January 19th Meeting Notes

The WhipCity Wordsmiths met on a bone-chilling Saturday, January 19th at Blue Umbrella Books, our home base. Twelve members were in attendance and three authors joined our meeting as guests and then were welcomed as new members. It is good to see our group growing and thriving! Gingerbread men and bottled water were provided for members enjoyment.

Quick introductions were made so our new members could get an idea of who we are and what we write, and we could meet them as well.

Russell Atwood provided us information on the upcoming Poe's 201th Birthday Bash at Blue Umbrella Books on Saturday, January 19th. There will be a Ghost Stories Live! event at 6PM with regular cast members reading Poe short stories and poems. Susan has done several pen & ink drawings and made prints of a hissing black cat, a full raven, and a raven profile that are available in the shop and will also be available during the events that day. Glass artist Hugh Nagger will be working his magic with glass rods and a torch from noon until 5PM. DJ Sean Martin will be spinning gothic tunes and Poe readings in the morning.

Mimi Caban Ross (excuse me if I have the names backwards!) and husband Mike ventured down from the hilltowns to join us today. She read to us a letter that she wrote pretending to be her 8-year old self writing to her future adult self, offering older self her best advice as an eight-year old. She wrote the letter in crayon. It was a sweet letter full of the innocence and wisdom of a child with a limited idea of what it is like to be an adult, with a few cautions and observations. It made me think back to when I was eight years old...what would I advise my older self from back then?

Our youngest author, Ayden Rogalski, at 10-years of age is in the best position t write a letter as his eight-year old self to his future adult self. It would be interesting to hear what he would advise himself at this point in his life. Ayden is working on two new books at this time. One is on homesteading and the other is a children's mystery. (after the meeting Tanya, his mother posted on facebook that Ayden was energized and inspired by today's meeting and now has another 2 books in his writing queue- one a science book, the other another children's book!)

Tenzie talked about her vampire novels and her difficulty formatting a book for KDP. Kelly offered to assist her with learning how to format for self-publication.

The topic of marketing and self promotion of our independently published works was brought up again. When an author works full time and has many other obligations it's difficult to get out into the community and surrounding states to have book signings, meet & greets, and attend other events where one can promote ones books. This led me to thinking that as a director of Artworks of Westfield I may be able to ask for their help hosting a WhipCity Wordsmiths Meet & Greet the Authors event where as many of us as are able to attend can have a table to display our books, etc. and talk about what we write and why we write. During the course of the event authors who would like to give brief talks could be scheduled to speak, like they do at the Springfield Library events. We can do something like that here, and try to get young writers, middle school writers, high school and college writers involved with a contest for each age group judged by WhipCity Wordsmith authors.

Judith has been working on a Christmas book she started awhile ago. It was good to see her at a meeting again as we've missed her.

Gerald McFarland spoke about his experience with Levellers Press in Amherst. Rhonda published her new children's book using Bridgeport Bindery in Agawam. Both have had positive experiences with these companies.

Geri is putting together some vignettes to self publish.

Lindsay is working on several projects and is dabbling in the paranormal, a new genre for her.

We talked a bit about stepping outside of the genres we are comfortable working in and trying something different. Susan did this recently with The Worth of a Woman. No magic, no special powers, no ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or happy endings. It was an emotionally wrenching experience she's not all that anxious to repeat!

There was a lot of energy flowing during the meeting with everyone participating and having something to offer the group. The time passed way too quickly!

The meeting adjourned about 4:15PM as several members had other obligations, or distances to travel. Several members lingered in the shop to chat and browse.

See you on February 2nd!!

We Now Have a Facebook Group!

Hi Everyone,

As of this morning we now have a Facebook group! The group has private settings, so only other members will see your posts. You can share writing samples, ask for editing or technical help, and share your news/events/facebook and web pages, etc. We encourage members to share others news/events on their own pages to help spread the word (free marketing!).

When you request to join, you'll be asked what you write to prove you are not a spammer or robot. Don't be intimidated by this! You don't have to go into detail. We've added a bunch of you to start (everyone we could find quickly this morning, sorry if we missed you), so you'll get to skip the question.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/whipcitywordsmiths/

Happy NEW YEAR Wordsmiths!

Kelly and I want to wish each and everyone one of you a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous, and Productive 2019! Happy New Year!

January 2019 Meeting Set

The WhipCity Wordsmiths will meet on Saturday, January 12th, 2019 at 3PM-5PM at Blue Umbrella Books, 2 Main Street, downtown Westfield, MA. Bring a brief, favorite piece of your own work with you to share and discuss with the group.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Kelly and I would like to wish you all Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and all the Joy of the Season!

The Forgotten Christmas Novella is now on my autor blog

When I revamped the three original larger Christmas anthologies, splitting them into three stand alone novellas and four small holiday story anthologies, somehow Christmas at Frothingham's was overlooked. For the past two years it never even occurred to me that this novella was missing from the collection...but watching a movie set in a department store on the Turner Classic Movie channel the other night reminded me that I had written a Christmas story set in a large downtown department story (think Steigers or Forbes & Wallace in Springfield back in the day, or G. Fox in Hartford- where I actually worked as a store detective when not at the stores in Enfield and Holyoke, when I was fresh out of college). Anyway, I found the story, not perfectly edited, but still very readable, on a USB, so...if you'd like to read Christmas at Frothingham's you can do so at susanbuffum.blogspot.com It may take a little while to load. Give yourself some time to read it. In its original form it's 33 8.5x11 pages long!

I Am so Hopeless at facebook Events!

I had a lot of trouble trying to create simple facebook event for the WhipCity Wordsmiths meeting this coming Sunday that Kelly finally pushed me out of my chair and took over, finishing in less than three minutes. The rule of thumb in this house is Mom doesn't touch the remote, doesn't want to touch the remote, and has no interest in it other than as an object I have to occasionally dust or pick up off the floor when a cat knocks it off the coffee table. I also don't do much other than write and create my books on my computer. What all that other stuff on it is...well, it's really not a major concern of mine. I can post a picture on facebook and edit a post if there's a word not spelled correctly, but beyond that, well, I don't have much in the way of interest in technology. I kind of liked rotary dial phones back in the day because it gave me more opportunity to slam down the receiver and walk away from the phone before someone answered. I still like to write letters on paper, with a pen, that I put into an envelope, have to find an address in an address book  to write on the envelope, and to stick a stamp on the front and place it in the mailbox for the nearly obsolete mailman to pick up and carry away to the post office where its stamp is cancelled, it's sorted and sent on its merry way to someone else's mailbox so they can open their mailbox and find something other than advertising and bills.

Can you tell I just signed, wrote out, addressed, and mailed Christmas cards? Only one person is getting an annual Christmas letter and that is Kelly's kindergarten teacher. This year I typed it and added pictures...rather high tech for me but it was a big year for Kelly that we wanted to share with her former teacher.

The Wordsmiths meeting and Celebration of Good Cheer and Friendship is Sunday, December 16th at 1:30PM at Blue Umbrella Books with refreshments courtesy of Susan, Kelly, and Rhonda to include several kinds of cookies, ginger ale, water, hot chocolate and hot cider. We'll review the group members various accomplishments in 2018 and look ahead to 2019. Join us if able.