Episode 81
WriterCon 2023 Preview ... with William Bernhardt!
In this episode, we’re talking with William Bernhardt, a novelist with more than 60 books and co-host of WriterCon writers' conference in Oklahoma City over Labor Day weekend (Sept. 1-4, 2023). We’ll hear what’s planned for this year’s conference and why you want to be there!
- WriterCon - Labor Day Weekend - https://www.writercon.com (Save $50 with coupon code WEAREWRITERS)
- Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership at https://writing.fyi/liz
- Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
- Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let's get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast.
Speaker:I'm Christopher Maselli, and I'm here with my wife Gena.
Speaker:How's it going, Gena?
Speaker:It's going really good.
Speaker:It's actually going great because we have a special guest today that we've
Speaker:been pretty excited about getting on here, and have been talking about
Speaker:for a few years about inviting on.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So this is a special day for us.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Our special guest is William Bernhardt.
Speaker:He's the bestselling author of more than 60 books that includes Shameless,
Speaker:the Daniel Pike Legal Thrillers.
Speaker:Two historical novels, two books of poetry, 10 books in the Red
Speaker:Sneaker Writer series, which are really great craft books.
Speaker:And he's also the host of the WriterCon podcast and a co-host of the WriterCon
Speaker:Writers Conference, which we're partnered with too, in Oklahoma City over Labor
Speaker:Day weekend, September 1st through 4th.
Speaker:Oh my goodness, I gotta take a breath.
Speaker:How's it going, Bill?
Speaker:I'm doing great.
Speaker:Good to see you guys.
Speaker:Hey yeah, all you ever had to do was ask.
Speaker:I'll be there.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah, no we're so glad to have you.
Speaker:This is good.
Speaker:We've talked about WriterCon a few times on the podcast.
Speaker:Quite a few, but we.
Speaker:I would love to hear your thoughts on it too.
Speaker:That's why we're so glad to have you here.
Speaker:And I love being introduced as having over 60 books 'cause it's 61.
Speaker:So that is, no, that shoulder, that was the 61st one just legit.
Speaker:So saying over 60 for a long time.
Speaker:Bill, you have been such a big asset to the writing community
Speaker:and especially with WriterCon.
Speaker:And so I, we want you to tell us what is WriterCon and in your words?
Speaker:WriterCon is many things.
Speaker:It was originally the annual conference that we put on now, didn't always have
Speaker:that name, but that's what we call it now and it's every Labor Day weekend
Speaker:in Oklahoma City, but of course is you already know we've expanded and
Speaker:we're doing a cruise now every spring.
Speaker:People are already signing up for the cruise in 2024, for Pete's sake.
Speaker:And we just finished a small group retreat in Branson's and that was wonderful.
Speaker:So I know we'll be doing that again.
Speaker:But the big event is coming up in what, about five weeks?
Speaker:I guess.
Speaker:It's not far.
Speaker:Yeah, it's not long from now at all.
Speaker:It is coming up.
Speaker:Tell us who, because I'm pretty excited about the keynote speakers and of course
Speaker:all the great speakers who are coming.
Speaker:So talk to us a little bit about who is gonna be there this year.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:We have more than 60 presenters, mostly authors, but also literary agents
Speaker:more than we have ever had before.
Speaker:And that's saying something at WriterCon and an increasing number of people,
Speaker:I'm gonna call and publishers too, of course, but increasing number of
Speaker:people I'm gonna call author assistants because there are so many people
Speaker:looking for help whether they're traditionally published or self-published.
Speaker:The reality of today and being a writer is you've gotta be involved
Speaker:more than perhaps in previous areas, particularly in marketing and
Speaker:publicity but other things as well.
Speaker:People are hiring assistants because they're, that day when you just sit
Speaker:in your recliner and in your pajamas and type all day, that's just not
Speaker:the current writer life, right?
Speaker:And so we got people to help with everything that might come up.
Speaker:Our keynotes, which I'm pretty excited about, are Lisa Gardner,
Speaker:who's of course number one New York Times bestselling author.
Speaker:One of the top thriller writers in the world today, and one of my very favorites
Speaker:too, we got Tosca Lee, who is also a number one New York Times bestselling
Speaker:author who's done historical fiction and works drive from the Bible, like the
Speaker:book on the Queen of Sheba and whatnot.
Speaker:And we've also got Susan Meissner, who's, got also been very successful
Speaker:new U S A today bestseller list.
Speaker:So terrific lineup of people, and since the WriterCon conference is
Speaker:basically Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we've got somebody to give a big keynote
Speaker:address every day, which is perfect.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:And it's not just keynotes, right?
