Featuring Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC
December 7, 2018 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Bethlehem Writers Group, BWG, Short Stories, Short Story Award, Writing Groups
For December We’re Featuring Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC
The Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC (BWG), founded in 2006, is a community of mutually supportive, fiction and nonfiction authors based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The members are as different from each other as their stories, spanning a range of genres including: children’s, fantasy, humor, inspiration, literary, memoir, mystery, paranormal, romance, science fiction, women’s fiction, and young adult.
BWG has published five anthologies. Each anthology has an overall theme—broadly interpreted—but includes a variety of genres, and all but the first anthology include stories from the winner(s) of The Bethlehem Writers Short Story Award.
Their latest anthology, Untethered, a collection of 27 paranormal tales, was released October 14th.
UNTETHERED: SWEET, FUNNY, & STRANGE TALES OF THE PARANORMAL.
About Untethered
Stoke the campfire and get ready for some chills and goosebumps when you open this paranormal addition to the award-winning Bethlehem Writers Group’s “Sweet, Funny, and Strange” anthologies. Among our twenty-seven stories, we bring you Jeff Baird’s “Bailey’s Mountain” which shows a romp with man’s best friend through Mother Nature morph into a visit to the supernatural. Dianna Sinovic’s “Point of View” describes a mysterious shifting painting and its sinister effects on its new owner. Jodi Bogert brings us “Old Man Omar,” and shows us that sometimes those we consider crazy might just know some things we don’t. In DT Krippene’s “Hell of a Deal,” a man buys a house for a price that’s too good to be true—until he discovers the bizarre strings attached. Kidd Wadsworth’s “The Beast” brings a ghost story to life—but can her characters escape with theirs?
In addition, we have new stories of the unexplained from favorite authors Courtney Annicchiarico, Walter Bego, A. E. Decker, Marianne H. Donley, Headley Hauser, Ralph Hieb, Jerome W. McFadden, Stanley W. McFarland, Emily P. W. Murphy, Christopher D. Ochs, Paul Weidknecht, and Carol L. Wright. Also included are the winning stories from the 2017 and 2018 Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award by Suzanne Purvis and Christine Eskilson respectively.
So sit back to enjoy a drift through the paranormal—but don’t let the fire go out!
Next up for BWG
BWG is currently working on their sixth anthology, Fur, Feathers, & Scales: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Animal Tales.
In connection with this anthology, they are hosting The Bethlehem Writers 2019 Short Story Award. The 2019 Short Story Award will open on January 1, 2019 the theme will be Animal Stories,broadly interpreted. Stories of 2,000 words or fewer about WILD ANIMALS, PETS, or IMAGINARY BEASTS will be welcome (so long as an animal is an important character or element of the story). The winner will receive $200 and may be offered publication in the above mentioned upcoming anthology. The 2019 guest judge will be John Grogan, best-selling author of Marley & Me.
In addition to anthologies and yearly writing contests, the group publishes a quarterly literary journal, The Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, and hosts twice monthly writing workshops and a critique groups for local members. You can see the schedule of BWG meetings and events, including author signings here.
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Featured Authors of the Month: Bethlehem Writers Group
December 1, 2018 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Bethlehem Writers Group, BWG, Featured Author of the Month
Featuring Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC
The Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC (BWG), founded in 2006, is a community of mutually supportive, fiction and nonfiction authors based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The members are as different from each other as their stories, spanning a range of genres including: children’s, fantasy, humor, inspiration, literary, memoir, mystery, paranormal, romance, science fiction, women’s fiction, and young adult.
BWG has published five anthologies. Each anthology has an overall theme—broadly interpreted—but includes a variety of genres, and all but the first anthology include stories from the winner(s) of The Bethlehem Writers Short Story Award. Their first anthology, A Christmas Sampler: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales (2009), won two Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Best Anthology and Best Short Fiction.
Besides anthologies and yearly writing contests, the group publishes a quarterly literary journal, The Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, and hosts twice monthly writing workshops and a critique groups for local members. You can see the schedule of BWG meetings and events, including author signings here.
About A Christmas Sampler
Christmas is a time for love, laughter, and wonder. A Christmas Sampler: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales, is an award-winning compilation of twenty-three Christmas stories commissioned by the Bethlehem Writers Group to capture all of Christmas’s myriad possibilities.
