Please save the date! November 12-13, 2010 in Santa Fe, N.M.

The Tony Hillerman Writers Weekend

• Create Compelling Charac ters and Dynamic Dialog with author Margaret Coel
• Show me the Energy: Start/Finish/Sell Your Book with author and motivational speaker Bill O'Hanlon
• Optional First Chapter critiques with author Judith Van Gieson
• Valerie Plame Wilson speaks at the Award Banquet for the annual Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery (St. Martin's Press)
• Conference headquarters: The beautiful Inn and Spa at Loretto in downtown Santa Fe

Registration information available soon. Please save the date!

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2010   9AM – 4 PM

Create Compelling Characters and Dynamic Dialog
with award-winning novelist Margaret Coel

WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE IN YOUR HEAD?  Author Margaret Coel will guide you through the steps of identifying and getting to know the characters in your imagination and transporting them into your story. You will learn how to give them distinct personalities, viewpoints, and motivations that will make them come alive on the page. Writing exercises will help participants grasp the techniques to allow characters to act, react, suffer, change, prevail and, finally, live on in the minds of the reader.

 WHAT ARE THEY SAYING? Coel will also focus on dialog as a crucial devise for character development. Again using hands-on practice, she will work with students to develop the craft of writing dialog that feels like conversation and keeps the story moving. By the end of the day, participants will have tools to create dialog that transforms characters into multi-dimensional people.

Margaret Coel is an exceptionally skilled and openhearted teacher, encouraging class participation, discussion, and questions. This workshop is appropriate for beginning writers as well as the more advanced. The New York Times best-selling author of the acclaimed Wind River mystery series. Margaret Coel sets her stories among the Arapahos on Wyoming's Wind River Feservation. The latest is "The Silend Spirit”  Her novels have won many awards and been on numerous bestseller lists including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. Among her honors are five Colorado Book Awards and the Rocky Award for Best Mystery Novel set in the American West, presented at the Left Coast Conference. Here work also is featured in the new anthology, "A Doven on Denver," a collection of short stories celebrating Denver, Colorado, first published in The Rocky Mountain News in 2008 to mark the city's 150th anniversary. She was among 12 of the area’s top writers invited to contribute.

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2010  9AM – 4PM

Show Me the Energy!
Find the Fuel to Start, Complete, and Sell Your Writing Projects
with author and featured Oprah guest Bill O’Hanlon

In this fun session, author Bill O’Hanlon will show participants how to:

• FIND the fuel to begin, persist, and complete writing projects
• FREE more time in our busy lives to ensure that the writing gets done
• UNSTICK your creative impulses when you stall
• ENERGIZE yourself to do the platform building, marketing, and sales parts of your writing lives
• SELL your book before you write it
• GET a literary agent in one day (he will teach you his secret)

Bill O’Hanlon is the talented author of 30 books, including Write Is A Verb.  He wrote his first 10 books when he had four kids at home, a private practice in psychotherapy, and a speaking career on the side — he speaks from experience!  A much sought-after teacher, Bill is known for his entertaining yet meaty content. This workshop will have you itching to get back to writing and energized about applying the new tools and inspiration you have picked during this special writers weekend.