Hi there, I have two questions - Are the times the classes start set for west coast or east coast? And if I cannot register for a free class, does that mean it is full?
Thank you for your time!

Okay maybe NOT a bad penny, but you know they keep showing up. It has been a few years since I've been a member, but I've stayed in touch with my old NaNo/Bootcamp team. Never underestimate the friendships you can make in a virtual/forum world! So, after hearing they were considering bootcamp and remembering how much I missed it . . . here I am.

Like others life has happened, but I find myself hungry to write again. To date it has just been for myself, but we'll see what happens with the next chapter.

I am a crisis manager by day (a career that started in wedding planning, now there's a story that's been told before); and writing the last few weeks have just been a balm for the soul. I have mostly written romantic suspense, but have at least one fantasy book (not including fanfic).

Now I just have to relearn my way around the site but I can't wait to see what amazing things are happening!

I registered for the coaching opportunity that starts on Monday and I was just assigned a project at work that will interfere. How do I UN-register for June's class? I'd rather open the space for someone else and take the class later.

Hey Everyone,
I'm Sara Thompson, I started this account many moons ago to the point I was getting upset when the system told me my email was already in use. Imagine that.
Just wanted to pop in and say "hey," I used to be really bent on writing and getting my stories out there and somewhere life happened and I got lazy. Yet recently I have been feeling that itch and a friend told me to sign up for boot camp. To which I said fine and jumped without actually looking. Now I'm terrified. Hence this post, if theres accountability I wont hide and might get something out of the ordeal.

My biggest claims to fame are being publishes 3 times in anthologies celebrating David Bowie, Freddy Mercury, and Douglas Adams. If you can call those claims to fame. I have books on my self with my name on them and its pretty neat, even if I bought the books myself. Outside of those anthologies I tend to write Sci-fi and branching more towards historical fiction. I don't really know what to call my genre box, I like taking an idea that could possibly happen tomorrow and push it into the future or the past depending. I also tend to write a lot of YA.

So I guess that's it. I look forward to learning more and seeing where we go with this.

Hello All,

My name is Katherine Schlem. I'm often known online by my moniker, KitKat, an appellation given to me by Christine Feehan many many years ago.

I'm a married, stay at home mom of two teenage sons. My husband is visually impaired but telecommutes his job as an IT Programmer/Senior Analyst for the Financial Division of a major reinsurer. I'm first and foremost a poetry writer and have been since Middle School. I have a degree in Political Science, which I can talk more about if any are interested. I don't want to offend anyone.

I began extensive prose writing in High School and continued into post-college with a stint in Fanfiction, primarily Hannibal Lecter based. I began my own writing series in 2006-07 writing a somewhat controversial and touchy subject matter, the case of a High School student and her school librarian falling in love. There are many extenuating factors that cover this issue and make it reasonable and it is a reflection on my own relationship with an instructor in school. It's got many overtones: mafia, love of family, protection of the weak. It's also a paranormal romance that deals with the existence of Hindu Avatars manifesting into their human hosts on earth. It's also hypererotic in portions of the text.

I started it back then, but, as my first child got diagnosed with Autism I had to put it aside and focus on being a parent. I had 153 pages, entirely handwritten, back then. Since I picked up that manuscript back in around 2013 or so, I've now got three completed manuscripts in the series and one in progress. They're all handwritten and over 4000 pages so far. I expect about a 9 book series overall.

Thanks for welcoming me into your midst.
Katherine Schlem
aka KitKat
PenName to come later (when I figure it out)

Any advice on landing an agent? I've been at it for a year and I'm getting discouraged. Here's a review I received recently. Chief Louise Consola, the chief of police for the idyllic town of Beaumont, Massachusetts, must unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of one of her best friends. As she unearths clues, it becomes clear that her friend’s death is part of a terrible secret that has been kept hidden for decades. Can Louise put an end to the evil that ravages her town and still protect those who have carried the secret? And can a town ever be washed clean from its terrible sin? (Summary via Amazon) A Run of a River by Rick Collins is a suspense novel……BOY is it !!! I’ll admit I didn’t read the summary of the book before I started reading it and quite frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered. Reading the little summary about the book does not, in any way, shape or form, prepare the reader for what they are about to get lost in. And when you start reading A Run of a River you are going to be completely lost in the story…..so much that everything around you will no longer exist. As long as the book is opened and you are reading the words, you will be under a spell. There will be no stopping it’s powerful hold on you until you get to the end, close the book and sit back. You are hanging out in Beaumont Massachusetts, a small town, with Police Captain Louise Consola who after the events of one day her town and her life are turned upside down. On the day long time baseball and basketball boys coach, Jack Monroe, is labeled a town hero and given the key to the city by the Mayor, a close friend of Louise and her husband commits suicide. As Louise and her husband Hank try to come to terms with Ken’s sudden death, Hank is in a car accident that turns out to not be an accident. It seems that a lot of people in this little town are hanging on to some deep, dark secrets that are starting to destroy them. Hank is carrying around a lot of guilt after Ken’s suicide and it puts him in the hospital. The Mayor is also hiding a lot of secrets that could destroy him and everything he has built of himself. While Louise tries to help her husband, she learns that some of the secrets if they came out could destroy her town. She is torn between doing what is right for the town but bad for it’s residents or turning a blind eye and letting things slowly destroy the ones she loves. Readers will be on the edge of their seats reading A Run of A River. Rick Collins writes in such a way that you will feel like you are right there along side the people in this small town. You will feel like you are caught in this web of secrets with them and will feel for Ken, Hank, Mickey and the rest of the boys coached by Jack Monroe. You will want to see justice done and stop the pain that is like a black cloud over Beaumont. And you will be in complete shock when you see how things turn out !!!

