February 24: Rose Glen Literary Festival: Kelley Griffith will be speaking and selling books. Ernest Lancaster, Leanne Tyler, Elle Andrews Patt will also have booths.
March 23: Victoria Griffin on Writing Query Letters: Traditional Publishing still swings the majority of sales. Learn how to properly approach agents to increase your chances of finding an advocate for your work who can land traditional publishing deals. From President Ernest Lancaster: "Not so long ago, literary agents and publishers literally stacked submissions of manuscripts to the ceilings of their offices. Today, they begin every day with at least a hundred submissions in their email box.
The duty of separating the wheat from the chaff is usually relegated to a young, newly graduated English major. Agents admit it’s sad, but with that workload, even after that first culling, they dig into the slush pile with the hair trigger attitude of, “Give me a reason to reject you”.
If you submit with anything less than a perfect query letter, your submission will be rejected without even being read."
The duty of separating the wheat from the chaff is usually relegated to a young, newly graduated English major. Agents admit it’s sad, but with that workload, even after that first culling, they dig into the slush pile with the hair trigger attitude of, “Give me a reason to reject you”.
If you submit with anything less than a perfect query letter, your submission will be rejected without even being read."
April 27: Joseph Wambaugh invented the modern cop novel when his debut novel, The New Centurions, blasted to the top of the charts in 1971 and stayed in the top 10 for eight months. He was 34 and still an LAPD officer. From writer Kevin Mims: "It is a story of police brutality, racism, public unrest, systemic rot, poverty, and the seemingly everlasting tension between American police departments and the communities they are supposed to protect and serve." The cultural impact of the novel lead to more realistic police procedurals, both in print and on screen. Today, censorship of the common language and daily racism experienced by the African American officers as minor characters in Wambaugh's seminal work would no doubt keep it from being published. But it's an important historical record of what patrol officers in the late '60s and early '70's experienced direct from the horse's mouth. Come listen to 87-year-old Wambaugh discuss writing crime fiction and ask all the questions you've always wanted answers to, but were too afraid to ask. On Zoom.
May 25: No Meeting - Memorial Day Weekend - Elections Open
June 22: Anniversary Celebration plus ??? Joe Ide! Author of the acclaimed IQ series, and "Goodbye Coast," a Philip Marlowe Novel ,and one of Apple's Best Books of the Year. "How to Write a Killer Crime Novel or How to Up Your Odds of Getting Published." On Zoom.
July 27: Romantic Suspense Author Kelley Griffin and Audio Book Narrator Amanda Marr discuss Audio Book Production
August 24: University of Tennessee Head of Creative Writing, Michael Knight, on Screenwriting for Mystery Authors
September 28: Cumberland Gap Harvest Moon Festival Booth!
October 26: Andrea Morrell via Zoom: Murder of a Manuscript: Writing and Editing Tips to Keep Your Book Out of the Editorial Graveyard
November 23:
December ? 2024: HOLIDAY POTLUCK 12:00-3:00 in Knoxville. Directions will be sent!
January 25, 2025: