HWA SFV – MINUTES OF JULY MEETING

The meeting was held on Sunday, July 9th, 2006 at 6 p.m., at Dark Delicacies Present were: Guest Jace Anderson, guest Adam Gierasch, Del Howison, Courtney Joyner, guest Tom McNamara, Lisa Morton, John Palisano, Alex Sokoloff, and guest James (?).

After the June minutes were read and discussed, the meeting discussed some news items from the parent organization, including upcoming elections and chapter organization. For our guests, we discussed our chapter rules and general HWA membership requirements.

We further discussed HWA SFV presence at local book events. It was suggested that perhaps we could issus a chapbook/magazine/newsletter that could be given away at events to promote our chapter, and that perhaps we could blog directly from conventions. We discussed how Sisters in Crime organizes their book event appearances, with scheduled signings, giveaway postcards, etc. We would like to have a presence at the 2008 BookExpo, which will be held in Los Angeles, and would like to have a presence at next year’s UCLA Festival of Books.

We also discussed again the idea of featured speakers at meetings, and the suggestion was made that perhaps these speakers could be from professions that might be of interest to horror writers (i.e., policemen, coroners, etc.).

We discussed again that one of the chapter’s main goals is to emphasize camaraderie, and to that end a social event such as a mixer was suggested. We discussed a venue that might offer us both a large, semi-private room and food and drink, and decided on the Eclectic in North Hollywood. We chose a date of August 26^th (Saturday night) and Jace volunteered to make the reservation.

We also again suggested the idea of a writing topic to be discussed at each meeting. Ideas included: Screenwriting vs. novels, and pitching (to agents). We decided to discuss work habits and procrastination at our next meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 8:30 p.m.

Minutes prepared and submitted by Lisa Morton