Speaker:There's so many people actually speaking individual classes where you
Speaker:can interact with the speakers, right?
Speaker:And just soak it up and learn one-on-one.
Speaker:This isn't just just like going to lectures, right?
Speaker:This is really an interactive conference.
Speaker:Right, very much.
Speaker:We've got, of course, classes all day long.
Speaker:More than 70 sessions of one kind or another 'cause of there are at least
Speaker:four things going on at most times.
Speaker:Plus, in the evenings we have the round tables where people can come
Speaker:and chat in a more relaxed way or chatty way with people, every table
Speaker:is designated to have some topics.
Speaker:So if you're interested in this, you can sit, ask some questions, move
Speaker:to another table later if you want.
Speaker:And we've got a lot of fun stuff going on too and a lot of private opportunities.
Speaker:I sometimes forget to mention 'cause I get so wrapped up in the
Speaker:schedule and the classes, but people are also signing up for manuscript
Speaker:reviews and private consultations.
Speaker:The idea being that, you'll meet one-on-one with someone that you've
Speaker:picked from a list of choices from the speakers at Writer Con, but you choose
Speaker:and the person will, read the manuscript and you'll schedule a time during
Speaker:the conference and meet with them for half an hour or so to talk about it.
Speaker:Same thing for private consultation.
Speaker:The only difference is that instead of actually reviewing a manuscript, you're
Speaker:just talking about whatever it is.
Speaker:We have an advantage because everybody involved in Writer Con
Speaker:is serious professional who's been doing this for a while.
Speaker:So you know, we know who the best people are.
Speaker:I go to conferences all year long.
Speaker:I know you do too.
Speaker:I've been writing for more than 30 years, so I feel like I know what's what.
Speaker:And that helps obviously because when we program things, we know who to look
Speaker:for and where to go for top quality.
Speaker:When I'm looking to choose people, my first qualification is
Speaker:basically, are they a nice person?
Speaker:Because I don't want any grumps of the conference.
Speaker:And second, do they have the credentials to be speaking on this topic.
Speaker:And I'm really proud of our lineup this year.
Speaker:I think it's a terrific roster or faculty.
Speaker:It really is.
Speaker:And I think you've touched on it there.
Speaker:I think one of the things that I love so much about WriterCon is how generous the
Speaker:speakers and the people who come are.
Speaker:How they are.
Speaker:I know that I have stopped people after conference or after attending
Speaker:a session just to ask 'em a question.
Speaker:And I know other people will stop me after my sessions to ask questions.
Speaker:And I just think there's this beautiful just, I don't wanna say camaraderie 'cause
Speaker:that's probably not the right word, but it is just a really supportive environment
Speaker:that I think Writer Con has and that that I think has been created there.
Speaker:So that is just a beautiful thing, and I think that's so important
Speaker:for new writers coming in.
Speaker:For emerging writers to come in to feel like there's a space for them.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:I think sometimes when people are starting, everybody
Speaker:feels a little bit insecure.
Speaker:Do I have any idea what I'm doing here.
Speaker:Do I have any talent?
Speaker:Are people gonna laugh at me?
Speaker:We've all been there, right?
Speaker:But let me tell you, nobody at Writer Con's gonna laugh at you.
Speaker:You hear me?
Speaker:Every year of the opening what do you call that?
Speaker:Orientation?
Speaker:Talking about how look Writer Con is a family and we're all in this together.
Speaker:And it's true.
Speaker:You'll never find a better group of people who will.
Speaker:Support you because we all want the same thing, right?
Speaker:We want to write a good work and we wanna get it out there so other people
Speaker:can read it and that's another benefit of the conference that you can't really
Speaker:even put on the website that it's true.
Speaker:People make friends, they build writing groups or critique groups and stay in
Speaker:touch long after the conference is over.
Speaker:One of the things I really enjoyed last year were those round tables, because
Speaker:you got these, it's just a big round table, but with a topic on it, right?
Speaker:And everyone who sits at that table is interested in that topic.
Speaker:And boy, that discussion just started going and it didn't matter where,
Speaker:whether it's, some people were, had been in the industry for 30 years, or
Speaker:others that had never been in it, right?
Speaker:They were just starting.
Speaker:Everyone started to just share tips and tricks from their heart to
Speaker:ask questions and provide answers.
Speaker:It was really a nice give and take situation.
Speaker:Collaborative.
Speaker:It was collaborative that, that made everyone feel welcome and a part of it.
Speaker:And it bridged that gap between the newbies and the professionals.
Speaker:And it just made everyone writers right, and that was something special.