Paul Weidknecht’s “Those Things Remembered” is about a long-time mall Santa who realizes he has forgotten a child’s name. Courtney Annicchiarico believes against all evidence that she is pregnant in “Mis-conceptions.” Hilarity reigns in Headley Hauser’s explanation of a bachelor’s Christmas traditions in “A Modern Single Holiday.” In Carol L. Wright’s “You Better Watch Out” a small-town lawyer takes on a mystery when Santa falls from her roof three weeks before Christmas. In “Walter and Stella,” by Ralph Hieb, Walter finds himself dead on Christmas Eve, but refuses to leave his beloved alone for the holiday. And in “The Perfect Gift,” Emily P. W. Murphy explores that moment in a relationship when one partner is ready for marriage, and the other seems not to notice.
This premier anthology also features stories by Jeff Baird, Carol A. Hanzl Birkas, Cindy Kelly, Jerome W. McFadden, Stanley W. McFarland, Sally Wyman Paradysz, Jo Ann Schaffer, and Will Wright.
These heartwarming, hope-filled, and hilarious tales will delight readers of any age.
Next up for BWG
BWG is working on their sixth anthology, Fur, Feathers, & Scales: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Animal Tales.
In connection with this anthology, they are hosting The Bethlehem Writers 2019 Short Story Award. The 2019 Short Story Award will open on January 1, 2019. The theme will be Animal Stories,broadly interpreted. Stories of 2,000 words or fewer about WILD ANIMALS, PETS, or IMAGINARY BEASTS will be welcome (so long as an animal is an important character or element of the story). The winner will receive $200 and may be offered publication in the above mentioned upcoming anthology. The 2019 guest judge will be John Grogan, best-selling author of Marley & Me.
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Submitting Your Work by A. E. Decker
November 13, 2018 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as A E Decker, Moonfall Mayhem, Submitting, writing
This month on From a Cabin in the Woods we are featuring Submitting Your Work by A. E. Decker
A. E. Decker is a former ESL tutor, tai chi instructor, and doll-maker. She holds degrees in English and colonial American history. Her Moonfall Mayhem series, chronicling the adventures of a half-vampire girl run amuck in the land of fairytales, is published by World Weaver Press. Her stories have been published in Fireside Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and PhobosMagazine, as well as in numerous anthologies. She has been a member of the Bethlehem Writers Group since 2010, and edited two of their anthologies. Like all writers, she is owned by three cats.
Submitting Your Work
A. E. Decker
I’ve come around to the belief that the real bugaboo of a writer’s world is not that dreaded phantom, writer’s block, nor even learning to take criticism without curling in a ball and weeping.
The very hardest part about being a writer is submitting your work. I’ve watched a lot of friends twist themselves into contortions trying to avoid it. One man I worked with in a critique group refused to hear any recommendations for his perfectly saleable military sci-fi novels, saying “he only wrote for his own enjoyment.” I have one friend who insists she doesn’t know how to write a query letter, and another whose work always needs one more revision before it’s ready to show to an editor. Speaking of query letters, I also know plenty of writers who spend more time agonizing over the perfect writing that will infallibly catch the agent/editor’s eye than they do on the work they’re submitting.
I’m not excusing myself from methods of submission avoidance, either. I have a formula worked out for short story queries, so I can whip them off pretty quickly, but I rarely refrain from dabbling with my work before submitting it, fiddling with a few lines here, adjusting the grammar there, as if these miniscule changes will somehow make all the difference in the editor’s mind. And, as far as novels go, present me with a perfectly good market that requires a summary as part of its conditions, and I’ll find any excuse to procrastinate until the deadline passes rather than think “Hooray! This might be someone who’s actually interested in reading my book.”
Why is submitting so hard? Surely most of us—the man from my critique group aside—write in the hopes of someday having people read our work, and unless we’re ready to go the self-publish route, that means finding someone to represent us.
I think the answer can be summed up in a single word: rejection. Rejection is harsh. The mere term carries many connotations. We equate it with Not Good Enough. “Loser” and “failure” might even drift through our cringing subconsciouses. We envision the editor/agent as some mighty judge on high, handing down the final word on our literary merit.
