August 2026 Meeting

August meeting: Critique session–If you would like to participate, please provide a chapter or excerpt of your work. Here’s an outline–

Title:
Genre:
Stage:
Part of a Series:
Themes:

Bring an excerpt and questions you have about your current or future writing projects and members can critique and offer each other help with writing projects.

If you can, bring school supplies to donate.

Coming in the next months…

September 5, 2026

Guest Speaker Layne Goode (Mississippi Licensed Certified Social Worker), will speak about Mental Health. In person

October 3, 2026

Guest Speaker Sarah Stillwell will discuss World-building focused (what goes into creating an unfamiliar setting and making it familiar). In person.

November 2026–NO MEETING (Writers retreat for members)

December 5, 2026

Guest Speaker Michael Buzzelli will speak with our group about humor tips and about his holiday romance, All I Want for Christmas. His article, ‘How to Charm Your Readers with Humor Tips on Writing RomComs’ was featured on the RWA website. He will present his topic in person.

June 2026 Meeting

June’s speaker will be Jodie Cain Smith. She is the founder of the Mobile Literary Festival, which is a big event every year at the Mobile downtown library and she is the event planner for the Haunted Book Shop. To be presented through Zoom.

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Heads up: There will not be a meeting in July. Because it’s July the 4th. Happy 250 years to the USA.

October 2024 Program & Presentation

Presentation:

Maria Grace, six time BRAG Medallion Honoree, #1 Best-selling Historical Fantasy author Maria Grace has her PhD in Educational Psychology and is a 16-year veteran of the university classroom where she taught courses in human growth and development, learning, test development and counseling. https://austenvariations.com/maria-grace/ (Per her website)

Capture Your Reader in Your World

Readers read for escape and to feel. The means of escape and the feelings they desire depend on the genre, but in the end, readers want the same thing: An immersive world and characters to lose themselves in.

As we concentrate on characters and plot, it can be easy to short change the setting. But when that happens, the real world too easily distracts readers from the story world. Creating immersive, atmospheric settings is a first step to creating a world that the reader doesn’t want to leave.

In this workshop we will cover how to develop engrossing worlds through the use of POV, narrative distance, research (and how not to get lost in that rabbit hole!), sensory details, and the creation of deliberate memory tags for readers.