​Welcome back, blog readers! We’re going to be doing something new and fun with this blog. Some of our blog posts will now be used as an Author Spotlight! It’s a great location and opportunity to share information about our members, their work, and their lives. In this first Author Spotlight, we welcome new member Dr. Christal Presley to the guild and she was gracious enough to share a bit about herself with us. So, we tossed a few questions her way and we’re happy to showcase her book Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD.
 
AAG: Tell us a little about yourself such as your hobbies, where you’re from and your local passions.
Christal: I’m from Honaker, Virginia. My wife and I recently moved back home—to Abingdon—to be closer to my parents. We lived in downtown Atlanta for many years. My biggest passions are farming (we own a donkey sanctuary here in Abingdon) and running our Airbnb. It’s called Abingdon Donkey Lodge. I also teach full-time at Georgia Cyber Academy. My school is all-virtual, and I currently teach American Literature. I am very passionate about creating safe, inclusive spaces for people, whether that be in my classroom or at home.
 
AAG: We noticed you have a PhD. What is your doctorate in and what got you interested in that field of study?
Christal: My PhD is in education. My specialty is mentoring and coaching other teachers to become more reflective practitioners—and to ultimately improve their craft.
 
AAG: Can you tell us a bit about Thirty Days With My Father? About the writing process of that…PTSD is such a hard thing for folks to deal with (soldiers and their families).
Christal: Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD is a memoir about connecting with my Vietnam-veteran father in thirty days of phone conversations after being estranged from him for many years. I finally got to ask him questions about the war and what happened to our family back then--and the answers changed my life. I began my journey searching for my father and I found myself. In terms of the writing process, it was wonderful AND it was awful. I don't regret any of it. Writing about trauma and about PTSD is such a sensitive subject. You live through the trauma twice when you write about it. And then I feel like I lived through it again every time I did media about my book. The year it was published, I did over 100 TV and radio shows, including CNN (twice), CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, Canada AM, and more. It was very tough to talk about my own trauma that much--and sometimes several times a day.  
 
AAG: What did you take away most from writing this book?
Christal: Writing a book is one thing. Marketing it and getting it into the hands of readers is something else altogether, and equally as important. Authors don't talk about the latter enough. 
 
AAG: Any future books being planned?
Christal: I’m currently working on a children’s picture book. The subject is a secret—for now! :) 

​2021 is finally here! With 2020 now in the rearview mirror, it is a great time to refocus on writing goals and ways to get better at our craft. With that said, the AAG is excited to welcome back all of our members and even a few new ones. If you haven’t yet paid dues for the new year, please do so here on the website.
 
We’re still hoping for life to get back to normal this year and we have a full slate of events planned. On Tuesday, February 9th our board will meet at noon at the Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator in Abingdon. Everyone is welcome to attend. Immediately following that meeting, Vicki Fletcher will lead a workshop titled Writing TIPS. That will begin at 1 PM and go until 3 PM. Make plans to attend! We hope to see everyone there. Our next meeting will be a general membership meeting on Tuesday, March 9th at 11:30 at Shoney’s in Abingdon.
 
ANTHOLOGY NEWS! We will be putting out a new anthology this year. If you would like to add a short story, essay, or poem to the mix, please submit your work to Vicki Fletcher at [email protected] by April 2nd. Our last anthology, Mountain Mist, had some great submissions and we look forward to another excellent group of submissions this year.
 
If you have events scheduled for the promotion of your books this year, please let us know so that we can help share those events with others and help promote your work. Send that info to Vicki Fletcher.
 
Last year was an incredibly challenging year for everyone. Despite that, we still grew the organization and had some fun. We look forward to doing the same this year and that everyone can be a part of it.
 
We will be welcoming back authors at the Virginia Highlands Festival. The event will be at the Higher Ed. Center in Abingdon and more details will follow. To be able to sign up for a table, you must renew or join by March 9th so take advantage of our $20 dues until then.

