NE Mall Blvd
Hurst, TX 76053
817-284-1244

See you there!

NTSFW member Dal Jeanis has a story,
“Billy Steadman, the Dragon and the Virgin Bride“,
in the upcoming anthology:

Strange Words of Lunacy
The Galaxy’s Silliest Anthology
Ships mid April, 2008

http://cyberwizardproductions.googlepages.com/cyberalienspress

Are yall old enough to remmeber this Saturday morning show for kids where a lady held up a mirror and sang in to it, “Do me a car sitter, don’t be a car stander”, or something like that (hey it was a long damned time ago for me LOL).  There as a “Do Bee” that flitted around the mirror.  So…

• DO bee a writer ~~ that’s why we’re here.  Write.  Can’t write?  Call up a writing buddy (from this list if you wish) and cheer each other on, work on problem arears, bring it to the group. The universe around us is a creative universe and ya only need to ask
• Do bee friendly ~~  and you’ll make friends.  I’ve made life-long friends from these groups that I thank the Lord every night she allows me to be a part of each beaufifully creative life.
• Do bee thankful  ~~  for the gift of critique is free here and given in the best of intentions.  To help improve the writing, the story, the characters, the scene, the whole schmeil. 
• Do buddy up ~~ find that some one or two or whatever who “gets” your writing and you “get” there’s and yall can work together intensely.  Advertise for one if you wish, don’t hesitate to turn people down if they aren’t a good fit.  Be creative, try new things, buddyup is one of my goals this year.
• Do be humble ~~ our writing is rarely as bad as we think it is on our worst days, and often, not as good as we think it is on our genious days.
• Do bee supportive ~~ no matter how good we might think we are, or we might actually be, 15th time on the best seller list, bought that house in Maui, on Leno every week… remember, you got there thru the support - mental, intellectual, emotional — of others.  Pass it on.
• Do bee yourself ~~ last of all, be yourself.  Wallow in your creativity and come see us next month.

We don’t have a lot of rules.  We use common sense (that isn’t really very common).  Mainly, respect the writer. 

1. Critique the WRITING, not the WRITER.  Work toward improving the wriing, not just marking things “wrong” with it.  Look for what WORKS and WHY.  There are several websites devoted to how to critique and be critiquied.  I highly recommend them.
2. And the “I’m holier than thou” law is in effect at all times.  We have writers brand new out of the box, with strong aspirations but not a letter put on paper, yet.  We have multi-published writers, sometimes other published authors, agents, editors as special guests.  We have members who have penned a few small pubs, still working on those big ones close to their hearts.  The “holier than thou” law means no one is holier than any other human on this planet.  We all learned the same way — (mostly the same way) — to scoot, to crawl, to climb, to walk, to run, to drive, …. and what we learned is in no way more important than how anyone else learned.  The important thing is that we learned.  We all have differing experiences, knowledge, intellect, creativity.  Here, we celebrate that hodgepodge of what makes us humans. 
3. So, be kind.  Have your say at crit, then let others crit.  Don’t dominate a crit, no matter how important the knowledge or how smart you may be.  Everyone gets a say.  The author being critted will decide who’s comments have most merit for his/her work.
4. Don’t get that “flash in the pan” syndrome.  Say, you get one book, short story, poem, art, etc. published.  Congratulations! 

Now, go make more.  And when you get to crit group, we’ll applaud you, but still, you’re just one of us, a writer honing his/her craft, over and over again.  Getting published, I don’t care who you are, Elmore Leonard or the Great Harlan Ellison, won’t get you put on a pedastal at our group.  Hogging group time because suddenly you’re the Robert Silverberg of Science Fiction won’t endear you to the group, nor will it allow you to remain a member.  Disruptive and rude members will be asked to leave.

Not a lot, mostly common sense :).  Come join us!

And so we’ve decided :) 

Some of us members have issued writing challenges in the past to each other, sometimes pulling ideas out of a hat, sometimes jumbling ideas from jumbled words, etc.  Some members have won short stories prizes using these methods.

This year, we decided our biggest writing challenge for our members, those who wish to participate, was to GET PUBLISHED!  and we would help as much as we could to help our members attain that goal by the end of 2009, certainly sooner!

We don’t know exactly HOW we’ll create this creative miracle.  But it’s loads of fun to brainstorm and keep focused on our goal.  Why not come visit us any 2nd Saturday of the month at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in North Richland Hills (map and links on our website) and check us out?

 I’m typing this in the month of March, after our March workshop meeting.  So our next workshop will be in April, Saturday the 12, at 6pm.  (rememeber, always the 2nd Sat of the month, unless announced otherwise)

Come join us anytime :)  There are no dues, tho we occasionally ask for donations for incendintals like server fees and domain name fees.  We love to socialize as well, so come join us at local writing workshops and conferences, or maybe just a last minute “hey you wanna hit up a Starbucks?”.