Connecticut Authors & Publishers University - 2008 5th. Annual Writing Conference.

2007-12-19T09:50:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, May 10, 2008, The Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association will present its 5th annual Writer's Workshop CAPA-U at the Hartford Steam Boiler Building in Hartford, CT.

We are honored to announce this year's keynote speaker will be none other than Wally Lamb.

Wally Lamb’s first novel, She’s Come Undone (Simon and Schuster/Pocket, 1992), was a # 1 New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a featured title of Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb’s second novel, I Know This Much Is True (HarperCollins/
ReganBooks, 1998), was also a # 1 New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a featured title of Oprah’s Book Club. It was a Book of the Month Club main selection and the June 1999 featured selection of the Bertelsman Book Club, the national book club of Germany. Between them, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True have been translated into sixteen languages. Both are in development as major motion pictures.

The Conference features

Workshops in Fiction, Non-Fiction, Publishing, Marketing, one-on-one's with agents, marketers, editors and everything of interest to writers.

____________________________________________________

Fiction workshops

Carole B. Shmurak will talk on Writing Fiction.

Dr. Carole B. Shmurak is Professor Emeritus at Central Connecticut State University. She is the author of nine books, including Deadmistress, featuring professor/sleuth Susan Lombardi, and the second Lombardi mystery, Death by Committee, has recently been published. Under the pseudonym Carroll Thomas, she is the co-author of the Matty Trescott young adult novels, one of which (Ring Out Wild Bells) was nominated for the Agatha for best young adult mystery of 2001.

Terry Shaw will speak on Writing Fiction.

Terry Shaw’s debut novel was chosen as Grand Prize winner out of more than 2,600 entries in the First Chapters Writing Competition, which has been called the “American Idol for books.” A mystery set in coastal Maine, THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE was published by Touchstone Books, a division of Simon & Schuster in conjunction with Gather.com in September 2007. Shaw has worked as a journalist in several states, including stints as editor of the Times Record in Brunswick, Maine and the Niagara Gazette in Niagara Falls, N.Y. He’s overseen coverage of everything from corrupt labor unions to bank robbers dressed in drag.

Marie Bostwick will speak on Writing Fiction.

On the path to becoming a New York Times Best Selling novelist, Marie Bostwick worked in the bean fields of Oregon, sang and danced in musical productions, acted in TV commercials, taught religion to deaf children, ran an event-planning business, worked as the scheduler for a U.S. Senator and directed women’s ministries for a large church. But as diverse and enriching as these experiences were, it was a conversation with a stranger that pointed Marie toward her true calling. As her third book, ON WINGS OF THE MORNING, was going to press, Marie stopped to tell the story of a day in 1994. Then the mother to three active young sons, Marie went on a much-needed vacation to a resort with some girlfriends. While there, she decided to attend a writer’s workshop, “not from any desire to become a writer,” she said, “but as a way to avoid playing tennis with my friends. I’m hopelessly unathletic.” At the end of the week the instructor approached her, and thinking she was a professional writer, asked what she’d published. “I just laughed. I told him that I was a mom, and the only thing I wrote was grocery lists.” The instructor insisted that whether Marie knew it or not, she was a writer. Marie thanked him for the compliment, saying she wasn’t a writer, just someone who hadn’t fired her imaginary friends when she grew up. “Then he leaned toward me and said, ‘Well, what do you think writers are?’ That got my attention. I think I realized then that he was onto something, that my secret identity had finally been unmasked.”

_________________________________________________

Non-Fiction workshops

Uwe Stender will speak on Writing Non-Fiction.

Dr. Uwe Stender, has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Pittsburgh. He also studied at the University of California, Berkeley and the Universitaet Goettingen, Germany. He taught at both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh and has been widely published in scholarly journals and books. Uwe was a guest speaker at several major conferences. Our best know clients are former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan, whose first book What's Possible will be released by Meredith in May 2008, Simon and Schuster bestselling author and 2001 NAACP Image Award Recipient for Outstanding Literature in Fiction Omar Tyree whose first non-fiction project The Equation will be released by Wiley in the fall of 2008, and legendary NBA referee Bob Delaney, whose book Covert will be published by Union Square West/Sterling in February 2008.

