March 21, 2026 @ 9:30AM Pacific Time presented by Jonathan Maberry Whether it’s a fantasy realm, an alien world, an unknown past, an apocalyptic future, or our very own planet Earth, the ‘world’ of any story should be real, interesting, unique, and useful. Building these worlds, including variations of our own can enrich any story and even serve as a kind of character. NY Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry will take you through fun and surprisingly easy steps to show how to build the perfect world that will bring your story to life. JONATHAN MABERRY is a NYTimes bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, 4-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, poet, and comic-book writer. He writes in multiple genres: suspense, thriller, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action. V-WARS (Netflix) was based on his books/comics; Alcon is developing his teen post-apocalyptic novels for film; and Chad Stahelski, director of JOHN WICK, is developing his bestselling Joe Ledger thrillers for TV. Marvel’s BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER was partly based on his work. He’s president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of Weird Tales Magazine.

The CLMP is an incredible resources for both writers and publishers. Their Calls for Submission section usually has pages of publishers you can submit to and you can even sort the list by genre and type. https://www.clmp.org Click here to go directly to their Calls for Submissions section.

If you want to learn how to gain readers, win over editors, and build a long-term writing career. Authors Publish Magazine offers lectures and workshops in addition to their magazine. Best of all it's FREE to sign up for their newsletter and receive a list of submission calls twice a month! https://www.authorspublish.com

February 21, 2026 @ 9:30AM Pacific Time presented by Steve Capone Jr. Whether you are prepping your first short story submission or looking to sharpen your professional edge, the submission circuit can be a bit of a maze, and there's always more even a pro can learn. This session will pull back the curtain on how editors filter submissions and show you how to give your work a competitive edge in a crowded market. Using Whisper House Press’s current open call for DOOM SCROLL (a social media horror anthology) as a live case study, Steve will provide a look from behind the editor’s desk. Whether you are finishing your first flash fiction piece or are an established author looking to pivot into new markets, this intensive, hands-on workshop will provide the roadmap you need for your next submission. Steve Capone, Jr. (M.A., M.S.) is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and publisher. In its first two years of operation, Capone's Whisper House Press has released horror anthologies Costs of Living , Dread Mondays , and Year One , earning four spots on the Bram Stoker Award Recommended Reading list for 2025 and nominating six stories for the Pushcart Prize. His own fiction includes a host of anthology shorts and the League of Utah Writers' Gold Quill-winning Max in the Capital of Spies . Steve previously provided editorial assistance on the DVWG's  Menagerie and looks forward to the Guild's next project! Here's a link to his presentation.

January 17, 2026 @ 9:30AM Pacific Time presented by Jana S. Brown You’ve finished writing your rough draft! Congratulations! Now what are you going to do? Before going out into the world, every manuscript needs a little love from its creator in the form of self-editing and revision. However, that can be a daunting task. Where do you begin? Join author and editor, Jana S. Brown, at her virtual table and learn the Steps to Self-Editing. Smooth out structure, plotlines, character arcs, and continuity while eliminating grammatical mistakes and wordiness to make your manuscript shine. Jana S. Brown entered the world of publishing in the mid-90s and has never looked back. She’s worked as a journalist, fiction writer, technical writer, editor, presenter, author coach, course creator, conference committee member, and a host of other positions. She’s assisted in the creation of bestselling and award-winning novels in the self-publishing space as well as working as an editor with small presses and as an acceptance editor for Book Cave, a book promotion company. She has over twenty books published across three pennames, as well as a host of newspaper articles (over 100 with the Deseret News alone!) and award-winning anthology tales. She runs Opal Kingdom Press , a small press and adores helping other creators reach their goals. Her amazing family and fuzzy sidekicks provide her with support, inspiration, and amusement, sometimes not in that order.

October 18, 2025 facilitated by Jessica Bruce Elections will be held for the President , and Treasurer  positions on the Board of Directors. Then we wrap up another amazing year of meetings with our 6th Annual Prose Readings. Just like our April Poetry, this is an opportunity for members to share your hard work and creativity with the entire guild! Click here for submission guidelines.

What is an ISBN? An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a 13-digit number that uniquely identifies a specific edition of a book or book-like product. It is used by publishers, booksellers, and libraries for ordering, sales, and inventory control, with different versions (like hardcover, paperback, or audiobook) all having their own ISBNs. A lot of self-publishing services, such as Ingram Spark , Draft2Digital , Amazon , and others offer FREE ISBN numbers... DON'T DO IT! By using a FREE ISBN number provided by those services, they own the publishing rights for your book! You still own the copyright, but you cannot publish your book through any other provider. Only ever use the free ISBN's if that is the only provider you're ever planning to use! So where do you get your own ISBN numbers? In the United States... visit a site called Bowker where you can purchase your own ISBNs under their Publisher Services section.

