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Find out the tricks of the trade, whether you’re a new author or have 100 books published to your credit.

J.D. Dudycha believes the best stories are written with characters overcoming real life struggles and everyone deserves a shot a redemption.

After a long stay in the baseball world, both as a player and a coach, J.D. has turned to his real passion, creating gritty, in-your-face characters who leap off the page and ooze practicality. You can’t help but continue to read because you don’t know where the story will take you next.

J.D. spends his time with his wife and children in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado. When he is able to step away from the world of writing fiction, he enjoys golf and fly fishing, and he never met a mountain he didn’t want to climb or an ocean he didn’t want to explore.

His inspiration is drawn from many different authors. Some of his favorites are C.S. Lewis, Clive Cussler, Vince Flynn, Dan Brown, and Lee Child. www.jddudycha.com

Does the thought of beginning and maintaining a blog overwhelm you? Come listen as Jeanne Takenaka shares the nitty-gritty on setting up and maintaining your own blog, plus tips for successful blogging. She’ll also share some benefits of creating your own space in the internet world. If you’ve thought about beginning a blog but you aren’t sure how to start, this workshop may answer some of your questions.

Award winning aspiring novelist, Jeanne Takenaka, writes contemporary inspirational fiction that tackles real life issues with a heart to draw women closer to God and those around them. She lives near the mountains in Colorado with her amazing husband and two exuberant boy-men. She loves being God’s girl—always learning about His grace, hanging out with friends and enjoying a great cup of coffee. When she’s not writing you can find her with a camera in her hand, looking for #alittlebitofpretty in her days. You can connect with her on her blog, on Facebook and on Twitter

Newsletter growth, development, and onboarding series: Bestselling author Hallee Bridgeman will explain how she grew her newsletter more than 300% to more than 3500 subscribers with a greater than 80% open rate in just a year, how she creates it, what information goes into it. She will go into depth with what her newsletter onboarding series looks like, and how that engages her readers to inspire a higher open rate.

With over half a million sales, Hallee Bridgeman is a best-selling Christian author who writes action-packed romantic suspense focusing on realistic characters who face real world problems. Her work has been described as everything from refreshing to heart-stopping exciting and edgy. Hallee loves coffee, campy action movies, and regular date nights with her husband. Above all else, she loves God with all of her heart, soul, mind, and strength; has been redeemed by the blood of Christ; and relies on the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide her.

Stories are woven of many threads. Author and Carol Award winner Jane Kirkpatrick looks for four threads that bind plot, character and theme together: Landscape, Relationships, Spirituality and Work. With discussion and short exercises she’ll show how characters stories can be deepened, the landscape and setting add to the joy or drama or suspense, identify why work is so important to characters and what it can unveil about a character and finally and perhaps most importantly, how a character’s spiritual journey and faith-life helps readers discover their own longings and deepening faith. Jane presented a version of this workshop over four days at the Oregon Christian Writer’s Conference in 2016.

Stories are woven of many threads. Author and Carol Award winner Jane Kirkpatrick looks for four threads that bind plot, character and theme together: Landscape, Relationships, Spirituality and Work. With discussion and short exercises she’ll show how characters stories can be deepened, the landscape and setting add to the joy or drama or suspense, identify why work is so important to characters and what it can unveil about a character and finally and perhaps most importantly, how a character’s spiritual journey and faith-life helps readers discover their own longings and deepening faith. Jane presented a version of this workshop over four days at the Oregon Christian Writer’s Conference in 2016.

Learn how to present your book idea with confidence and professionalism to make the most of a 10-minute pitch appointment during a conference. If time allows, Tez will walk us through creating a one-sheet, so bring your laptop.

Award-winning author and international speaker, Tez Brooks, writes on family issues, with his work appearing in Guideposts, The Upper Room, CBN.com, Clubhouse, Focus on the Family, and Cru.org. His editorials are featured regularly on Jesusfilm.org and seen by over 20k readers each month.

Tez's book, The Single Dad Detour (Kregel) was winner for the 2016 Royal Palm Literary Awards. His comedic screenplay Jangled, won 2016 Best Short Film in Florida at CENFLO. His literary works have won awards with Jerry Jenkins' Christian Writers Guild, Florida Christian Writer's Conference and Florida Writer's Association.

Tez is a mentor of Word Weavers International. He and his wife serve as full-time missionaries with Cru. They have four children and live in Colorado Springs. You can learn more at TezBrooks.com.

Learn to organize Scrivener projects with color, customize the toolbar, and use the corkboard and outliner to plot with ease. Attendees will learn to revise with Scrivener’s special features and format the screen in ways you never before imagined. Helpful for all levels of Scrivener experience.

I'm a homeschool mom, desperate for more time to write. I love to encourage other writers, and share what I've learned so far. I'm finishing my second novel and researching my third, I'm a freelance writer and editor, and I homeschool four teenagers. They're the reason I write while the rice boils.

Does your manuscript feel flat? Readers crave an emotional reading experience. Exploiting subtext will hook your reader page by page, engaging them in the story to a much greater depth than on-the-nose writing. As readers try to figure out what’s really being said, and the real intent behind the characters’ actions and dialogue, they connect at a deeper, subconscious level with the story. In this workshop, you'll learn what subtext is, and how to use it intentionally in your plot, in the internal states of your characters, through their relationships and various forms of dialogue, and through symbols. Time permitting, in class demos will help participants immediately put the techniques to work in their own stories. Participants are encouraged to bring a page of dialogue from their own writing to class.

Sandra Orchard is winner of the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence, in addition to several Canadian Christian writing awards. Best known for her laugh-out-loud whodunit series featuring art-crime agent Serena Jones, she’s also written the Port Aster Secrets series with Revell Publishing, numerous cozy mysteries with Annie’s Fiction and seven novels in Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense collection. A former teacher and home educator, Sandra enjoys conducting writing workshops. When not plotting crimes, Sandra hones her imagination by playing make-believe with her growing tribe of young grandchildren. She lives in Niagara, Ontario, Canada. Connect with Sandra at: www.sandraorchard.com.

Deluged by stressful circumstances? Suffocated by a life-altering event? Is it possible to reclaim the oxygen of motivation to stay afloat and to write, when you're drowning and don't know how to swim? At one point or another, rogue waves will wipe out a writer's world, washing away their desires, designs, and dreams to write. Scoti Domeij takes a hard look at how to write while submerged by life's tsunamis. When swallowed by a monster billow, discover how the salty psychology of seismic circumstances unleashes a tsunami of words.

Regardless of the genre, readers want stories that are more than just surface excursions into the imagination. In this class, we'll learn about using subplots to add tension; flesh out characters; and offer a distraction from the main story that serves as a kind of red herring.

Bio: Donna lives in Denver with husband Patrick. She writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 25 times in novellas and full-length novels. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, and Sisters In Crime; facilitates a critique group, and teaches writing classes. Donna ghostwrites, edits, and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, and travels extensively for both. Donna is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.

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Conflict and obstacles are the last things any of us need in our everyday existence, so as authors we sometimes shelter our beloved characters to spare them the pain. Stop that. Stop it right now! No one wants to read a namby-pamby story about some person with a perfect life who lives in a perfect world. Conflict-riddled readers need conflict in their stories because they need victory - even if it's someone else's.

Join us for a hands-on workshop presented by Davalynn Spencer (no fisticuffs, we promise) on how to be a trouble-maker.