Marilyn Allen talks on How to Write an Irresistible Non-Fiction Book Proposal

Marilyn Allen spent 25 years working in positions of increasing publishing responsibility culminating in Associate Publisher and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Harper Collins before striking out on her own seven years ago. Prior to that, she had directed sales and marketing teams for Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster, and Avon Books. She created many innovative marketing campaigns and managed a host of successful authors and brands through the years. She is an impassioned advocate for innovation in the marketing and selling of books and loves to work with writers who understand their audience and have smart marketing plans lined up. Marilyn and her partner are now representing more than 100 authors. She is most interested in nonfiction topics from experts in the areas of health, history, cooking, business, lifestyle and pop culture. She loves to be seduced by fresh ideas, great writing and smart marketing in almost every discipline.

Howard Manton Layton will talk on writing Memoir.

Born November 23, 1918, Bristol, England. Immigrated to the

USA

2/15/1955. Royal Air Force Navigator, Bomb-aimer, World War II. Sept. 3, 1939 through 1946. 1940-1944 Served in North Africa, with 203 and 223 fighter- bomber squadrons.1945-1946 Signals Officer, Eastern Fighter Sector, Fighter Command.

Professional Qualifications: Chartered Electrical Engineer (UK), Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (Brit). Former Vice Chairman of New England Branch of IEE. Inventor: Hold sixteen US and foreign patents. Co-author of eight other patents. 1958 Founded INTERLAB INC., manufacturer of hi-tech processing equipment for semiconductor and optical industries. Current leader in USA in cleaning and hard-coating technology and equipment for ophthalmic lens processing.

Airplane pilot with commercial license and instrument rating. Owned Piper high-performance airplane (Saratoga) for ten years and flew it for a total of 1,000 hours on sales missions for my business. Hold current medical certificate (Expires Sept. 2008).

Former professional actor in England, earned living at it for five years. Member, British Actor's Equity. Played before, and was presented to, Queen Mary. Made film for the military: ‘Technique of Instruction’. Spent two months made-up as Robert Taylor, and played a considerable portion of his role in ‘The Conspirator’ because scheduling crisis back in California, left Taylor with insufficient time for anything except close-ups, and for scenes with Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor’s voice was dubbed onto my footage. Graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Hobbies and other activities: Writing: Published technical articles in trade papers in England and USA. Work-out at the gym when business commitments permit.

Took course in California with Dan Poynter to learn a bit about publishing. To test the waters, wrote an experimental non-technical book ‘The Thirteen Club’ about the history of the manufacturing company I founded in 1958 (and still lead). Created my own publishing company (Three Spires Publishing). Produced the book in hard-cover with professionally created dust-jacket (Paul Perlow, NYC). Printed 2,000 copies. Sold them all myself (List price $24.95), through Ingram and New-England book-stores. Spent countless hours talking with patrons of WaldenBooks, Barnes & Noble and Borders, promoting my experimental book and learning which categories of readers would buy the books I would write in the future. Enlisted in writer's school at Fairfield University, CT. Learned how to be more entertaining and make readers more eager to turn the page. That priceless instruction gave me the courage and confidence to write ‘Love and Sand.’

Don Noel - Writing for the Op Ed page.

You won't get rich, but the

op-ed page of your newspaper can be an opportunity to be seen and heard, and to affect public thinking about issues that concern you. We'll talk about how to make your pitch and how to frame your opinion piece. Don Noel retired as op-ed columnist for the Hartford Courant in 1997, after a 39-year journalistic career. He worked his way up to become editorial page editor and then editor of the evening Hartford Times, and spent a decade as senior correspondent and political specialist for WFSB-TV3 before joining The Courant. His writing has won state, regional and national awards, and won him an Alicia Patterson Fellowship in Cambodia and Romania in 1966-67. His Jamaican memoir, Near A Far Sea, was published in 2006. Since retirement he has been a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, and currently serves as chair. His wife, Brad, after a career in the Hartford school system, is in her third term on the Hartford Board of Education. Their daughter Emily is a senior math teacher and coach at the Hartford Middle Magnet School.