Of course it’s all nonsense. Editors and agents are as much flesh-and-blood people we are ourselves. People have their own tastes. As much as we all want to write that one great novel that transcends genre and is beloved by all who read it, we have to recognize that it isn’t possible. I personally would have rejected The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, and anything written by Ernest Hemmingway, if I were an editor, and I bet half of you nodded along with that list, and the other half substituted your own choices.
So, what does this mean, when it comes to dealing with rejections? Am I suggesting that the next time you receive one of those form letters you should shake your fist at the screen, shouting: “You fool! You just turned down the next Herman Melville!”
Actually, yes, if it sounds like fun, and doesn’t scare your cats or members of your family too badly. Because getting a rejection, even a form rejection that tells you nothing of the editor’s true thoughts, means that you submitted. You took a chance. And I can tell you, personally, through the carnage of hundreds of rejection notices, that submitting is mostly a number’s game. It’s not about polishing your writing until it’s “good enough” to be published; it’s about managing to put it in front of a person whose taste matches your style.
Think about it: you only really have to appeal to one person, so long as it’s a person with the ability to publish you. Suddenly, the eighteen varying opinions in your writers’ group don’t seem so weighty. (That said, if they all agree on an aspect of your work, you likely have a problem.) With this thought in mind, submitting becomes more of a hide-and-seek game, searching out that one agent or editor who thinks your writing is marvelous. Yes, they are out there somewhere. It’s up to you to find them.
So stop fussing with your story or novel, trying to make it “perfect.” Take a breath, make a list of agents or publishers, and get to work. Keep records of who sends you encouraging feedback—they might like your style, if not the piece you sent them. Most importantly, remember submitting isn’t like the lottery; you will win if you just keep playing.
And until then, you can yell at your screen. Just don’t scare your cats.
Hallow’s Eve Trick or Treat
October 13, 2018 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as Costumes, Halloween, Muses, stories, writing
This month on From a Cabin in the Woods we are featuring Diane Sismour’s “Hallow’s Eve Trick or Treat.”
Diane Sismour has written poetry and fiction for over 35 years in multiple genres. She lives with her husband in eastern Pennsylvania at the foothills of the Blue Mountains. Diane is a member of Romance Writers of America, Bethlehem Writer’s Group LLC, Horror Writers Association, and Liberty States Fiction Writers. She enjoys interviewing other authors and leading writer’s workshops.
Her website is www.dianesismour.com, and her blog is www.dianesismour.blogspot.com.
You can find her on Facebook and Twitter at: http://facebook.com/dianesismour, http://facebook.com/networkforthearts, and https://twitter.com/dianesismour.
Hallow’s Eve Trick or Treat
Before the goblins and ghosts come knocking at the door, I go through costumes of Halloween parties past with hopes one will inspire a new use to don during Trick or Treat. There were some outrageous getups over the years.
Each brings a memory or two, but one particular outfit stirs a smile. Guests were required to stay in disguise throughout the entire party. The person who remained a mystery won best costume. Usually we had an idea who was whom except once. That year someone arrived, and nodded to people as he entered our house. Nobody knew who the concealed man was until he removed his mask at the end. A party crasher fooled everyone!
I remove the box from the stack, and place it upon the bed. The odd sensation of déjà vu strikes. A staggering certainty hit that I’ve been here before doing exactly this, just not in this lifetime! Then another thought occurs . . . wouldn’t it be fun to write a story about a parallel dimension. One facet in today’s time and another from the past, and possibly a third in the future, running simultaneously with the character’s thoughts colliding with more frequency.
A good shake removes most of the wrinkles from the cape and I arrange the red satin around my shoulders. The matching gloves slide on up to the elbows, the felt flames flickering in glitter. I nestle the horns upon my head and fasten the belt attaching the forked tail, and WHAM! Another déjà vu moment. The story idea is taking shape with each occurrence. One last item—place the black iron circlet around the horns and ta da— Queen of the She-devils. Now to find a minion or two to wrangle some candy so I can go write this story.
However your muse likes to trick, remember to give her a treat. Happy Halloween!
~ Diane Sismour
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