Soldiers In Petticoats, the latest book by guild member Betty Jamerson Reed, is a powerful look at three Appalachian women educators who were brave soldiers in the fight for equal rights, literacy, and justice. Although none of the women who are the subjects of this book were originally from Appalachia, they all came to these mountains for a similar cause and this book highlights their struggles and courage.
 
Betty was kind enough to spend some time answering a few questions about this book and her work and we greatly appreciate the question and answer session.
 
Q: What inspired you to write Soldiers in Petticoats?
A: I came across information about Emily Prudden while doing information for graduate studies at Western Carolina University and was amazed at the schools she founded for white and black mountain children, but was unable to locate much information about her. Then I discovered Sophia Sawyer while researching the history of schools for the Cherokee. Each founded a school which either physically or influentially exists in the twenty-first century. So, I looked for another female who had founded a school in the Southern Appalachians and decided Martha Berry would do, even though she was a Southerner.
 
Q: Given the deep subject material, was there a particular woman that you highlight in the book that served as inspiration?
A: I highlight the three women mentioned above and identified in the book’s sub-title. Living in a time when women were restricted in their means of making a living and in their access to an education, these three amazed me that they were able to provide schools for mountain white, black, and Indian children. Each one amazed me; how could they accomplish so much and what led them to do that? I set out to find the answers and decided to share that information with twenty-first century readers. Their accomplishments should not be forgotten.
 
Q: What was the research process like for this book?
A: I have spent my retirement doing research. It’s is an addictive process, and I am an addict. I sat in cold basement rooms, read ancient newspapers in a secluded vault fearing I would forget to lodge something against the steel door to prevent my being locked in and forgotten for days, found space to read school board minutes in isolated conference rooms, and browsed the internet for hours and hours—but I enjoyed it, and now I feel I KNOW these three women and admire each one. Each hoped to live a useful life, and each accomplished that.
 
This intriguing book, Soldiers In Petticoats, can be found online at Amazon for your Kindle device and paperback and hardcover.

​​The Appalachian Authors Guild has a big year planned for 2020. Not only are we doing great with membership (and gaining new members!) but the year ahead is full of events for our members and others thinking of joining. Not only will we be having our regular general meetings every other month at Shoney’s in Abingdon, Virginia, but we will also be hosting several workshops throughout the year. We encourage all members to attend. The workshop topics are suggested by members of the guild and are designed to help all of us get better at our craft.
 
Mark your calendars and come out and join us!

On February 11th we will have a board meeting and a workshop from noon to 3 pm. Jahmal Potter will lead the workshop. "My Book Got Schooled" will show us how he got his children's book into area schools and other marketing tips.

March 10th--general meeting at Shoney's in Abingdon. This will be our first general meeting of the year and we'll use this opportunity to meet and greet each other give each author an opportunity to introduce their work to the group. 
 
April 14th—board meeting and workshop from noon to 3 pm. (Topic to be determined)
 
May 16th  is SPRING FLING!! This is our second annual Spring Fling event to be held at the Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator in Abingdon, VA from 9 am to 4 pm. Guest speakers will be Dr. Jesse Graves, Tammy Robinson Smith, and a panel discussion led by Delilah O’Haynes, Oral Frazier, Matt Bolt and Jon Bott.
 
June 9th—board meeting and workshop from noon to 3 pm. Rose Klix will lead the workshop on poetry.
 
August 11th—board meeting and workshop from noon to 3 pm. Kari Kilgore will lead with a discussion on publishing with Ingram and how to market your work.
 
October 13th—board meeting and workshop from noon to 3 pm. Penny Sansevieri will present on “How to sell books on Amazon” and “How to best promote your books for sales.”
 
*All workshops will be held at the Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator. 

2019 has been an amazing year for the Appalachian Authors Guild. Membership increased, attendance at regular functions either held steady or increased, and we’ve held several workshops for members with some good participation and great guest speakers. The workshops have been especially helpful and more are planned for next year.
 
