Mark your calendars for Saturday, September 9, 2017!
That’s the day of the Fourth Annual Southwest Washington Writers Conference at Centralia College. This year we have two bestselling keynote speakers, Robert Dugoni and Mike Lawson, and more workshops than ever before.
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, #1, Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Best Selling Author of The Tracy Crosswhite series, My Sister’s Grave, Her Final Breath, In the Clearing, and The Trapped Girl. He also wrote the best-selling David Sloane series, The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One and The Conviction, and the stand-alone novel The 7th Canon and the nonfiction book, The Cyanide Canary, 
and several short stories.
He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction, a finalist for the International Thriller Writers and the International Mystery Writers Awards and has twice been nominated for the Harper Lee Award for legal fiction. www.robertdugoni.com. He will present a morning keynote and teach two workshops: “Creating Plots for Page Turners” and “Playing God: Creating Memorable Characters.”
Mike Lawson has published eleven novels in the DeMarco series and three books featuring DEA Agent Kay Hamilton: Rosarito Beach, Viking Bay, and K Street. He will deliver the afternoon keynote and teach a workshop: “Fourteen Novels: What I’ve Learned/Mistakes I’ve Made.”
Click on the links for the schedule with no room numbers (single page no room numbers), workshop schedule (with room numbers), workshops descriptions and presenter bios.
Plan now to attend the 2017 Southwest Washington Writers Conference. All proceeds will benefit the Chehalis Veteran’s Museum.
Speakers for the 2017 conference include:
Robert Dugoni
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Best Selling Author of The Tracy Crosswhite series, My Sister’s Grave, Her Final Breath, In the Clearing, and The Trapped Girl, as well as the Best Selling Author of the David Sloane series, The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One and The Conviction, and the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon and The Cyanide Canary and several short stories. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction, a finalist for the International Thriller Writers and the International Mystery Writers Awards and has twice been nominated for the Harper Lee Award for legal fiction. www.robertdugoni.com
Mike Lawson
Keynoter Mike Lawson was raised in Pueblo, Colorado, attended college at Seattle University and earned a degree in engineering. After college, he spent about 30 years working for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer. He worked in Washington D.C., but most of his career at the naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, where he managed organizations related to overhauling nuclear-powered submarines, cruisers, and aircraft carriers. So how did he go from nuclear engineering to writing? The short answer is he likes to write. “I tell people that if you want to be a writer you need some talent, a lot of persistence, and a whole lot of luck,” Mike said. In 2004, he signed with a fantastic agent who liked The Inside Ring and found a two-book deal with a publisher. He has since published 10 novels in the DeMarco series, a new book called Rosarito Beach.
Lisa Brunette
Local novelist, game writer, and journalist, Lisa Brunnette, will speak for the first time at the conference. Her non-fiction work has appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Woman, Crosscut, and many others. She’s the award-winning author of the Dreamslippers mystery series and has hundreds of story design and writing credits in digital games. Read her blog—and sign up for a free book—at www.lisa-brunette.com.
Melanie Dobson
Melanie Dobson is the award-winning author of sixteen timeslip, historical romance, and suspense novels including Catching the Wind and Beneath a Golden Veil. Three of her novels have won Carol Awards, and Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana won Best Novel of Indiana in 2010. Melanie loves to explore old cemeteries and ghost towns, hike in the mountains, read fiction, and play board games with her family. She lives near Portland, Oregon with her husband Jon and two daughters.
Kait Heacock
Kait Heacock grew up in the same city as her literary idol, Raymond Carver, and hopes this means something. Her debut short story collection, Siblings and Other Disappointments, is available now. Her fiction has appeared in, Esquire, Joyland, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Portland Review, Tin House, tNY.Press, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Her nonfiction has appeared in Bustle, Crab Creek Review, DAME, Largehearthed Boy, Literary Hub, The Millions, and The Washington Post.