Speaker:I thought that was a great addition last year and we're doing it again.
Speaker:The only difference you learn as you go, we're still doing it, but this time we're
Speaker:gonna put it in two different rooms, so it's not quite as noisy as it was.
Speaker:It was noisy.
Speaker:There were a lot of people in there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:No, we'll, we learned we're to do it differently.
Speaker:It was still fun, but it was a little noisy after a while.
Speaker:What else?
Speaker:We do a lot of things in the evenings that are just pure fun.
Speaker:We've got karaoke night, which I have never seen you at, Chris.
Speaker:I bet you'd be really great.
Speaker:I'm really not.
Speaker:We've thought about bringing our daughter just because we're like,
Speaker:she's a very good writer, but she's the singer in the family.
Speaker:So we're like maybe we could bring her, we'll just do backup.
Speaker:Oh, you need to, and we got open mic one night so people can read, their
Speaker:poem or a selection of the work.
Speaker:And at one point, we play games, we got jeopardy and it's just a fun time.
Speaker:And of course we've got some new additional features this year too.
Speaker:That's, I was just gonna ask you about that.
Speaker:Tell us about what's new.
Speaker:I didn't know if I should just roll right into, but two things
Speaker:that I'm really excited about is this year we've added a fourth day.
Speaker:In the past we've had Monday master classes.
Speaker:One or two deep dives into a topic like the fiction.
Speaker:We've got two fiction master classes, one taught by Lisa
Speaker:Gardner, the other by Tosca Lee.
Speaker:How great is that?
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And but on Monday, we're for the first time having what we're calling ReaderCon.
Speaker:I'm embarrassed to say that I went through days of thinking,
Speaker:Celebration of Books, Writers Unite.
Speaker:Isn't the obvious companion for Writer Con.
Speaker:It is Reader Con, but still it took me days to, but anyway, Monday is
Speaker:a writer's conference, which is completely free and open to the
Speaker:public, but the focus is different.
Speaker:This is people who love to read books, have a chance to meet their authors.
Speaker:Prominent.
Speaker:Lisa will be there, Tosca will be there.
Speaker:And 20 plus other people will be there.
Speaker:You can get books autographed.
Speaker:Plus we've got all kinds of fun things going on.
Speaker:We've got oh gosh, I don't even know where to start.
Speaker:We've got a contest.
Speaker:We've got a mystery thing going on.
Speaker:We've got panels all day long.
Speaker:We've got a different exhibitor's room.
Speaker:Safe haven is bringing rescue animals.
Speaker:So people, yeah, people will have a chance to read bedtime stories
Speaker:to a doggy and I, how can you read it and not wanna take 'em home?
Speaker:So I'm hoping animals adopted too.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:That is a riot.
Speaker:That'd be fun to see.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:And that is free to the public, so that Monday session.
Speaker:Now, don't come for writing advice 'cause that's not what we'll be doing that day.
Speaker:We'll be completely open to the public.
Speaker:Another new thing, we're adding this here is Pitch Fest,
Speaker:which is on Saturday at noon.
Speaker:We've done pitching practices before and we still will just not during
Speaker:the noon hour, but this idea, we're letting people make a, what's a bid?
Speaker:What's the word?
Speaker:Suggest that they'd be, wanna be a part of a pitch fest.
Speaker:And the idea is that we get everybody in the room, all the agents, all the
Speaker:publishers, assistants, influencers.
Speaker:We've got some, TikTok or Instagram book reviewers coming
Speaker:and pitch to everybody at once.
Speaker:And you get five or six minutes on the stage and we will work
Speaker:with you to help make the pitch as good as it can possibly be.
Speaker:Lara and I went to the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, which was fun.
Speaker:And I just thought, why can't we do something like this in books?
Speaker:'cause the point of the is people to bring their indie films and try and get a
Speaker:distributor, which is very similar to what authors do, except you're looking for a
Speaker:publisher who will distribute your book.
Speaker:Here's the chance to have basically that film festival experience with
Speaker:books and I think it's gonna be a pretty dynamite opportunity for people
Speaker:who want to connect with agents or publishers or whatever you're looking for.
Speaker:That's an important kind of session to go to also, because, even if you
Speaker:don't pitch your own book, hearing other people's books being pitched
Speaker:like that, you will learn so much about what you should be doing in your
Speaker:own pitch so that even if you're not a part of the more public display of
Speaker:that, even if you just want to meet one-on-one with an editor or an agent.
Speaker:You'll gain a lot of confidence in just seeing, okay what do I need to do?
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:That can actually make a connection with someone else,
Speaker:with manuscript I've created.