Speakers this year included:
Linda Hoagland
Linda and Amber Icenhour
Linda Dobkins
Joe Tennis
Greg Lilly
Damean Mathews
Kari Kilgore
Dr. Jesse Graves
Jim Glanville
 
Although we were unable to have a Symposium this year, we did hold our first annual Spring Fling in Abingdon at the Small Business Incubator off of Exit 14 near the Higher Ed Center. We had a great crowd in attendance, a catered lunch, and great guest speakers that included prolific and bestselling author Steven James. Writers that attended the event came away with some new skills and provided some great feedback about the event. We are looking forward to hosting the next Spring Fling in 2020 which will be held on May 16th, times yet to be determined.
 
Our last gathering of the year will be on Tuesday November 12th at the Small Business Incubator in Abingdon. If you’re new to the guild and haven’t attended any events, come on out and make some new friends. The guild is about writers helping each other in this region. We welcome everyone to come and be a part of it!
 
Pictures from 2019 events are below.


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Now that summer is officially here, people from our region are flocking to their favorite vacation spots for some rest and relaxation. Nothing is more relaxing that settling in with a good book. Well, at least in the collective humble opinion of the members of the Appalachian Authors Guild. Several members were recently approached and asked what books were on their summer reading list. To say that our members are well read and read a wide variety of books would be an understatement! 
 
Here are 10 recommendations from the AAG members:
 
The Night Window-Dean Koontz
Rebecca-Daphne du Maurier
Every Deadly Kiss-Steven James
New Orleans Mourning-Julie Smith
To Be Where You Are-Jan Karon
Grendel-John Gardner
Moscow Rules-Daniel Silva
Black Mountain Breakdown-Lee Smith
Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy
Mountain Mist-Anthology by the Appalachian Authors Guild
 
What’s on your summer reading list?
 
 

We’re approaching that time of year again when the Virginia Writers Club holds its annual Golden Nib writing contest and we invite our AAG members to submit something for the contest. Specifics about the contest and submission guidelines can be found at https://www.virginiawritersclub.org/golden-nib/.
 
Victoria Fletcher (President of AAG) recently emailed members about the contest and submissions are due to her by July 13th. We hope to see a lot of entries this year! Since there is still time to write something for the contest we encourage you to come out to our regular meetings where we gather to help each other hone our skills. The next meeting will be on June 11th (see the AAG home page) and we will be having a writer’s workshop from 1-3 pm. These are always a lot of fun and really get the creative juices going. The more people that participate in these events the better they seem to turn out. 

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One of the greatest obstacles most of us face in life is self doubt. Not believing in ourselves and our talent is the biggest hindrance to success. That’s just as true with writing as it is with any career. You may work a traditional nine to five job and be of great importance to your company. You may feel that you have earned and deserve better pay in that job but if you don’t have the self confidence to ask your boss for a raise, you probably won’t get one.
 
As a writer, you have made a personal commitment. You have committed to spending thousands of hours learning the craft. You have taken the necessary time to explore the different ways of publishing and chosen a method that works for you. You have spent hundreds of hours writing your book considering the amount of time it took you to create the story and characters, develop those characters, proofread, edit, revise, and rewrite. You may have even gone through some expense (even if you couldn’t really afford it) to have copies printed to give away for reviews, to set up a website or blog, or even pay for some limited advertising.
 
A writer’s commitment is serious business. But one thing that holds many of us back (me included at times) is that hint of self-doubt; wondering if the book will be well received by readers. One thing that remains a challenge for most of us is promoting ourselves. There are two main reasons for that.

​One reason is that something inside of us is hesitant to be open to the criticism, even the constructive kind. That self-doubt holds us back. We silently hope that once we put our book out there that the world will come and find it. The sad truth is that the world isn’t going to go looking for your book (or mine). We have to take that book to the world and that kind of effort is daunting and difficult. And if we are successful, we have to deal with the fact that the people that love our work will seldom tell us so but the ones that don’t like it will take every chance to tell us. Yes, the dreaded bad review! It will happen.
 
