Regarding last week's Friday Office Hours
Holy bios, Batman!
Holy moly you all really responded to the open call for bios during last Friday’s Office Hours! That open call has now ended— I’m both grateful and excited about all the material that was sent in. Please take time to read through some of the bios— not only am I weighing in on all of them with feedback, but it’s also such a nice way for us to learn about each other: where we hail from, what we’re working on creatively, what we do for day jobs, what we have in terms of pets and kids and houseplants.
If you’ve seen the amount of comments on that post, you know I have a lot of work cut out for me. There won’t be a regular post this week because I’m still reading through hundreds of bios and commenting on them, and I intend to reach out to several of you to further workshop your material in a dedicated post. And next week, along with many of you, I’m headed to AWP. So sit tight for the next newsletter— I need time to make it great.
If you want to upgrade to join us in the next Friday Office Hours open call for material, please do!
In the meantime, here’s some cool stuff happening this week and month!
Please note that the call for bios is now closed. Stay tuned for our next open call for material to workshop.
“12 Weeks to Book Launch” is accepting new participants in its cohort!
If you’re planning a book launch in 2024 or 2025, writer and book marketer Lainey Cameron’s 12-week program might be right for you. Organized as a cohort of likeminded and supportive authors, Lainey will guide the group towards a successful launch plan and co-members will root each other on. The goal of the program is for authors to come away with an actionable launch plan, a new set of author friends, and confidence in book marketing. The next cohort starts the week of February 19th. Email Lainey at lainey@laineycameron.com for details.
Story Studio’s Virtual Pub Crawl conference is about to kick off! And guess what, my beloved Tin House editor, Masie Cochran, is Keynoting! (I published my historical novel COSTALEGRE and my memoir THE YEAR OF THE HORSES with Masie. She is brilliant.) During the virtual conference, I’ll be speaking myself about book proposal-writing. Check out the entire schedule of events here. It starts February 1st!
My destination writing retreat, Turning Points, opens for applications on February 15th. Save the date if you intend to apply! It’s not a first-come-serve kind of conference (there’s a selective application process) but early birds tend to get the worms around these here hills. All info about the retreat (which is in New Mexico in October) is on my website.
I’ve created a newsletter for my beloved barn: want to follow our adventures? The barn I ride at is owned by a new mom who is pretty overwhelmed by new motherhood, the rising costs of hay, and the various stresses of barn management during a tough winter. I’ve developed a newsletter for her that I’m super excited about. If you’re an animal lover or just appreciate wholesome content, it will come out once a month and will feature a spotlight on one animal (not just horses, barn cats, bears, you name it!) and one human each month, plus we’ll include resources for fitness and inspiration and feature student artwork. It will be a heartwarming place. If you’d like to follow along, you can sign up for that newsletter here! (It’s free and will stay free.)
That’s all for now! Hope you’re finding time to write, and read, and laugh a little in-between periods of stress.
xoxo
Courtney
Thank you, Courtney. For anyone considering attending Story Studio's Pub Crawl, I highly recommended it. I attended in 2022 and found it very helpful in gaining insight into publishing. (Including Courtney's talk!)