EIGHT SESSIONS
TO CHOOSE FROM
Six hours each
of in-depth teaching!
LIVE
AND
INTERACTIVE!
Continuing Sessions meet six times.
Thursday, Friday & Saturday
9:30-10:45 and 3:00-4:15
Choose one for the entire conference.
Dr. Peter Lundell
Author, Pastor, Teacher
www.PeterLundell.com
Peter is a writer, pastor, and teacher who helps people connect with God and live by God’s Word and Spirit. With life experience all over the world, he brings new perspectives to what most people overlook. He has authored numerous nonfiction and fiction books on Christian spirituality. Peter is also a collaborative writer and a developmental and substantive editor.
Authentic writing starts from within you—being honest with who you are, which sometimes means writing out of recovery from pain and ashes. Then you can effectively write change into the lives of your readers through your particular approach, genre, and unique voice. This continuing session will take you through this process and include participant exercises and presentations for feedback.
Amy Deardon
Author, Publisher
EBook Listing Services
www.AmyDeardon.com
Amy is an award-winning author, publisher, and budding online entrepreneur. She is eager to help writers take their words to the next level and guide them through the self-publishing minefield. In her life B.C. (before children) she was a Ph.D. scientist under a different name who did bench research. Now married, she lives with her husband and two children near Washington D.C.
Are you considering indie publishing your book? Do you want to keep costs low and quality high? Then this course is for you! This hands-on continuing session will walk you through the indie publishing process:
Patricia Durgin
Founder
Marketers On A Mission
Amazon sold its first book back in 1995. That was the year Patricia Durgin began studying online marketing. Since then, she’s invested thousands of dollars to learn from leaders in the field, and countless hours adapting those principles for Christian writers and speakers.
Online marketing is a confusing tangle of technology and messaging. Patricia helps Christian communicators cut a straight path, so they can escape the maze and fulfill their calling, which is to reach more people for Christ.
Patricia delivered 505 60-minute programs as the host of Marketers On A Mission, a program for Christian writers and speakers, until Christ placed it on indefinite hiatus. She continues to serve 1) as the Admin of the private Facebook group Marketers On A Mission ENGAGE; 2) as a faculty member at many Christian writers and speakers conferences across the country; 3) through The Encourager, a weekly devotion, and; 4) via private coaching sessions.
Patricia and her husband live near Atlanta. Their two daughters are children’s pastors and their two sons-in-law are youth pastors. Their four grandchildren are a delight, and their two pups, Lucy and Linus, rule the roost at home.
I believe that every Christian communicator has a God-given audience and a God-ordained message, drawn from our relationship with Him. Every book, article, presentation, blog post, social media post, and email should have one goal: to serve our audience exclusively. (God will see that others in need are served by other Christian communicators.)
In this continuing session, we’ll focus first on identifying your audience, then move to the four basic marketing elements and how they all work together to build your platform: your 1) Website, 2) Lead Magnet, 3) Blogging & Social Media, and 4) Email . . . all designed to serve your audience through content focused on their needs.
We cannot grow our audience effectively without these four elements in place. Leave one out and our marketing will be lopsided. Join us to build the strong foundation you’ll need for an effective, long-lasting platform, wherever God may lead you in the future.
Who Does God Want You to Serve? / Why & How to Create (Blog & Social Media) Content for Only Those People
In His kindness, God calls us to serve a specific group of people (vs the 7+ billion in the world). We’ll begin by helping you identify that group. Every subsequent class focuses on those people alone. Then we’ll create content ideas for your blog and social media, merging your message with the needs of (say it with me) only that group. You’ll never wonder what to write about (or share) again!
Serve via Your Website: The 2 Most Important Pages / Newsletters are Good; Lead Magnets are Better (in 2 parts)
Ideally, your website makes your audience think, “This is where I belong!” We’ll review your website’s Home and About pages, to see if the core elements are included, and if they’re positioned for maximum results. Then we’ll turn to creating a “Lead Magnet,” a sliver of valuable information so intriguing visitors are compelled to “sign up” for it, thus growing your email list (one of the main avenues to serve your audience).
