Logical Expressions Blog

Happy Saint Patty's day everyone. It's been a great day here! On a personal note, I'm adopting a fluffy white dog from a rescue group, so I'll be driving out to pick her up. (Road trip!) We are SO excited. And the as-yet-to-be named dog is SO cute!

James and I are also fired up about a writing retreat for book authors that we've decided to do this fall. I wrote up some initial information on the event that we've dubbed the Cabin in the Woods Writing Retreat.

Check it out here: Cabin in the Woods Writing Retreat

In other BIG biz news, we finalized the speaker list for the Self-Publishers Online Conference in May.

Here's the line up:  SPOC 2010 Speakers

And this is the Agenda:  SPOC 2010 Agenda

Depending on when you read this, we may or may not have updated the site with a couple of last-minute speakers. We were hoping to hear back from a keynote speaker on Day 3. He said yes, so I'm pleased to report that Mark Victor Hansen will be speaking at SPOC 2010. (Woo hoo!)

All these big things happened when we decided to just "go for it." That happens to be the topic of this week's article too:

When Is Book Writing Like Barn Raising?

by Susan C. Daffron

If you really want to be a published author, at some point, you have to be a little nuts and take a few risks

As noted in this week's Publishize newsletter article, I've been distracted from work by life events, but I still have been lining up speakers for the second annual Self-Publishers Online Conference (SPOC) which will be held May 12-14, 2010. Like last year, there is NO cost to attend the virtual event live, and you can learn from the comfort of your home or office.

I haven't gotten to updating the SPOC site yet, but I can report that confirmed speakers include:

• Dan Poynter – author of the Self Publishing Manual
• Peter Bowerman – author of the Well-Fed Self-Publisher
• Penny Sansevieri author of Red Hot Internet Publicity
• John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Book
• Fern Reiss, author of the Publishing Game series of books
• Mark Levine, author of the Fine Print of Self-Publishing
• M.J. Rose, novelist and creator of Author Buzz
• Janet Goldstein, publishing consultant and creator of Publishing Reset

Of course, James and I will also speak, and we are still finalizing a few additional speakers. When all is said and done, a total of fifteen publishing experts will be on hand to share their expertise. Plus, this year, based on attendee feedback, we're adding an extra "lunchtime" Q&A roundtable session and online discussion tools so attendees can network with one another more easily. For more information or to register, visit the SPOC Web site at http://www.SelfPublishersOnlineConference.com

I'm beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to virtually hang out with such a cool group of publishing pros. We'll let you know more about SPOC as everything develops this spring.

In the meantime, this week's article talks about how you can move forward with your writing, even when life gets in the way.

How to Write When Life Gets in the Way
Life events can disrupt working and writing. How can you write when you can barely even think?