Keeping Your Voice While Honoring Reader Expectations.

Whether you write mystery, romance, fantasy, memoir, historical fiction, or nonfiction, every genre asks you to make a promise to your readers. Discover how writing across genres isn’t about changing who you are as a writer—it’s about mastering the art of telling compelling stories and communicating ideas in different literary forms, all while delivering on the promises your readers eagerly anticipate.

Emotion Tells the Story.

Readers want to feel something, and stories that make them feel will resonate and keep them coming back for more. What helps writers convey the emotions of their characters? Why is emotion so important in consideration of plot and the tension that drives it? Let’s dig deep on how to get across the emotions of your story and pull those readers into feeling it.

There are many types of critique groups. How do you find the right one? What if you can’t find one in your area? Learn the pros and cons of critique groups, how to find or start a good one, and how to survive the process.

Tierney James is the author of 25 books and decided to become a full-time writer after working in education for over thirty years. Besides serving as a Solar System Ambassador for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and attending Space Camp for Educators, Tierney served as a Geo-teacher for National Geographic. Her love of travel and cultures took her on adventures throughout Africa, Asia and Europe. From the Great Wall of China to floating the Okavango Delta of Botswana, Africa, Tierney weaves her unique experiences into the adventures she loves to write. Living on a Native American reservation and in a mining town, fuels the characters in the Enigma, Dark Side, and now the Strong Independent Women books. She has now introduced another set of heroes in the Whispers of Angels series.
Besides speaking at conferences Tierney helps beginning writers in their quest to becoming a published author through her workshops and classes.
Tierney has been an Amazon #1 Best Selling author and won awards at the Annual Ozark Creative Writer’s Conference as well as the Sleuths’ Ink Mystery Writers, and Between the Pages Writer Conference.

Author Lori Ericson grew up in a graveyard. Her family home was also the cemetery office complete with sample headstones in the front yard. One of her first jobs was plucking dead flowers from Styrofoam blocks and selling them back to the florist for nickels and dimes.
Retired to full-time writing, Ericson’s career included everything from a part-time gig during college running the crotch machine at a local pantyhose factory to briefly managing the cemetery after a family illness. After two decades as a newspaper reporter, she “went to the dark side,” so they say in journalism, and spent sixteen years in local government as a city planner.
Ericson isn’t sure which of her diverse career moves helped shape the motley mess of stories that spill out of her brain.
Ericson lives in northwest Arkansas with her biggest supporter and husband, Lloyd. They stay busy adoring their grandchildren and serving two rescue dogs, Dexter and Ruby.