Winkie Writers Workshop

The fiftieth annual Winkie Con, the longest-running Wizard of Oz convention, will be held at the Town and Country Hotel, in San Diego’s Mission Valley, on August 8-10, 2014. Winkie Con celebrates the Oz books by L. Frank Baum and all other aspects of Oz.

The Winkie Writers Workshop for Children’s Fantasy is planned as part of Winkie Con 50. Two separate three-hour sessions are scheduled. The first session runs 9 am to noon on Friday, August 8, 2014. The second session runs 10 am to 1 pm, Saturday, August 9. The location is at Winkie Con 50 at the Town and Country Hotel, 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego, California 92108.

Three writing industry professionals will give personal critiques of up to five manuscript pages of a Middle-Grade or Young Adult work of fantasy or science fiction plus a one-page synopsis of the work. The work need not be an Oz or Oz-related work, but it should be within the genres of fantasy or science fiction. Each session’s submissions will be read beforehand by all session participants and critiqued in-person by the faculty during the workshop.

The registration fee for the Winkie Writers Workshop is $50. A three-day or single-day pass to Winkie Con 50 is also required for participation in the Winkie Writers Workshop.

Each session of the Winkie Writers Workshop consists of three faculty members and five students. Confirmed faculty includes:

Friday, August 8: 

Edward Einhorn, author of Paradox in Oz (Hungry Tiger Press), The Living House of Oz (Hungry Tiger Press), A Very Improbable Story (Charlesbridge Press), Fractions in Disguise (Charlesbridge), etc. 

Nancy Holder, New York Times best-selling author (with Debbie Viguie) of Wicked: Witch and Curse (Simon & Schuster Children's), Crusade (Simon Pulse), and author of television tie-ins including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wishbone, and Teen Wolf, etc. 

James Matlack Raney, author of Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves (Dreamfarer Press) and Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (Dreamfarer Press).  

Saturday, August 9: 

Sherwood Smith, author of The Emerald Wand of Oz (HarperCollins), Trouble Under Oz (HarperCollins), Wren to the Rescue (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), The Spy Princess (Viking Juvenile), etc. 

Laura Preble, author of The Queen Geek Social Club and sequels (Berkley Trade), Out (CreateSpace), Lica’s Angel (iUniverse), etc. 

Thao Le, agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, Del Mar, California; recent sales include Katherine Harbour’s Thorn Jack to Harper Voyager and Lisa Freeman’s Honey Girl to Sky Pony Press.

Faculty subject to change without notice.

Registrations for the Winkie Writers Workshop are being accepted on a first-come first-serve basis. After the ten openings are filled, materials will be returned. To reserve your space, send your $50 check payable to WINKIE CONVENTION to:

Winkie Writers Workshop

Attention: David Maxine

5995 Dandridge Lane, Suite 121

San Diego, CA 92115

Include your e-mail address and/or phone number so that we can confirm your reservation. You may indicate your preference for the Friday session or the Saturday session, and we will try to accommodate you. Otherwise we will make every effort to match your manuscript to the most appropriate faculty.

Once your reservation is accepted, submit seven copies of your five pages and synopsis in standard manuscript format. These materials are due by JUNE 15, 2014.

A pass to Winkie Con 50 is required for participation in the workshop.  You may make a reservation for the Winkie Writers Workshop prior to purchasing your Winkie Con 50 pass.

Winkie Con 50 will have a focus on writing and children’s fantasy. Authors of modern Oz books and other fantasy writing will speak at the convention, primarily on Friday and Saturday. Authors expected to participate include YA novelist and former YALSA president Michael Cart, picture book author J. L. Bell, novelist Walter G. Meyer, non-fiction author Aljean Harmetz, fantasy author Caroline Spector, and comic book writer Eric Shanower. Other guests at Winkie Con 50 will include Priscilla Montgomery, Munchkin actor in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz; Caren Marsh-Doll, stand-in for Judy Garland in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz; John and Bjo Trimble, the couple that saved Star Trek; Kurt Raymond, Wicked Witch of the West impersonator; and Robert Welch, grandson of MGM Wizard of Oz special effects master Buddy Gillespie.

For further details about Winkie Con 50 and to register for the convention online, see the official website here.

Oz Fiction Contest at Winkie Con 2012

The Winkie Con is reviving the Winkie Research Table for the 2012 Convention, including the Fred Otto Prize for Oz Fiction.

$100 First Prize
$50 Second Prize

Here's the call for submissions:

Prose story submissions are invited for the 2012 Fred Otto Prize for Oz Fiction.

“Oz Fiction” is defined as any story about or pertaining to the Land of Oz as originally created by author L. Frank Baum in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels, but stories need not be confined to Baum’s vision. Submissions about or pertaining to the Land of Oz in any of its forms will be accepted. Stories may follow on from Oz books, Oz plays, Oz movies, Magic Land, or any other fictional version of Oz.

Maximum word count: 10,000 words
Submissions may not be previously published or publicly exhibited in any form, including online and digital publication.
No entry fee.
Deadline: June 30, 2012

Use standard manuscript style: double-spaced, 12 point type, 1 inch margins, page numbers at top right.
Include your name, mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone number at the top of the first page of each submission.
Include the title of your submission halfway down the first page and at the top left of every subsequent page.
Electronic submissions only will be accepted in one of the following formats: .pdf, .txt., .rtf, and .doc

Attach your submission to an e-mail and send to:
research@winkies.org
Please put the words “Oz Fiction” in the subject line.