Jane Hodges
Jane Hodges has worked on staff at Advertising Age, Small Business Computing, Fortune, and The Seattle Times and freelanced full time since 2004 for outlets ranging from community papers to newswire Mergermarket and The Wall Street Journal and for corporations including Earnest, Expedia, Motif Investing, and Zillow. She’s the author of the book Rent Vs. Own (Chronicle Books).
Debby Lee
Debby Lee, raised in the cozy town of Toledo, Washington, has published three anthologies with a traditional Christian publisher, Barbour Publishing, with more in the works. The Courageous Brides and Mountain Christmas Brides anthologies made the Christian Book Expo’s Bestsellers List. She also contributed to three independently published collections that have done well. She has learned what makes and anthology work, and what can freeze it in its tracks. She has been involved in American Christian Fiction Writers and Romance Writers of America. She is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steven Laube Literary Agency. Debby loves connecting with her readers through her website at www.booksbydebbylee.com
Tod Marshall
Tod Marshall, the 2016-18 Washington State Poet Laureate, is the Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Endowed Professor in the Humanities at Gonzaga University, where he directs the writing concentration and coordinates the visiting writers’ series. Tod was born in Buffalo, New York, grew up in Wichita, Kansa, and now lives in Spokane. After studying English and philosophy at Siena Heights University, Tod earned a masters of fine arts from Eastern Washington University and a doctorate from the University of Kansas. His work has been published in many journals, including Narrative, The Southern Review, The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Boulevard, The Colorado Review, The Denver Quarterly, The Columbia Poetry Review, Poetry East, Poetry Northwest, Volt, Interim, The Canary, Willow Springs, Cutbank, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Bugle, released in 2014 by Canarium Books, The Tangled Line (released by Canarium in 2009) and Dare Say (from University of Georgia Press).
Veronica (Ronnie) Noize
Veronika (Ronnie) Noize, The Marketing Coach, is the founder and managing director of the DIY Marketing Center, which provides classes, coaching and community to small businesses. Ronnie is the author of “How to Create a Killer Elevator Speech” and “Networking for Newbies,” and co-author of “Marketing Strategies that Really Work” from Insight Publications. Ronnie has spoken about and taught small business marketing at more than 200 locations in North America. She is currently ranked in the top 4% of all social media influencers in the world.
For more information, visit Ronnie’s websites: www.VeronikaNoize.com and www.DIYMarketingCenter.com
Kyle Pratt
Writers can spend a lifetime creating quality stories but never break into the traditional publishing world. For years Kyle Pratt, the bestselling author of action-adventure and speculative fiction novels, worked that treadmill. But he left it behind in 2013 to begin “indie publishing.” Within a year he made enough money to quit his 9-to-5 job and write full time. He released Titan Encounter, his debut novel, in 2012. Through Many Fires, the first book in his post-apocalyptic series Strengthen What Remains, came out in paperback, Kindle and on Audible in August 2013. Within two weeks the novel appeared on the Kindle Science Fiction Post-Apocalyptic list, reaching #10, and topping the list on December 2, 2014. The second book in the series, A Time to Endure, reached the #1 position on the Amazon Kindle war fiction genre bestseller list just over a month after release and then again in January 2016. At the same time Braving the Storms reached the #8 spot on the bestseller list. Using the growing arsenal of technologies including Kindle, Kobo, print-on-demand, ACX, and the other tools of the digital era, Kyle believes it is possible for many more writers to be what author Guy Kawasaki terms successful APEs—Author, Publisher and Entrepreneurs. You can learn more about Kyle on his website, http://kylepratt.me/
Jennifer Vandenberg
Jennifer likes to think of herself as a wanderer, since she moves often, changes jobs even more often, and often thinks of six impossible things before breakfast. She lives in Chehalis, Washington, where she splits her time between a restaurant job and her writing job. She is working on a 12-part short-fiction fantasy detective series. Books 1–6 are available on Amazon.com. This series follows the troubles of a down-on-his-luck private eye on a distant moon. You can find a complete list of her books at www.jennifervandenberg.com. Come wander with her.