The second reason that promoting ourselves is so difficult is that most of us writers aren’t wired that way. It requires us to push our work in ways that make us afraid that we are coming across as arrogant and pushy. There is a fine line there! But we have to be committed to finding that balance if we want our work to be read and appreciated. We have to have thick skin and be a bit more creative in ways that we are not used to. I’ve spent many hours and more than a few dollars on books that deal with marketing and branding in this age of social media. I have a few thoughts on those books that I’ll share in a blog at a later time. But in order to succeed at selling our work, we have to have this commitment. It’s a tall order, even for the most driven writer.
 
Despite these daunting challenges, every writer should realize something very important about themselves. You are unique. You are special. You bring your own twist to a craft that is vital for every culture. You are a writer. Whatever you write (novels, poems, memoirs) you take your stories and you paint a picture in the minds of your readers. You plant a message in their hearts. You are special.
 
Are you committed enough to your work and overcoming any self doubt to do something that might not be comfortable to you? Are you willing to tell one new person a day about your work? In a year, 365 new people will know about your book(s). Some of them might actually buy one of them. Some of them may tell a friend about you. You may not sell any books at all, but that commitment to yourself may be the difference between where you are right now and being successful in the long term.
 
Now, I will leave you with two important questions as you ponder the topic of this blog. The first one you have to answer for yourself. The second one you have to answer for your targeted readers.
 
What does being a successful writer mean to you?
 
Why should someone buy your book? (Think of a catchphrase or slogan that catches your reader’s attention.)
 
 
 

​How well do you know your main character? It’s something I often fail to ask myself when I sit down to write. I assume I know my character well enough to write a short story or an entire novel about them. However, today I began to question just how well I know my main characters. Maybe you should, too!
 
I’m not going to speak for any other writer, and certainly not for any of the writers in this amazing guild. But I want to plant that question as food for thought before you begin your next project. I recently published another comedy and as I was watching television today, a strange question popped into my head. If my main character suddenly called and told me to leave the door unlocked that they were coming over for dinner, what would I serve them?  If they had an afternoon to kill and looking for something to do, where would I take my main character?
 
Sometimes solid character development requires that we go beyond the usual and obvious, that we reach beyond just what we let the reader know about our character. To fully understand the range of emotions and what pushes their buttons, we should consider writing a short biography of them before we begin. Are they married or divorced? Was it a bitter divorce or breakup? Are there still lingering emotional wounds from past events that impact how our character sees the world and reacts to others in our novel?
 
Culturally most people tend to be outcome oriented. That makes sense for most folks. However, as writers, we tend to be more process oriented. That is why we take on the challenge of writing exercises such as this. It helps us fully understand our character. By writing short pieces, even only a paragraph in many circumstances, about our main character in situations that have nothing at all to do with your book, you understand the nuances of the character. This will come across in your book in the most subtle ways. It is those subtle points in your story that moves your reader in the direction that you want them to go.
 
Every book is a process and we all have our own unique processes as we write. Process matters, and the main character deserves the extra attention. So do our readers. 

,One of the most important things a writer can do after publishing a book is to get their work out in the public, to put their face and voice out there. It’s great to finally see your work available on Amazon but that doesn’t mean your audience is going to be waiting eagerly to accept your work. In fact, after all of the time and effort you put into writing and publishing a book, your audience has no idea you are there. That’s why some form of marketing is important.
 
Being a member of the Appalachian Authors Guild comes with a great perk! Book signings are one of the most effective ways that a writer can share their work with the public. As a Guild member, we work to set up book signing events for our members. We are always working to add businesses to the list of places willing to host our members for book signings, and even the occasional public reading. We strongly suggest all members to take advantage of this perk. The more you put your work out there in the public, the more books you are going to sell. It’s time to grow your fan base. If you’ve never done a book signing before, let us help you and set a modest goal for at least two book signings in 2019. You’ve put a lot of work and effort into your book. Let’s get it out there!
 
However, there are many reasons to join the Guild. Having the opportunity to listen to guest speakers, learning new things at the regular educational and informational seminars, learning to challenge yourself in your writing and writing goals, and making a lot of new friends to name a few. Not a bad way to spend $20. Make 2019 a great year for you and for your work!