Scott Gray will present a workshop on Sports Writing

Fifty nine years old. I have been a sportscaster for thirty six years, all in the Hartford market. The last twenty seven and a half years I have been at WTIC-AM. I began my career at WINF Radio in Manchester (Conn). In 1979 I moved to WPOP Radio in Newington as the sports director. At that time I was also hir ed by the Connecticut Radio Network to do the radio broadcasts for the UConn football and men's basketball teams. On January 3rd, 1981 I began my tenure as the sportscaster on the legendary Bob Steele morning show at WTIC. During my tenure at WTIC I also spent eight years doing college soccer games f or the New England Sports Network in Boston and two years as the S t. John's soccer play by play voice on Sports Channel New York. I also spent seven seasons on the radio play by play team for the UConn women's basketball team. Certainly one of my career highlights was doing play by play for the first UConn basketball national championship, when the women defeated Tennessee in the national championship game in Minneapolis in 1995. A six time National Sportscasters and Sportswriter s Association Connecticut Sportscaster of the Year.

Eric Kampmann will be talking on Publishing.

Eric Kampmann entered book publishing through an entry level sales position at Viking Press in 1970. He became Assistant Sales Manager there and then in 1974 moved on to St. Martin’s Press as Director of Sales. In 1977 Eric moved to Simon & Schuster as National Sales Manager where he focused his energy on building a sales organization that could deal with the significant sales growth at S & S. In 1980, he was promoted to the position of Vice President, Director of Sales. Eric has worked with independent publishers since 1981, first as the President of Kampmann & Company, then as one of the architects that engineered National Book Network’s growth in the early 1990’s. Eric is one of the three original founders of Midpoint which shipped its first title in February 1996. From the beginning Midpoint has focused its talent and energy on helping independent publishers build successful publishing programs in the trade marketplace. Midpoint has worked with several national bestsellers, but the sales people at Midpoint take special pride in working with backlist titles. Midpoint currently works with more than 250 independent publishers. Many of Midpoint’s largest publishers have worked with Midpoint for nine years or more. Eric is the author of The Book Publishers Handbook: The 7 Keys to Publishing Success to be published by Beaufort Books, Inc in May 2007. Eric has also taught book publishing courses at Harvard, Columbia, Hofstra and New York University. He has also served on panels at PMA University, SPAN, and other venues.

Gina Panettieri will talk on How to Work with an Agent.

Gina Panettieri is President and Executive Editor of Talcott Notch Literary Agency. She has worked as a writer, freelance editor and literary agent for over 20 years. She represents both fiction, with an emphasis on mystery, suspense and thrillers, and nonfiction, with a sp ecialization in prescriptive nonfiction, history, science, current events, business and finance. Some of her current titles include The Connected Child, the #1 adoption title in America, by Dr. Karyn Purvis, Dr. David Cross and Wendy Sunshine, The Darkest Night, a St. Martin's true crime title by Ron Franc ell, and Gina's own first full-length nonfiction The Single Mother's Guide to Raising Remarkable Boys, through Adams Media.

Peggy Gaffney will talk on Self Publishing.

Peggy Gaffney has been a teacher, librarian, writer, editor, dog breeder and handler and knitting designer. When she decided to begin writing knitting books that were unique to her world of pure bred dogs, she knew that she would want to publish them herself. Peggy had spent ten years creating a reputation in the US and abroad as an outstanding designer, so she had her platform established. She set up her Kanine Knits publishing and in three years has produced as many knitting books in her Crafty Dog Knits series. She chose to do one breed per book which makes them unique. At the same time she decided to extend this publishing, by developing a line of knitting brochures with individual designs for more than 100 breeds. She continues to produce these books and will share all the steps involved in publishing and marketing as a one person publishing house. She's also bringing out Do-It-Yourself, a how-to book for self-publishing authors.

Dennis Schleicher will tell How to C

reate a Buzz and Make Money Using Amazon.com.

