July 23, 2011
8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
The Clarion Hotel Conference Center, 3333 S. Glenstone Ave., Springfield, Missouri
Tickets are $50 in advance for members ($55 at the door) and $60 for non-members ($65 at the door) payable via PayPal.
– Registration and Breakfast
– Opening remarks and intros
– Shannon Vannatter – Cut the Fluff: The Art of Revision and Self-editing
– Shannon Butcher and Eliza Lloyd – Suspense Plotting and Making it Hot
– Leigh Michaels – Things that Stump the Best of Us (Pacing, Backstory, and Transitions)
-– Lunch (catered lunch provided on-site)
– Panel Discussion with Editors and Agents – The Best and Worst We’ve Seen (What to do and what to avoid in the path to publication)
– Break for small group discussions
– Break-out Session #1
- Shannon Vannatter – Crafting Effective (and Gender Appropriate) Dialogue
- Editors and Agents – Future Directions in Publishing
– Break-out Session #2
- Shannon Butcher & Eliza Lloyd – Crafting Heroes to Die For
- Leigh Michaels – Playing Fair: When Characters Keep Secrets
– Break
– Full Panel Q &A
Awards — Presented for Weta Nichols Writing Contest
Closing remarks and Adjourn
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Shannon Vannatter
Central Arkansas author, Shannon Taylor Vannatter is a stay-at-home mom/pastor’s wife/writer. She recently signed a three-book contract for her contemporary inspirational romance series set in Romance and Rose Bud, Arkansas.
Heartsong titles ship to a 10,000 member book club before releasing in stores. Vannatter*s titles: White Roses, White Doves, and White Pearls will be available through the book club and preorder in May 2010, October 2010, and January 2011 respectively and in stores six months later for each title.
It took Vannatter nine years to get published in the traditional market. Like Janette Oke, she views her work as a ministry and her books as paper missionaries. Vannatter hopes to entertain Christian women and plant seeds in the non-believer’s heart as her characters struggle with real-life issues. Their journeys, from ordinary lives to extraordinary romance through Christ-centered relationships, demonstrate that love doesn’t conquer all, Jesus does.
Her short stories appeared in Mature Living and The Writers’ Journal, in 2009. Her first novel was Print On Demand published in 2001. She’s received several awards including 2nd place in RWA’s 2007 Touched By Love and 2008 Where the Magic Begins Contests, and a Honorable Mention in The 2007 Writer’s Journal Romance Contest. Her works have been displayed at Springfest’s Annual Artist & Author Exhibit.
Vannatter has taught fiction workshops for several writers’ groups including: Arkansas Inspirational Writers, Cleburne County Writers’ Guild, Fiction Writers of Central Arkansas, and White County Creative Writers. She’s contracted to teach workshops in 2010 at the Life Press Christian Writers’ Conference in Memphis, TN and the Ozark Creative Writers’ Conference in Eureka Springs, AR.
Vannatter is available for writers’ groups, workshops, conferences, schools, colleges, churches, book clubs, media appearances, print interviews, speaking engagements, and book signings.

Shannon Butcher
A lot of authors knew they wanted to write books from the time they were little. Their heads were full of fanciful stories that they yearned to commit to paper with a passion that only grew as they did. They spent hours reading fiction, voraciously absorbing every kind of story they could get their hands on.
I’m not one of them.
When I was little, I wanted to be a daddy. When I learned the anatomical improbability of that happening, I decided instead to become what my dad was: an Industrial Engineer. So that’s what I did. I never once changed majors or veered from my path. After I graduated, I went to work for a big telecom company earning a steady paycheck while my husband pursued his dream to become a published author.
For those of you who might not know, my husband is Jim Butcher, fantasy and sci-fi author extraordinaire. I learned to write in an effort to help him improve his own work and as soon as I discovered that writing was more a learned skill than a natural talent I knew I had to give it a try. I couldn’t resist the challenge of taking the pieces of a story apart and putting them back together again. It’s the kind of puzzle that made me want to be an engineer to begin with – to learn how things work and why. I thought I’d write the same kind of thing Jim did, but then I picked up my first romance in 1998 and was hooked. Somehow, stories about how two people come to love each other made everything else seem shallow in comparison. Maybe it was just my hormones talking, but whatever it was, it was loud, so I listened and I started writing romances. I wrote great heaping piles of suckfulness – like most new writers – but eventually my work sucked less and hopefully that trend will continue as I learn more. Heaven knows I have a great teacher. Thanks, Jim.
A family of geeks to the core, we live in Independence, Missouri with our teenage son and a dog who is only one four-foot stick away from being a dust mop
Leigh Michaels
Leigh Michaels is the author of nearly 100 books, including 80 contemporary novels, three historical romance novels, and more than a dozen non-fiction books. More than 35 million copies of her romance novels have been published. Six of her books have been finalists for Best Traditional Romance novel in the RITA contest sponsored by Romance Writers of America. She has received two Reviewer’s Choice awards from Romantic Times.
Her work has been translated and published in 120 countries in more than 25 languages, including Japanese, Korean, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Africaans, Arabic, Indonesian, and Chinese.
She is the 2003 recipient of the Johnson Brigham Award presented by the Iowa Library Association to an Iowa author for outstanding contributions to literature.
She is the author of On Writing Romance, published by Writers Digest Books.
She is the author of non-fiction books such as WRITING THE ROMANCE NOVEL, a step-by-step workbook, and CREATING ROMANTIC CHARACTERS. She is also the author of DEAR LEIGH MICHAELS: A Novelist Answers the Most-Asked Questions about Getting Published, and a cookbook, A TASTE OF LOVE. She has produced audio programs and written magazine articles on subjects of interest to writers in general.
She teaches romance writing on the Internet at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Men and women from around the world have participated in her workshops, and a number of them have gone on to publish their own romance novels with commercial publishers. She is currently an adjunct professor in the School of Communications at the University of Iowa.
She wrote her first romance novel when she was a teenager and burned it, then wrote and burned five more complete manuscripts before submitting to a publisher. Her first submission was accepted and published by Harlequin Books, the first publisher to look at it.
Eliza Lloyd
Visit http://www.ozarksromanceauthors.com for more information and details on registering.