Spring Break Writers Games!

Take a day of your Spring Break to hang out with other awesome young writers in the area. Play games, win prizes, and challenge your mad writing skills! We have two age levels and lots of different games, so there's a game day for everyone.

We Awesome Writers Spring Break Games is for ages 13-18. Games on the menu are Speed Writing, Pass the Plot, Story Scavenger Hunt, and Picture a Quest. Lots of fun and yummy prizes will be won!

2 "Awesome Writers" Dates - Come to one or both!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Time: 5:00-9:00 p.m.
Location: Panera Bread, 7344 North Academy Boulevard, Colorado Springs 80920
Cost: $20 per person

—OR—

Saturday, March 26
Time: 2:00-6:00 p.m.
Location: Agia Sophia Coffee Shop, 2902 W Colorado Avenue, Colorado Springs 80904
Cost: $23 per person, includes a specialty drink from Agia Sophia!

Super Writers Spring Break Games is for ages 8-12. Games on the menu are Word Wars and The One-Word Story Game. Plus we'll create blank books for you to write stories in later. Lots of fun and yummy prizes will be won!

"Super Writers" Date & Time

Thursday, March 24, 2011
Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Location: Panera Bread, 3120 New Center Point, Colorado Springs 80922
Cost: $10 per person

Hope you can make to the games!
Questions? Email mangycat (at) gmail (dot) com or make your reservation online below:

Good Reads Review: Kenny & the Dragon by Tony DiTerlizzi

Kenny & the Dragon
by Tony DiTerlizzi

What a wonderful story of friendship between two unlikely friends! DiTerlizzi's illustrations add so much to the story. Quick read for an adult, appropriately challenging read for a young reader. Nicely paced and thoroughly enchanting. My rating: 5 of 5 stars

More Mangy GoodReads Reviews

Young Writers Workshops

These young writers workshops run for 6 weeks with 2-hour sessions each week, held at a local coffee shop or cafe. Together, the group brainstorms and writes a novella over the course of 6 weeks. Details on each group:

INKLINGS
Ages 9-12, Beginners
Wednesday mornings, time/location varies

INKAHOLICS
Ages 13-18, Intermediate-Advanced
Saturday mornings, time/location varies

Cost is $65 for the entire 6-week workshop. Students have the option of purchasing a final, printed copy of the novella through Lulu.com after the workshop ends.

If you have any questions, or if you're interested in attending a workshop--great! Shoot me an email (mangycat (at) gmail (dot) com) to let me know. I'll answer your questions, let you know about the next workshop dates, and/or we can talk about forms of payment at that time.

You may also want to keep an eye on this blog, as I will be posting all the details on upcoming workshops. Online workshops are in the planning stages, so if you live outside the Colorado Springs area, we may still have an option for you!

Thank you for taking the time to consider these workshops for you or the young writers in your life.

Free Church Wi-Fi

One of our pastors recently made this request: Can we make a Sunday morning announcement slide that has the following message on it: Connect your wireless device using the "[network name]” wireless access point. The logon is: “[password]”

I love how I can always assume that "we" actually means "you." XD We must learn how to be perceptive in this job.

Anyway, I had way too much fun with this and delivered a snarky and non-snarky version of the requested slide.

Non-snarky:

Snarky:

Inkaholics Workshop I, Day 1

We had our first session of the first incarnation of the Young Writers Workshops last Saturday. The three girls in attendance were brilliant and had a great time. Much laughter was had, and the creativity was flowing in full force.



We decided to write a contemporary fantasy about three teens who all go to the same school. The two boys are best friends and meet the new girl on the first day of school. As it turns out, she's a duchess from another realm. Sounds intriguing, eh? Chapter 1 is written, and chapter 2 is homework for the week. I can't wait to read what everyone writes this week!

Parting Shot
Isn't it against against the law NOT to take a goofy picture when a group is posing?

A Novel Written on Twitter

An absolutely fascinating writing project is going on right now--on Twitter. Adam Palmer is writing a novel called Space Available for Marcher Lord Press this year, which will be composed completely on Twitter. He isn't writing it in Word and copy-pasting it into the status bar. No, he is actually composing every line in Twitter, within the parameters of 140 characters per post.

This is going to call for some seriously tight writing--of which I am a huge fan. I read through the entirety of his novel-in-progress tonight. It's a science fiction, and right off the bat, an Artificial Intelligence lifeform is a part of the dialogue. Oh my. Could it get any better?

I'm going to have a lot of fun following this project through the year. What a novel idea! If you want to follow Adam Palmer's Space Available as it is being composed, you can do so as well @AdamAuthor.

Live Sketch App

There's a drawing app for the iPhone (and iPod Touch, which I have) called LiveSketch. I was able to download it for free and have been having quite a fun time with it! It's unlike any other drawing app I have ever tried. The images it creates are quite unique. Here are a couple of mine:



Below is a Japanese artist drawing an anime character on an iPad with the same app. (Obviously he's a lot more talented at this than I am!)

Evangeline's New Site

I'm working on a new website for my friend Evangeline. It's an author site for her to use primarily as a marketing tool right now. She'll take it on as a full-fledged author site eventually, but we're starting small for now. Awaiting approval on the initial design:

Upcoming Young Writers Workshops

I am thrilled to let you know about an opportunity for young writers that will be offered beginning the second full week of January. Please feel free to pass this on to any young writers you know who might be interested in being a part of a group writing project.

Two young writers workshops will run for 6 weeks with 2-hour sessions each week, held at a local coffee shop or cafe. Together, the group will brainstorm and write a novella over the course of 6 weeks. Details on each group:

INKLINGS
Ages 9-12, Beginners
Wednesday mornings, 10-Noon
Einstein Bros. Bagels
Begins January 12, 2011

INKAHOLICS
Ages 13-18, Intermediate-Advanced
Saturday mornings, 9:00-11:00 a.m.
Panera Bread (S Carefree & Powers)
Begins January 15, 2011

Cost is $65 for the entire 6-week workshop. Students will have the option of purchasing a final, printed copy of the novella after the workshop ends.

If you have any questions, or if you're interested in attending a workshop--great! Shoot me an email (mangycat (at) gmail (dot) com) to let me know. I'll answer your questions and/or we can talk about forms of payment at that time.

Thank you for taking the time to consider these workshops for you or the young writers in your life.

Blessings on your week!

RAFL-LOL Blog Design

My friend Donita asked me to spruce up her literacy advocacy blog, RAFL-LOL, which is an acronym for "Reading Aloud For Literacy - Lots of Learning". Blogger has some fantastic template backgrounds these days, you just have to find the right one and give it a few tweaks to personalize.

At that point, all they need is a special header graphic to complete the scene. So this is what I came up with for Donita:



Check out the blog here.