Dennis J. Schleicher was launched into national prominence appearing on television talk shows including Larry King Live in 1990 at the age of 17 after being severely beaten by his classmates for being gay. In recent years, Mr. Schleicher was a regional sales manager, representing a multimillion dollar territory within the professional beauty industry with 400 plus sales reps reporting directly to him. He currently is the founder of the Author's Marketing Solutions where he works directly with published authors to increase their sales through Amazon.com. MySpace, and various Blogger websites. Over the past year since his debut at CAPA University 2007 Schleicher has developed more than a dozen blog websites for published authors and fortune 500 companies. He candidly admits he favors the authors as we often don't understand the marketing side to publishing. His work can be seen at

http://www.otherman.typepad.com/,

http://www.theotherman

support.blogspot.com/,

http://www.marketsellmorebooks.blogspot.com/,

http://www.oprahandfriends.blogspot.com/,

http://www.straightgaytalk.blogspot.com/,

http://www.airleafvictims.blogspot.com/,

this site receives 4000 hits a month due to his easy to follow (SEO). Using free sites like Blogger.com.

In July 2006, he published his explosives and controversial memoir Forbidden Love with a Married Man: E-mail Diaries, which has received national attention from dozens of television and radio shows around the country. Mr. Schleicher still struggles to complete his second book The Other Man, because all of his time is spent on educating and working with authors on the importance of blogging and utilizing the free power of (SEO). Those who attended Dennis’s workshop last year at CAPA University had feedback that he was a dynamic and charismatic lecturer.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted talks on Marketing.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted had three novels published with Red Dress Ink going into 2006, a year that saw the publication of four books by her from four different publishers: How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (RDI), Vertigo (Bantam), Angel's Choice (S&S) and This Is Chick-Lit, for which she was editor as well as contributor (BenBella). In 2008, Lauren will see at least five more books published: Scenes of My Suburban Life, a YA from S&S; Me, In Between, a tween from S&S; Baby Needs a New
Pair of Choos (her fifth RDI); and the first two volumes in The Sisters Eight, a series of books for young readers to be written with her husband Greg Logsted and their seven-year-old daughter Jackie (Houghton).

Before becoming a published author, Lauren was an independent bookseller, a PW reviewer, a freelance editor, a sort-of librarian and a window washer. She lives in Danbury, CT, with her family, where she writes and reads nearly all the time.

Sherry Shameer Cohen will talk on Marketing

Sherry Shameer Cohen has been freelancing as a journalist and photographer since 1990 and is a Special Sections Editor at The Advocate and Greenwich Time. Her works have also appeared in Greenwich Magazine, Stamford Plus, Connecticut Magazine, The Connecticut Jewish Ledger, The Jewish Press, The New Jewish Voice, The Jewish Chronicle (London), and various daytime magazines. Sherry is President of the Connecticut Press Club. She lives in Stamford with her husband, Ken, and their son, Alex.

Plus a Discussion Panel on Getting Your Book Noticed.
The panel will approach the topic from three directions Agent, Author, Publisher and talk about each one' s role, how they work separately and together. This is a chance to get all your questions answered by those who "walk the walk and talk the talk."

Our knowledgeable panelists are:

Kathi J. Paton, Agent - Kathi J. Paton Literary Agency

The Kathi J. Paton Literary Agency specializes in popular non-fiction and literary fiction. A gradua te of Middlebury College, Kathi Paton worked as an editor at Simon & Schu ster before opening the agency in 1987. We represent writers who are experts in their field with a platform to help promote their books. We are interested in the subjects of business, health, parenting, progressive pol itics, scien ce, the environment, humor and finance. We seek authors who are authorities and authors who question authority. We like non-fiction that is alarming, brilliant and unprec edented. We like fiction that is bizarre, romantic and analytic. Our books are available in over a dozen languages throughout the world.

