Next HSW Meeting 

Saturday May 10th at 11 am at
Raleys ONE Supermarket on Wedge Parkway in the Community Room

Agenda for May

Company Business
Shameless Self-Promotion
World Building from a Professional Builder
Micro Building with Matt

First Pages

Learn more about World Building 

Narrative Design is the same for a novel as it is for a game! From games like Baldur’s Gate 3 with its almost 2 million lines of dialog and both God of War & Ghost of Tsushima’s intensive, exploratory narrative, there’s more overlap than ever with games and novels, with games masterfully snaring its audiences with setting and design. There’s a lot to learn that can help you reach new audiences, or keep them reading once they’ve taken the hook, or hook them in the first place.

About Gregory Wunderlin:
Gregory is an author and game designer. He’s worked—and published—multiple products for Dungeons and Dragons, as a designer for Mythcraft, and has a slew of freelancing credits. He’s developed games and related worlds for almost two decades and currently works as the Head Writer for Camp Dragon, a table top gaming company, creating narrative content and worldbuilding for the company’s unique setting. He’s also a professional Game Master, meaning people pay him to run games. His Fantasy novel, The Soul of Chaos, has been praised for its worldbuilding by both Literary Titan and IndieReader.

FIRST PAGES

Matt will be doing First Pages at the Maymeeting. If you would like to get feedback on the first page of your work from the group, then send it to Matt (MattBayan@aol.com) before 6 pm by Friday, May 9th. The page should be double-spaced in Times New Roman or equivalent 12 pt type. Do not include your name on the page but do include the genre. 

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GUEST OR TOPIC IDEAS!
If you have a topic area you’d like covered or know of someone you’d like to have as a guest speaker at an upcoming meeting, please drop a line to board@highsierrawriters.org

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From the President:

WORST PAGE

I like to occasionally watch a movie that I know will be bad, but I watch it anyway. My reason is that I can learn more about plot, character, pacing etc. from a bad movie than I can from a mediocre movie. Why? Because it’s easier to see the extremes.

We’re going to analyze a first page in the April meeting that is the worst first page I have ever seen. Talk about extremes. Don’t worry. The page is not from one of our members. Don’t miss this educational experience. (and the good laugh you’ll get)

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Change in Price for 2025 Dues

Annual dues are $5 for 2025

If you haven’t paid your 2025 dues yet, they are now overdue. Please renew, especially if you are in a critique group and find it valuable. If you’re not sure if you’ve renewed, contact Rene at RPAverett@gmail.com and she will check your status.

You can pay them online using this payment link for PayPal: $5-for-25
or send a check to:
High Sierra Writers
PO BOX 17205 – RENO NV 89511
     (Please let us know by email to board@highsierrawriters.org if you mail it in, so we can check the mailbox.)

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Drop-in Critique Group at B&N

Due to a five-week month, the Barnes and Noble drop-in critique group will be meeting May 7th and May 21st this month at 6pm.

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CHANGE CAN BE A GOOD THING…

Linda Enos
w/a Lynda Bailey

2025 is proving to be a year of change for me, both personally and with my writing. I’m in a serious hunt for a narrator, wanting to put at least two, possibly three, of my books onto audio this year. Changes are happening with our adult son which will be of benefit not just him, but his mom and dad as well. Change is also coming to my role with High Sierra Writers.

Since its creation, back in, I believe, 2014, I’ve been a part of HSW and before that, Unnamed Writers. I’ve been president, co-president, secretary and now critique group wrangler. For basically the past 25 years+, I’ve been involved in one form or another and feel it’s time for me to take a giant step back. Thus, I won’t be continuing as the wrangler for critique groups, effective May 1^st.

This means we’re in need of someone to handle the duties of helping to form new critique groups and/or match writers with existing groups.

Is the work hard? No. Is it time consuming? No, but the position does require a certain level of participation. Emails need to be returned in a timely manner. Questions need to be answered and if you don’t have the answer, you need to find out who does. You should also have a diplomatic bent to your personality in case conflicts arise within or between groups. In my time as Wrangler, there’d never been a situation which needed my intervention, which was good as diplomacy really isn’t one of my stronger traits. 😊

If you’re thinking about becoming more involved with HSW, being the critique group wrangler is a great, low-pressure position to try out. If you have any questions, or want additional info, feel free to email me at Lynda.r.bailey@gmail.com.

Lastly, while I’ll be stepping away from “official” duties, I won’t be leaving HSW.
Y’all just ain’t gonna be that lucky. 😉
L.

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HSW Writers’ Success Stories

High Sierra Writers has quite a few published writers in the group. We have a page featuring the various books grouped by author under genre. These are under HSW Authors link. As our authors release new books, we’ll feature them here. If you have a release coming up, send me your press release to RPAverett@gmail.com.

Last month, Mark Bacon released his next Nostalgia City Mysteries book, The Woke and the Dead, the fifth book in the series. Coincidentally, Mark was at the Left Coast Crime Mystery Convention when the book released. He was on one of the panels, so he had a chance to hold it up and say, “My new book.” Congratulations to Mark. 

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