8:00 - 10:00 pm: Official Welcome & Ice Breaker Activities - The zanier, the better! When Debra Dixon was guest author, we were all "Star Warped" — abducted to a galaxy very close by and enslaved as scribes by the Evil Harlequin Empire. "Murder at Gull Lake" involved "poisoning" guest author Eileen Dreyer with "Korbel" champagne (she made a very convincing corpse) and then detecting which of her envious literary colleagues did her in. This year...who knows?

9:15 - 11:30 am: Cindy Dees, "A Master Class in Writing" — Cindy will share advanced tools for plotting, characterization, conflict, thematic development, settings, research, and editing. Bring pen and paper and be prepared to lift your current work-in-progress to a whole new level by the end of this session!

1:00 - 2:00 pm: Book Sale and Autographing — attendees only. We'll have Waldenbooks there with their terrific selection of books and reference materials, and authors will be available for signing attendees’ books. Our authors will also bring their own books to sell.

2:00 - 3:30 pm: Cindy Dees, "A Master Class in Characterization" — Cindy will focus entirely on advanced techniques in characterization. Learn a seven-layer method for developing characters that your readers will never forget. Come with pen and paper and be prepared to flesh out the characters in your current work-in-progress to a whole new level of depth and believability.

4:30 - 6:00 pm: Book Basket Raffle, Silent & Live Auctions with proceeds going to Kalamazoo YWCA Anti-Violence Services.