Thank You, Readers, for all the pageviews this month and every month.

We had over eleven hundred readers this past month just in the United States. Pageviews also came from over ten other countries. Thank you so much for visiting us here at Writers Circle 

around the Table, our blog for the series of writing classes held from March through October each year since 2010.

In the past four years we have been overjoyed with the quality of writers, teachers, poets and students who have come and shared the studio and sat around the table with like-minded people who appreciate the written word.

In the bookcases we have books to instruct, to inspire and others to enjoy reading. Students are invited to check out books and return them within a reasonable time.

Instructors who stay overnight in the studio apartment are invited to browse the bookshelves and enjoy a book while here. We also have a stack of writers' magazines to share - Writer, Writer's Digest and Poets and Writers. 

Each season we try to bring back the most popular instructors, but we continue to invite new writers who can offer instruction our local writers and poets want.

During the winter months while we are closed I will be busy contacting writers and poets in western North Carolina and North Georgia including the Atlanta area to include on next year's schedule of classes. 

Meantime, check back with us for guest posts and for articles and prompts that will keep you writing while you huddle inside by the fire. To see what is new for 2014, click on our Schedule page.

Hurry if you want your book published on paper

If you have always wanted to see your name on a published book, I mean one you can hold, one with a hard or soft back, you had better hurry. Read this post from the White Cross blog. Very interesting.

http://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/2013/11/05/eight-tracks-rotary-phones-and-printed-books/

Writing is the easy part - now sell those books

 Follow These Five Rules to Prepare for Your Book Launch

1. Six months before the book is released, create a written marketing plan

2. Send out notices about your book acceptance to everyone on your email list, your Facebook and Twitter contacts as well. 

This is an announcement, not a pitch to sell the book. Not yet.

3. Call and set up book signings or readings, one a week for three months. The library or book store is not always the best place to hold a signing. I signed a book about horses in a farm supply and feed company. Advertise the events in local newspapers. Create interest in yourself. Include your photo if possible. 

4. Locate book clubs and make dates to visit them in person or by phone or skype. This can often be done from your own home.

If your book fits in a special niche, find those people through support groups, church groups, or social clubs, and make arrangements to give a free author chat, or give away several of your books each time you appear. One might be hesitate to give away his book, but consider this as cost of advertising. Word of mouth is the best kind of promotion, especially when it comes from one who has read and enjoyed the book

5. Guest blog for another blogger. Write short articles for your favorite charity, send to your local newspaper. If you have a cause you are passionate about, get your name out there by writing about this cause but don't write about something that will divide your audience. 

Karen Holmes, Kelsay Books, Poetry Collections

My friend, Karen Holmes, is a terrific poet. Her poetry collection Untying the Knot, will be published next year by Kelsay Books.

This is an excerpt from an interview with Karen Kelsay of Kelsay Books. I post this to reiterate what I tell my students and to guide you to read this post:

 Have you ever had to turn down a chapbook manuscript you loved? Maybe because it wasn't right for your press, or any other reason?

Yes, there have been a few I really thought were well written and clever, but they just didn't follow the guidelines closely enough. I absolutely hate to do layout work on experimental poetry. The lines need to be justified to the left and in a traditional manner. I will let a few slip by if they look like they won’t be too much trouble, but I will refuse the manuscript if it is filled with crazy lines going all over the place.

I am in process of putting together a poetry manuscript that I hope will be complete before too long. My chapbook, Now Might as Well be Then was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009, the same year my husband passed away. That book is a bitter-sweet reminder.

photo by Michelle Keller

I enjoyed working with Leah Maines editor, and Kevin Maines at Finishing Line. I hope the publishing of my next book will go as well. 

Poets can run into some nightmares with publishers. A friend had her book accepted, but the press failed and after holding her manuscript a long time, the book was never published. Writers must research, carefully, and still one never knows what might happen. 

A novelist, Nancy O., published her book in the U.K. That company went out of business and stopped sending her checks, but the book continued to be listed on Amazon.com. She could not reach anyone to ask if her book was still selling and if so, why was she not receiving any revenue.

With self-publishing and print on demand (POD) becoming easier, some poets are doing their own thing. Some of our greatest poets, like Walt Whitman and T.S. Elliot, paid to publish an early book. The first book is often used to build a name for the poet if he has not already done so.

I believe that Karen Holmes has made a perfect match with her poetry and Kelsay Books.

With winter looming and the cold days that keep us inside, this is a good time to sort poems and to arrange short stories to see what I have and what might be worth sharing with others. Would you, my readers, have any interest in collections of my poems and stories?

Writers Night Out - last of this season - Don't Miss it!!

Last month, we had a small group of 10 in attendance, so please come this Friday to give these wonderful poets a large and enthusiastic audience as we usually do for Writers' Night Out. November is our last meeting of the year -- we'll resume in March 2014.