Speaker:That's so right.
Speaker:That's what I always tell people about.
Speaker:The first page panel, which we do, I think is Friday at noon this year,
Speaker:where people in advance submit the first pages of their manuscripts and
Speaker:then we get a panel of experts, usually a couple of agents and a publisher.
Speaker:Who, someone else will read it aloud and they'll listen and basically say, stop
Speaker:when they hear the stopper, the red flag?
Speaker:Or the thing that would cause this agent to move on to the next one, which
Speaker:of course, if you're sitting in the audience, they do that to your work.
Speaker:It's painful, but they don't announce the names.
Speaker:They're not gonna call you out or anything.
Speaker:But this is not only useful to the people who submit, it's useful to everyone.
Speaker:I think you can learn more from listening to somebody else's first page, getting
Speaker:critiqued maybe, than from your own.
Speaker:You hear that and you think, oh, good point.
Speaker:Remind me not to do that on my first page and then go home to edit it.
Speaker:And sometimes manuscripts get rejected really just because
Speaker:agents are drowning in them.
Speaker:And publishers, if they even accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, get
Speaker:too many, and so they just can't, they glance at it and move on.
Speaker:Here's a chance to try and find out what are the red flags these people are
Speaker:seeing that are causing your manuscript to not get picked up so you can fix it.
Speaker:In some cases, not always, but in some cases it's a pretty simple fix
Speaker:that can significantly increase the chances of your book being picked up.
Speaker:Yeah, that's good, now this is in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Speaker:It is central in the US and I, there are a lot of people around the Oklahoma
Speaker:area, the Dallas-Fort Worth area that come in, but there's really people
Speaker:from all around the world, right?
Speaker:There we get people from everywhere.
Speaker:So we had, it's still time to book your plane tickets.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Am I remembering we had 14 different states in three
Speaker:different countries this year?
Speaker:I'm just going from memory, but I think that's right.
Speaker:Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker:That's amazing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So if you wanna find out more, you can go to WriterCon.com.
Speaker:That's like writer conference WriterCon.com, and you can check
Speaker:out not only the tickets for the conference, but you can get all the
Speaker:information about the contests and the different critiques and all that
Speaker:sort of thing that you can submit to.
Speaker:That's all on the website.
Speaker:You'll see all the speakers, you'll see the schedule, what
Speaker:everyone's talking about.
Speaker:You'll see everything you can just immerse in for three days.
Speaker:And go from there.
Speaker:And then you can also find out about Reader Con.
Speaker:And do they need do they need tickets for Reader Con or just for Writer Con?
Speaker:Nope, just for Writer Con.
Speaker:Reader Con is Free.
Speaker:And I don't even know what you'd be registering for.
Speaker:Just come and join the fun.
Speaker:Just come walk in the door.
Speaker:You're welcome.
Speaker:Yeah?
Speaker:Absolutely, and I also wanna point out that the this is at
Speaker:the Renaissance Waterford Hotel.
Speaker:And there are special discounted rates for the WriterCon attendees.
Speaker:So when you wanna go ahead and get on that quickly so you can take advantage of that.
Speaker:Oh, you know what else?
Speaker:Get started now.
Speaker:Get going.
Speaker:Speaking of discounts, we've got a special discount code for everyone today.
Speaker:If you're listening, you can put this in on the Writer Con website and save $50.
Speaker:That code is, we are writers, all one word, W E A R E W R I T E R S.
Speaker:I had to look over as I was saying that, to make sure I wouldn't misspell it.
Speaker:We are writers.
Speaker:I always write it in all caps.
Speaker:I don't know if that matters though, does it?
Speaker:Probably not, but good to do, just in case.
Speaker:Definitely.
Speaker:Thank you, Bill, for being here.
Speaker:We are so excited.
Speaker:We just really encourage anybody watching us or listening to us today
Speaker:to take the time over Labor Day Weekend for Writer Con in Oklahoma City.
Speaker:That's September 1st through the 4th.
Speaker:We'll be there.
Speaker:September 4th is going to be Reader Con, which is gonna be just like a
Speaker:party for readers and books and authors.
Speaker:All right, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe,
Speaker:and share it with someone else who you know needs to go to Writer Con
Speaker:so they can get that discount code and join us all at the conference.
Speaker:Bill will be there.
Speaker:Gena and I will be there because this whole writing
Speaker:thing is not a solitary venture.
Speaker:This is something that's better when we do it together, right?
Speaker:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker:So what happens Gena it's best what?
Speaker:Together we have writing momentum.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Bye-bye.
Speaker:Good to see you guys.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:You too.
