Longview Literary Festival

This Friday, I will be attending the Longview Literary Festival at Metropolitan Community College in Lee’s Summit, MO. It’s a one-day event, and I’ll be speaking on a couple of panels for “Combining History and Fiction” and “Writing in Multiple Genres.” There will also be panels and workshops on self-publishing, character creation, working with small presses, working with an editor, and many more.  All and all, it’s a pretty jam-packed day. The keynote speakers this year are science fiction writer Bryan Thomas Schmidt and romance author Claire Ashgrove. I will have copies of All Manner of Dark Things for sale, as well as the anthologies Faed and Rejected.

It all starts at 10 am on October 23rd at the Cultural Arts Center on the Metropolitan Community College-Longview campus, 500 S.W. Longview Rd., Lee’s Summit, MO.

I really enjoyed the festival last year. Many of the attendees are students at the college. They have a great outlook on the business and art of writing. It’s also free, so the price is right.

Speaking of students, I received a bunch of thank you cards from the writer’s group at Sumner High School in Kansas City, Kansas. I spoke to their class and had a fantastic time talking to the kids. Their enthusiasm was inspiring, and I would love to go back to do more of a technical workshop and write something with the group. Talking to people about writing always energizes me. Things like Longview and the Young Writers of KC always raise my desire to keep writing to another level.

There are a lot of writers that I only see at things like this. I look forward to seeing a bunch of people that I haven’t seen since ConQuest. I hope to see the rest of you there, as well.