August 2019 Blast

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Conference

As August comes to a close, we wanted to get a quick note out reminding everyone that registration for this year’s conference in Albuquerque needs to be made by September 5.  The conference will include our annual general membership meeting on Sunday morning, September 15.

Book Donations

If you would like to participate in our annual book donations drive and donate books this year to the VA med center in Albuquerque, please get them mailed off ASAP as we intend to give them to the med center at the beginning of the conference.  Mail them to Larry Greenly at 2916 Jane Ct NE, Albuquerque, NM  87112-1638, and he will do the legwork taking them to the VA.

Website, Social Media, and More

MWSA has done a ton of work improving our social media exposure and our website—all part of our on-going efforts to enhance and expand the benefits of MWSA membership. However, not everyone has taken advantage of these new benefits. 

 Besides the obvious—most notably, our Facebook pages: Public, Writers Education, and Book Marketing and Open Mic—we have new programs available to our members. The latest addition is our Beta Reader Program. For the time being, this program is a self-help one, involving members helping members.

 Go to the Beta Reader page on our website (https://www.mwsadispatches.com/beta-readers) and look for books you’d like to beta-read or post your book to get feedback from your fellow MWSA members. The more of us who end up visiting the page and signing up to help our fellow MWSA authors, the more active and useful our program will become. 

 Of course, the Beta Reader Program is not all there is when it comes to member benefits.  Check out our website and have a look at all the services and programs available under the “Resources” tab at the top of every page.

Help Wanted—Help!

By the way, if you have the time, we need help monitoring our social media outlets or posting content to the website and social media. Every little bit helps, so if you’re interested, please let us know by:

 The vast majority of this work does NOT require that much in the way of Internet savvy or special coding skills. We can have you up-to-speed in a matter of minutes if you’re interested in lending a hand.

 Have a story to tell?

 Have a “lesson learned” or a writing/publishing/editing/marketing trick you’d like to share with your fellow MWSA member-authors?

 Thank you!

 2019 Season’s Final Stretch—Heading to the Awards Banquet

As everyone knows, we announced our finalists earlier this month and will be broadcasting the final medal results during the awards banquet in Albuquerque (Saturday, 9/14). If you can’t join us in Albuquerque, we plan to broadcast the awards ceremony live on our Facebook Public Page: https://www.facebook.com/MWSA.MembersPublic.

 If you participated in this year’s awards season, and haven’t already had a chance to go over the applicable instructions/recommendations provided in our “Now What?” series of articles, please have a look.

 https://www.mwsadispatches.com/now-what-main

 For all awards finalists: Please remember that our awards packages include materials for one author. If you have a co-author or collaborator and would like them to be recognized along with you and receive a medal, certificate, or book stickers (either presented during the awards ceremony or mailed later), please have a look at the details provided in the article for finalists above.

 2020 Awards Season

January 15 and the 2020 Season will be here soon—after all, aren’t you surprised that your calendar is about to flip over to September? 😊 

 Due to record-breaking demand for our review and award services, we had to close our book submission window several times during this past season. We expect that 2020 will be as busy or even busier, so please consider joining our reviewer team!

 You can read as few or as many books as you like, and you get to pick the ones you want to read and evaluate.  Our process for assigning review copies to reviewers is “a la carte”—where each reviewer picks from the available list.