Patricia Sheehy - Author

Patricia Sheehy is the author of three award winning bestsellers published by Oak Tree Press: Field of Destiny a novel - 2007, Veil of Illusion a novel - 2004, and Giving with Meaning a fiction/lifestyle book - 2007. Field of Destiny a nd Giving with Meaning rank as bestsellers in several categories on both Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com since being released in June 2 007. H er new novel, A Thousand Whispers, is scheduled for releas e in December 2008. Patricia hold a Master's Degree from Wesleyan University and for over 20 years has worked as a freelance and business writer/pr marketing consultant, developing promotional pieces for corporate and non-profit clients. Her magazine articles and essays have appeared in local and national publications. She has been a workshop facilitator and public speaker for groups across the country.

Patricia is a Connecticut native who was born and raised in Hartford and now lives in Wethersfield. She is an adjunct Instructor at Northwestern Connecticut Community College teaching an online college course in Effective Written Communications.

Joseph Keeney - Vested Publishing

My wife Carol started to write The Brand New Teacher in 2004 for early grade teachers. Although we hadtwo offers to publish the book, the timing was all wrong. The publishers wanted a manuscript immediately and Carol had only completed three chapters, so the offers went the way of the wind. I bought Dan Poynter’s book, The Self Publishing manual and read it from end to end, and I decided I could do this. I published her book in 2006, myself. It is distributed nationwide and we get checks, on the average, each month. Since that time, I have attended PMA-U to learn more about marketing and publishing. Today I own Vested Publishing and I am currently working on three books for clients. My greatest lesson while publishing her book, is that you don’t have to know-it-all just take things one step at a time.

_________ ______________________________________________

There will be opportunities to meet one-on-one with

agents, marketers and editors.

Gina Panettieri, Agent - Talcott Notch Literary Agency (see bio. above)

Uwe Stender,Agent - TriadaUS Literary Agency (see bio. above)

Kathi J. Paton, Agent - Kathi J. Paton Literary Agency (see bio. above)

Marilyn Allen, Agent - Diforio Literary Agency (see bio. above)

Victoria Skurnick, Agent – Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, Inc.

We represent people, not just individual projects; more than selling books, we work as our clients’ creative and business partners throughout the entire publishing process. Our goal is to lend our skills at editorial development and marketing tothe creation and successful publication of important, useful and entertaining works in a variety of media—books, magazines, film, audio, video and electronic formats.

Todd Shuster, Agent — Zachary Shuster Agency.

Todd Shusteris a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. Following college at Yale (where he graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and law school at Northeastern University (where he subsequently taught on the adjunct faculty), Shuster practiced publishing and entertainment law at the Boston law firms of Palmer & Dodge and Ropes & Gray.As a literary agent, Shuster represents both fiction and nonfiction. His nonfiction list includes biography, true-crime, popular science,adventure, politics and civil rights, history, memoir, business, health, and psychology. His fiction list is comprised primarily of literary and "crossover" commercial novels. In addition to representing books to publishers, Shuster places film and television rights on behalf of agency clients, dealing directly with producers, studios, and networks in New York and Los Angeles. He has recently helped set up projects at Paramount, Universal, Sony, Warner Brothers, Participant, CBS, MagRack, LIME, Discovery Health, and VH-1.

Book project Shuster has recently represented include the New York Times bestseller Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter by James Hirsch (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Fairure of Homeland Security by Wall Street Journal reporters Christopher Cooper and Robert Block (Times Books, 2006); CI:Team Red and the continuing Army Counterintelligence fiction series (Warner Books, 2005) by former CI agent David DeBatto and Pete Nelson; The Last Good Time, a nonfiction narrative from Vogue's Jonathan Van Meter (Crown, 2002); best-seller Real Boys: Rescuing our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack, Ph.D., professor at Harvard Medical School (Random House, 1999); It! by New York Post Page Six reporter Paula Froelich (Miramax Books, 2005); The Spy Next Door, a non-fiction narrative about FBI mole Robert S. Hanssen by TIME correspondents Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman (Little Brown, 2002); Pull Me Up, an acclaimed memoir by Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times columnist Dan Barry, and Eating, Drinking, Overthinking by Yale psychology professor and best-selling author Susan Noen-Hoeksema.