Serve via Your Email Messages: How Email Works / Use It to Build Relationships with Your Audience (in 2 parts)
Few harness the power of email. The tech can be frustrating, so we’ll review how the various parts fit together. But why bother with email, anyway? It allows us to develop long-lasting relationships with our audience members, serving them regularly, and then periodically inviting them to purchase our books, products, or services. Imagine hundreds (or thousands?) of readers eager to buy or share your latest “thing,” supporting you the way you’ve supported them for years. Wowzer! This is what email can do.
Serve via a FB Live Program or Live Webinar: You Don’t Have to be Published to Serve Your Audience NOW!
Our enemy suggests we should wait until our book is published before we actively serve our audience. That could take years! Instead, serve your audience now and be pleased to discover that you’re actively building your platform, too. In this last session, learn how to create and host a FB Live program or a live webinar suited for you, your audience, and your message. Checklists included.
Now your core marketing elements are in place, as is your platform’s infrastructure. Grow (and serve) from here!
Susan Baganz
Acquisitions Editor
Pelican Book Group
(White Rose Publishing, Harborlight Books, Watershed Books,
Pure Amore, and Prism Book Group)
Author
www.susanbaganz.com
Susan is living her own happily-ever-after with her husband Benjamin. She chases after two Hobbits and is a native of Wisconsin. Susan writes adventurous historical and contemporary romances with a biblical world-view.
Susan speaks, teaches, and encourages others to follow God in being all He has created them to be. With her seminary degree in counseling psychology, a background in the field of mental health, and years serving in church ministry, she understands the complexities and pain of life as well as its craziness. Her favorite pastimes are lazy . . . spending time with her husband, snuggling with her dog while reading a good book, or sitting with a friend chatting over a cup of spiced chai latte.
Part I: Before You Write - What do you need to know before you start your story? I'll share things I learned that I didn't know when I started writing to help you make that first draft the best possible! We'll talk about essentials for success, genre, word count, point-of-view, tense, pansting vs plotting, story structure/plot, developing characters, backstory, inciting incidents, and more!
Part II: As You Write - When you sit down to write, what are some things you need to consider as you work your way through your story? Topics we'll discuss include: writer's block, dialogue, show vs tell, strong verbs, starts and finishes to chapters, and more!
Part III: After You Write - That first draft is finished, but it's a mistake to think it's ready to be published. The hard work has just begun! But if you do it well, you'll have a marketable manuscript. How do you edit and revise weasel words, overused words, and adverbs? You’ll discover the value of making mistakes.
5 – Developing Your Nonfiction Book Unable to come – Please consider taking Continuing Session 1 or 7. Both of these will enrich your knowledge and skill in terms of writing nonfiction.
Bill Watkins
Author, Editor
President, Literary Solutions
Bill is the founder and president of Literary Solutions. A long-time writer, editor, mentor, consultant, teacher, and speaker, Bill is the award-winning author of seven books, twenty-six study guides, and hundreds of other pieces of writing. He has worked with such authors as Mike Huckabee, William Bennett, Charles R. Swindoll, Peter Kreeft, Leslie Vernick, Sherrie Campbell, Dallas Willard, and Jay Sekulow. Bill’s books have been endorsed by such notables as J. I. Packer, Jerry Bridges, Robert L. Saucy, Norman L. Geisler, and J. P. Moreland.
To write an effective and compelling nonfiction book, you need to answer six questions before you start writing. Your answers will become your guide through the writing process, helping you to maintain your focus as you craft your message in words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. We’ll explore each of the six questions, explain why they matter, and illustrate different ways to answer them so you can apply them to your own nonfiction writing projects.
6 – Reach the World with Your Message
Linda Evans Shepherd
Speaker, Author
www.sheppro.com
Linda is a nationally-known Christian speaker and an award-winning, best-selling author of over 35 books. Her online and speaking ministries have seen well over 350,000 people come to Christ. Linda is also president of a large Christian ministry, Right to the Heart. She ministers to the top 500 Christian women authors and speakers in the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association (AWSA) that she founded and directs and their Arise Esther Movement. Linda is also the publisher of Leading Hearts magazine and Arise DAILY e-devotionals.