Prizes will be awarded at the 2012 Winkie Con of the International Wizard of Oz Club, July 27-29, 2012. To enter and win you need not be present at the Winkie Con, though attendance is encouraged:

http://hungrytigerpress.blogspot.com/p/winkie-convention.html

To enter and win you need not be a member of the International Wizard of Oz Club, though membership is encouraged:

http://www.ozclub.org/The_International_Wizard_of_Oz_Club.html

Winners not in attendance will be notified in the week following the 2012 Winkie Con and prizes mailed in check form.

The Winkie Research Table also welcomes submissions of non-fiction and art. Prizes will be awarded in these categories, but those prizes won't be cash. Submission format guidelines and deadline for non-fiction are the same as fiction above. Submissions of 2-D and 3-D artwork should be brought to the Winkie Con (or arrangements made for delivery and pick-up) and will be judged onsite during the convention.

For further inquiries and questions, e-mail:
research@winkies.org

Who Stole the Sexing Stones?

I just finished reading Rachel Cosgrove's SF novel The Deathstones, published by Avalon Books in 1964. As with all of Rachel's SF for Avalon, the book was published under her pseudonym E. L. Arch. Most of my readers know that Rachel Cosgrove was the fifth Royal Historian of Oz, author of The Hidden Valley of Oz and The Wicked Witch of Oz. I've kind of gotten onto a Cosgrove kick lately. I had to dig thru my Cosgroviana a few weeks ago to find a checklist of Rachel's work for a friend who's been bit by the research bug. I wish him lots of luck and much fun!

But as I was saying, I just finished reading The Deathstones. The novel begins on the planet Isis in the Ranian system. Captain Jack Landers is looking for a crew for his small spaceship, the Motley. He and his first-mate hire three peculiar aliens to crew the ship, and yes, Rachel makes a joke about the Motley Crew several times. The three aliens are called X, Y, and Z.

X is the most interesting. He's a protoplasm blob sort of like Odo from Deep Space Nine, except that X can't take other forms. X is a native of the planet Isis. The species is quite intelligent, but can't communicate directly with humans. They can, however, absorb information or instructions if they are in direct physical contact with the person thinking said information. These Ranians (the blobs) have no gender until they make a pilgrimage to the Temple of the Sexing Stones. They enter the temple as grey blobs and leave as either bright red or deep violet blobs who must then mingle with a blob of the opposite color.

Well, Captain Landers is hired by six humans to take them to Osiris (the most distant planet in the system). The bulk of the novel plays out on the crowded little spaceship. The passengers consist of five men and one woman; Captain Landers is none too pleased to have a woman on board. His attitude is very misogynistic, as are the attitudes of the other male passengers. Oddly, the woman is in fact kind of awful. I kept hoping Rachel would redeem her or address the sexist attitudes of the men, but she did not. At one point Amanda says, "I'm such a dope about mechanical things . . . I need a man around to help me." She's simpering, ditzy, and manipulative. Within a few chapters someone has killed her and the book plays out as a murder mystery.

But wait, there's a subplot! Halfway through the journey they hear over the news service that Isis is in chaos - the Sexing Stones have been stolen! Without them the gray blobs will never discover their genders, won't be able to "intermingle" with the opposite color, and there will be no more baby blobs. But in the end the Sexing Stones are found, the murderer gets what he deserves, and all ends as it should with a little help from the Deathstones.

The book was a quick and pleasant read. The grumpy pessimistic captain, the small crew, the half-dozen passengers with secrets (one of whom is a preacher), tooling around a single solar system at sub-light speed definitely reminded me of Joss Whedon's Firefly. 

I got my copy of the book many years ago, but never sat down to read it. I wish I had so I could have discussed a few things with Rachel, such as Amanda's character, which seems so odd coming from the strong, well-educated woman Rachel was. I did ask Rachel to sign my copy of The Deathstones, and I was very pleased with what she wrote. I do miss her friendship.

 

You can read about E. L. Arch's Bridge to Yesterday by clicking here.

Some Novel Ideas

This past November I participated in National Novel Writing Month. To participate in this event, a person is supposed to write at least 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days.

The rules state it should be a new novel, not something you've already begun, but you can work from an existing outline and notes. By November 27th I had topped 50,000 words and thus won this year's NANOWRIMO, along with everyone else that hit the word-count bullseye by the end of the month.

My novel is not Oz-related, it isn't a fantasy, and it isn't a children's book. It's probably a Young Adult novel - possibly just a novel. In any case, the reason I am blogging about it here in Oz Land is that I've been reading a lot on fiction writing and the novel.

And one of the books I've gone back to is Techniques of Fiction Writing (1959) by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. Perhaps you didn't know that a Royal Historian of Oz had written a book on writing fiction. It's a very good nuts-and-bolts book assembled from a series of articles by McGraw that were originally published in The Writer magazine.

Over the years McGraw taught many classes and seminars on fiction writing, and in 1979 she recorded a Books-on-Tape lecture series, How To Write Fiction for Young Readers, for Monosette Productions.

I'm currently relistening to the tape series and making digital copies of the tapes for fear the thirty-year-old cassettes are going to disintegrate any minute.

The twelve tapes cover much more than McGraw could cover in her book, and she reads many examples from books she likes. She also peppers the tapes with personal information and anecdotes about her life, her kids' and grand-kids' lives, and with thoughts on a lifetime of writing stories.

Eloise sent me the tape series when I was about nineteen and first began writing fiction. I haven't written much fiction in the last twenty years, but I suspect I'm permanently bitten this time. I wish I could send my novel to Eloise. I miss her.

On a side note, I've also been devouring John Gardner's two books on fiction writing, The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist. I highly recommend both - especially if you like opinionated perfectionists.

So, next year maybe YOU should sign up for NaNoWriMo!