Hi everyone! I dabbled in writing fiction a few years ago and just couldn't pin down my genre nor dedicate the time to it because I run my own business (and had a million other excuses LOL). I'm starting fresh and feeling really determined to stick with it and finish my first novel quickly.

Would love to connect with folks here that want to encourage and help hold each other accountable, so any advice on where to start with that would be appreciated. Excited to be here!

Hello! I just joined (to be specific, probably only 20 minutes ago) and am excited! I didn't even know SavvyAuthors existed. I randomly found it through a classmate's website! It's amazing how you can randomly find things on the internet...

I love how comprehensive this site is and how there is so much here for writers! I'm looking forward to payday so I can upgrade my account. Only 16 weeks (but who's counting?) until I'm finished with my writing degree, so I'm excited to have time freed up to take writing classes. Anyhow, I am going to start working my way through the site (and finding things to read, woo!) and just wanted to poke my head in here and wave.

~Jen

How do you control the tags that show up next to your name when you post in a forum? I just posted in a class I'm in, and I get the "Going Indie" tag next to my "Premium Member" tag. I'm not an indie published author, so not sure where that's coming from. I searched the help and couldn't find anything. Went through every setting I could find in my account, still nothing. I noticed some people have other tags like "Ask me about my book on submission."

My name is Priscilla, and I am just finishing a final edit on my sci-fi romance and trying to make some connections and get some advice. Thanks for being here.

Hello! I have read that writers should have a marketing plan as agents/editors may ask for it as part of your pitch package. Two questions: 1) is this true and 2) if so, is this a marketing plan specifically for the book you're pitching, or for yourself as an author?

Thanks in advance!!

Or, can I at least delete it?

I just finished a new lecture series called Fiction Writing Workshop for Kids. It has three story ideas in it and each story idea is expanded to show kids how to create a story. It uses color-coded text boxes to focus the kids creativity and collect their ideas.
The regular price is $19.99 but it's on sale now. Use this link to take advantage of the discounted price.
Fiction Writing Workshop For Kids
Hey! You never know when you'll need something like this to keep the kids occupied.

Hello all. I needed a kick in the pants to get writing again, and rejoining this site is the perfect motivation.
I'm going to read a bit on the forums to catch up on news, and all the changes.

I write romantic suspense. My first book was traditionally published by a small publishing house, and I've just got the rights back. I'm going to self pub that book (once I've changed the cover etc) and I know I have a lot to learn about how to do that, especially the tech.

I've got another book finished that I'd love to submit to the critique match, but I can't seem to find a link for where to sign up for that. I've read the FAQ's on the Indie thread, but didn't see a link. Does anyone here know how I should go about this?

Thrilled to be back at SA!
Sandra Clarke
w/a SJ Clarke

Hi,
My name is Jillian and I have just joined the group today. I am in the final edits of my YA Fantasy novel that I co-wrote with my mom. Would love to make new friends and share feedback for sweetheart pitch/query/2 page synopsis for upcoming author mentor match.

Welp, I was bored this am and now we can post giphys!
choose "..." from the menu above
then choose "giphys" from the dropdown
Search for the giphy you want!

Every writer hopes to find one. They're gold-plated grammar ninjas. They can spot a plot hole from their desk a half a world away, and they have the common sense to give you the bad news gently. They're hard to find. They must have an understanding of the genre you write in. They should cringe when they sniff passive voice, and rejoice when they've read five pages of your manuscript and forgotten to edit because the book was just SO. DARN. GOOD.

We're launching the IndieCafe's latest new feature: Crit Partner Matching and offering this great service free of change to all Premium Members for SIX MONTHS!

How this works:

1. This Monday all Premium Members will receive an email with access to the Crit Partner Matching preferences panel to input your preferences. (Not a Premium Member? We can fix that!)
2. You will answer a few simple questions and indicate that you want to be matched!
3. On Sunday, or as soon as we get 30 people in the match pool, we'll run our match program with our specially designed match algorithm.

Every two weeks we'll run the match program and match you with a like-minded author!

Check out the full FAQ

Just an FYI, we rolled out a bunch of new features this past month or so. One is that you can now see all the reviews for our instructors. These are shown on each class that instructor teaches in a separate tab.

Let us know what you think!

I always figure that January is the most motivated I am going to be to meet my goals for the year. To try to leverage that, I spend a lot of time in January setting up my planner, reworking my calendar, and moving planning postets up and down my walls. What do you guys do to set your new year off right?

So I finished another book, The Taming of Delaney Fortune - A HQ Special Edition. Now I'm onto Cowboy Seal Homecoming. It starts off with three Navy Seals who are recovering from getting wounded - and they're going to heal while working on a ranch, and one of them falls in love. Can't get much better than that.

What is everyone else reading this week? I noticed a bunch of sci-fi readers...where are my romance readers at? Got any good cowboy romance recommendations?

We're planning a Feb pitchfest like we usually do. So often some of the folks who pitch do so without a completed mss. So I was thinking of a funny way to get the point across that you really have to be done with a book to pitch it. It's just not fair to agents and editors if your book is not done and not fair to you, as well.

So I made this, what do you think?