If you want to answer God’s call to share your message, life story, or ministry topic, Linda will show you her insider tips to help you identify your message, build your brand, then find the best ways to share it. She will give you the scoop about book writing, articles, speaking, publishing, interviewing, social media, and if you need to create a non-profit ministry. She’ll also share the secrets she’s discovered as an author, book and magazine publisher, conference organizer, screenwriter, TV host, social media influencer, a nd non-profit head. Consider new ideas, and discover how to take the next step in becoming an influencer.
7 – Growing Your Craft to Increase Your Impact (fiction & nonfiction)
Tim Riter
Author
Website / Blog Unconventional at timriter.com
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/timriter
Tim has a passion to help others not only know God, but to weave Him into the everyday fabric of their lives. He spent over 20 years doing that as a lead, associate, and youth pastor, and extended that with over 25 years writing professionally with 10 Christian living books that have sold over 100,000 copies and have been translated into 8 languages.
Blend in serving as a college professor and high school teacher in composition and communication with being an inveterate motorcycle rider and trout fisherman, and you gain someone who can connect to a variety of people in all stages of life.
Tim has had 10 television interviews, ranging from The 700 Club to local television, and over 100 radio interviews, and has spoken to hundreds of groups and churches. His blog, Unconventional at timriter.com, explores fresh ways to follow the old faith.
We write for therapy for ourselves or impact on others. With the latter, we best do that by writing well, by developing our writing craft. This continuing session will explore dimensions of excellent writing, including principles of persuasion coupled with practical exercises. We’ll then add some basic rules of writing and how we can intentionally break them for a greater impact using rhetorical strategies with exercises. We’ll conclude with two sessions that can make our writing sing, as we cover four difficult but necessary marks of excellent writing: how to read our audience, how to increase the clarity of our writing, how to make it powerful and figurative.
8 – How to Build a Book Promotional Power Pack
Scoti Domeij
Publisher, Blackside Publishing
Director, Springs Writers
Author
Scoti has held various responsibilities with 10 traditional publishers including author; editor; senior research assistant; copywriter; marketing director; and production, art, and design coordinator. As Director of Springs Writers, which offers monthly conference-quality workshops and bi-annual writing boot camps, Scoti’s passion is to help writers hone their skills, pursue their passion, publish, and effectively market the story God embedded in their hearts.
She has published over 400 articles in such diverse periodicals as The New York Times, Southwest Art, School Daze, Sam Journal, Contemporary Christian Music, Focus on the Family magazine and other parenting magazines. She contributed to Violence of Action: The Untold Stories of the 75th Ranger Regiment in the War on Terror (Blackside Concepts), Love is a Verb and Heaven Touching Earth (Bethany House), Christmas Miracles (St. Martin’s Press), Extraordinary Answers to Prayer: In Times of Change (Guideposts), and The Mommy Diaries: Finding Yourself in the Daily Adventure (Revell). She authored Bible Heroes (Rainbow Publishers) and co-authored Wrong Way, Jonah (Harvest House Publishers) with Kay Arthur.
Scoti is the proud Gold Star mother of Army Ranger Sgt. First Class Kristoffer Domeij, KIA October 22, 2011, in Afghanistan on his 14th deployment, the most deployed soldier in American history to be killed in action. As a result of her loss, God opened the door for Scoti to become the Publisher for Blackside Publishing. In her role as an editor and a contributing writer for Havok Journal, an online Huff-post-style journal targeted to and written by military personnel and veterans, Scoti opens conversations on subjects-you’re-not-supposed-to-talk-about.
Many authors frantically try to create last-minute marketing materials after their book launches. Discover the marketing pieces you need to
Reality check: From your business card to your tag line to your bio to your one-sheet to blurbs to back cover copy to press releases to requests for endorsements, book reviews, interviews, or speaking engagements, to sell sheets for bookstores to writing tweets to communication with your book launch dream team to your media kit (whew!)—your book promotional power pack includes more than two-dozen marketing pieces. Surprise—developing your book promotional power package uses the same creative muscles that make writing fun, fulfilling, and enjoyable.
Give your book the attention it deserves. Scoti will cover how-to:
How I love the Colorado Christian Writers Conference. Though I've taught at the conference for well over a decade, I'm still one of its earnest students. Every year I take home loads of inspiration, encouragement, and instruction. If it weren't for what I've learned at CCWC, I would not be the author of over 35 books today. I hope to be involved for at least another decade because I've got more to learn—and write!
Linda Evans Shepherd