Writers’ Night Out
Friday, Nov 8

Brothers Willow Ranch Restaurant, Young Harris, GAPrivate Room upstairs (can access by ramp from upper parking lot)

6:00-7:00 eat dinner or munchies and socialize (come early to order dinner)
7:00-ish announcements and featured reader
Break
7:45-ish Open mike, sign up at door, limit 3 minutes per poetry or prose reader (Please time yourself at home, let's make it fair to everyone. Prose readers can often eliminate some details and still captivate the audience with their piece).

Featured Poets' Bios:

Katie Chaple is the author of Pretty Little Rooms (Press 53, August 2011), winner of the 2012 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry through Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She teaches poetry and writing at the University of West Georgia and edits Terminus Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, Mead, New South, Passages North, StorySouth, The Rumpus, Washington Square, and others.

Travis Denton is the Associate Director of Poetry @ TECH as well as a McEver Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech. He is also founding editor of the literary arts publication, Terminus Magazine. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, such as Mead, The Atlanta Review, The Greensboro Review, Washington Square, Forklift, Rattle, Tygerburning, Birmingham Poetry Review, and the Cortland Review. His second collection of poems, When Pianos Fall from the Sky, was published in October 2012 by Marick Press.

Invitation to writers - Open House at City Lights Bookstore

We hope you will join us at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC for this event. I look forward to seeing old friends, my readers, and those who want to know more about NCWN West, our regional chapter of North Carolina Writers' Network, the state literary organization.

NETWEST OPEN HOUSE AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE and Cafe, NOV. 10, 1:00-4:30 p.m.

We welcome all Netwest members, as well as wannabe members, to a friendly literary gathering on November 10. 

We will begin the reception upstairs in the Regional Room, with finger foods and other assorted goodies, as well as coffee, tea, cider, and wine. We'll have Echoes Across the Blue Ridge prominently displayed, along with books by individual Netwest members. 

If you want to have your book available at the open house, call City Lights with details, so that the store can enter it into their system beforehand. 

Singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin and guitarist Paul Schofield will provide music for us.

Shortly after 2:00, we will go downstairs to the Cafe, where our three featured writers will read. An open mic. will follow. The sign-up sheet will be upstairs, so please sign up when you arrive, if you wish to read. We will set a time limit depending on how many members have signed on to read. 

John Campbell Folk School Festival was Fun

In 1996 I signed up for my first writing class at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. If you have never been to this special place nestled in the beautiful mountains between Chattanooga, TN, Asheville, NC, and Atlanta GA, please add taking a class at JCCFS to your bucket list.

This weekend my sister and BIL, Stu, came up and we had the greatest time. Saturday afternoon we drove over to Brasstown and found ourselves caught up in a traffic jam. Who would have thought we'd have a traffic jam on Settawig Road? Cars were bumper to bumper and we had become discouraged by the time we reached the parking area on the campus. Stu dropped off Gay and me at the entrance near the Gift Shop. Thousands of people come from all over the country and I'm sure from other parts of the world to visit JCCFS on festival day.

This is a place where I always see people I know. We made sure we arrived in time to see Butternut Creek and Friends, a great singing group that includes Steve Harvey who plays banjo, ukulele, guitar and he sings.
We have been fans of the group for over sixteen years. Steve is an essayist and will be teaching a class at the Ridgeline Conference this weekend.

We didn't want to miss seeing the lovely twins, The Pressley Girls, who have blossomed into quite a singing group backed by their grandpa, their mother and their uncle. The girls belong to Tipper of Blind Pig and the Acorn.

The folk school holds many good memories for me from my first class there with Nancy Simpson, poet, to my first opportunity to teach a writing class. I was asked to sub for a weekend class. I had taught some classes already, but this was my first time at John C. Campbell Folk School.

I'll never forget the emotion that rolled over me as I turned the key to the door of the room where we would gather. I thought I would burst with gratitude, and I wanted to laugh and to cry at the same time. I felt I'd reached a milestone. I hoped I could give my students the same feeling I had in my first class at this magical place.

Years have passed since that day and many men and women have sat before me in writing classes at the folk school, at classes in church fellowship halls, at Tri-County Community College, at ICL classes held at Young Harris College and in my own studio. But I never forget that my life changed forever the day I took my first writing class at John C. Campbell Folk School. 

Kathryn Stripling Byer - The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest from Press 53

Kathryn Stripling Byer

How wonderful that all the fans of Kathryn Stripling Byer, first woman poet laureate of North Carolina, can now buy The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest from Press 53. This is the second edition of the award-winning book that was first printed in 1986. I'm not bragging, but I have an autographed copy of that first edition. 

Kathryn and I share a similar background having both grown up on farms in south Georgia. Her poems speak to me as if she were my sister, and I'm sure they will speak to you when you get your copy of this book.

Kathryn Byer has become one of the most important women in the literary world of western North Carolina, and a beloved poet throughout the country and in foreign countries as well.

Click on this link to see more about this book and the poet.

2005 NCWN Fall Conference, from left, me, Janice Moore, Nancy Simpson, Shirley Uphouse and Kathryn Byer