In addition to working with authors to sell their own manuscripts, Shuster represents numerous journalists, collaborative editors and ghost writers. These clients have helped scores of major celebrities and national figures complete their books, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Poitier, Ginger Rogers, Maureen Stapleton, real estate guru Barbara Corcoran, supermodel Petra Nemcova and many others.

Finally Shuster has recently returned to his work producing and executive producing independent feature and television projects. His credits include The Inheritance, a 2-hour movie produced for CBS based on Louisa May Alcott's first novel (1997, Associate Producer); and Six Ways to Sunday, and independent film produced by Scout Productions of Queer Eye fame (1997, Co-Executive Producer) starring Deborah Harry and Oscar award winner Adrien Brody. Shuster is currently in pre-production on an untitled feature-length documemtary exploring a highly controversial area of the criminal justice system for Showtime (2006, Producer).

Jill Grosjean, Agent - Jill Grosjean Literary Agency

Jill Grosjean has been a literary agent for the past thirteen years, the last eight as the head of her own agency. Prior to becoming an agent, Jill managed an influential independent bookstore for many years. She also worked at one of the top New York advertising agencies and in publishing. Jill's interests are in literary fiction, women's fiction, both historical and contemporary, and in mysteries.







Kerry Smith, Agent - Talcott Notch Literary Agency.  Kerry Smith is new to Talcott Notch
Literary Agency. She's a former editor at Adams, author of a book on indie  rock history
and a former stringer for Rolling Stone.

Rachel Dowen, Agent - Talcott Notch Literary Agency

Rachel Dowen has been an Associate Agent with Talcott Notch Literary for the last year. She specializes in children's fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery and some non-fiction, including career, business and children's non-fiction. Her most recent title is Courage in Patience, a young adult novel by Beth Felhbaum sold by Kunani.

Roberta J. Buland, editor

Roberta J. Buland is a general fiction and non-fiction editor of a variety of diverse subjects including psychology, business, self-help, history, poetry, mystery, romance, horror and most other genres, Roberta has worked for Reader's Digest, W. W. Wilson and other large and smaller publishing firms for over 20 years in New York, Connecticut, North Carolina, Florida and abroad. Ten years a go, she founded Right Words Unlimited, a full-service editorial and publishing firm located in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Beth Bruno, Editor

Beth Bruno, Ed.M., M.A., in the literary biz since 1995 as a columnist, features writer and author, now works almost exclusively as a book editor. Over 100 authors of fiction and nonfiction have collaborated with Beth to improve their manuscripts before seeking publication. "My goal is to enhance each writer's voice to fully engage the reader."

Rita M. Reali, Editor

Rita M. Reali is a copywriter, proofread

er and editor of general fiction and non-fiction. She has worked as a newspaper writer and editor for local publications, including Imprint Newspapers and The Catholic Transcript; and has provided copywriting, editing, search-engine optimization and proofreading services for advertising agencies, Web-development companies and private clients from Connecticut to California. In 2000, Rita started her own proofreading and editorial service, The Persnickety Proofreader.

Dina Rubin, Editor

Dina Rubin, B.A. has worked in publishing for 20 years, most recently at Scholastic, Inc. in children's non-fiction and fiction for the school and library markets. She has also been a project/production editor for medical and academic publishing companies. Currently, she is a full-time editor, proofreader, and copyeditor.

Eric Kampmann Marketer - Midpoint - See biography above

Brian Jud - Marketer Book Marketing Works, LLC

Author of Beyond the Bookstore (a
Publishers Weekly book) and  The
Marketing Planning CD-ROM
describing new ways to sell 
more books profitably to special-sales
buyers. He is also the author of the new series
of printed booklets published by R. R. Bowker
with Proven Tips for Publishing Success. Brian
is editor of the Book Marketing Matters 
special-sales newsletter, and creator of the Special-Sales Profit Center
used by R. R. Bowker to sell other publishers’ books to special markets.

Connecticut Authors & Publishers University - 2008

CAPA-U is a Success

Connecticut Authors & Publishers University - 2008 5th. Annual Writing Conference.