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) is the venerable, time-tested guide to style, usage, and grammar. It is an indispensable reference for writers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers, informing the editorial canon with sound, definitive advice. It is available in a convenient online version, or you can purchase the manual. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org

Though we lost the ability to have user profiles linked to Member Books, we have re-enabled user profiles. The Member Directory can be found under the MEMBERSHIP menu. You can set your user profile to private or public! This setting can be found under MY ACCOUNT. We've also added some automation forms to make things easier for the volunteers managing the website and shout outs. We've simplified adding a Member Book, you can now simply cut & paste the URL to where your book can be purchased and we can crawl the site and extract the title, blurb, publication date and cover. How easy is that? If you have some older books you would like added to the site, you can add them also. Recently published books and those available for pre-order will automatically be included in the monthly Shout Out! Speaking of Shout Outs, we've also added a form for submitting your Shout Out. Menu items with *'s on them. You may have noticed there's several menu items that now have *'s on them. This is because you MUST be logged in to access those pages, if you're not logged in, you'll be redirected to the login page. There are a few reasons behind this. First, many people seemed to forget they had an account already on the site and then went and created yet another account for this years renewal. This makes things messy and a bit difficult to manage, especially now that we've turned User Profiles back on. Second, by having menu items it reminds people of things they may not always remember. Third, by requiring log in for certain pages, like forms, some of your information will be automatically pre-filled in for you. Resources Most of us belong to multiple writing groups, but we still love this one the most. So we're trying to mimic some of the better ones by providing resources to help writers of all levels. There's not much in there right now, but if there is a resource you find helpful, tell us about it and we'll look into it. It could be a software program, website service, or anything that might be of value to the community. Our resources section will be comprised of suggestions from fellow members.

Your member profile page is shown to any visitors that click on something you wrote, such as comments you make on a meeting page or any blog post on the site. The more you interact with the site, the more likely your profile is to be seen! All we ask is that you please refrain from the 3-P's... No Politics, Proselytizing, or Pornography! Also, we are writers, please check your spelling and use proper grammar and capitalization. Also once you add any links, please test them to make sure they work. A. Display Name - Think of this as your pen name, this is the actual name that gets displayed to the public. We highly recommend using the name that people would see on any books you publish. You can change the display name at any time. B. Title - You could use this field to tell people something else about yourself. Such as Author, or a degree, or your military rank. C. First Name - Your actual real first name that people would call you when speaking to you at an event. All of the following fields are completely optional. Simply leave them blank if you don't want to use them. D. Last Name - Your last name E. City, State - Our members span the globe, it's nice to see where people are from. Please include your city and state (or province). F. Web Site - A website is an author's ultimate toolbox. Social media accounts are popular, but their content is fleeting. An author website provides one-stop for any fans to find out everything about your books, or other scrivenings. A site that you can always control. G. Other Social - There are fields for links to Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube, but there are so many other social sites you may have a presence on. If you use other social sites, you can link one of them here. As mentioned, an author website should contain links to ALL your social media sites. H. Facebook - You can cut & paste the complete URL to your Facebook profile. I. Twitter - Now known as X, you can cut & paste the URL to your X profile. J. Instagram - You can cut & paste the URL to your Instagram profile. K. Pinterest - You can cut & paste the URL to your Pinterest profile. L. LinkedIn - You can cut & paste the URL to your LinkedIn profile. M. YouTube - You can cut & paste the URL to your YouTube page. You can also click on the camera icons in the profile image and on the profile header to upload custom images and graphics to make your profile page look uniquely yours.

What is a Shout Out? A shout out is a public announcement of some accomplishment in your writing journey, whether you're a beginning writer or an accomplished author. Your membership to the Diamond Valley Writers' Guild leverages the strength of our mailing list to recognize our members and share your success. When is the Shout Out sent? There is no set schedule, but the shout out is sent around the end of the month. The deadline for the next shout out is announced at the monthly meeting! Did you publish a book? There is a menu option under the Member Books page to Add Member Book. Simply log in and fill out the form. It's super easy, all you need to do is cut & paste a link to the Amazon, Books2Read or any URL that has your book available for purchase or pre-order. Only recently published books or those available for pre-order will make it into the Shout Outs. Can I "shout out" other writing-related news? Sure, we always like to share our member successes. We just require a link to include so people can visit the blog, site or announcement. Some examples that we allow are... You've been short-listed for, or won an award for something you wrote. You wrote an educational writing-related blog post. You have a scheduled book launch event happening at a location. You will be presenting at an event or attending a writing event. By all means tell others of the event as they may be interested. Who can send Shout Outs? All active members are welcome to submit Shout Outs. How can I submit a Shout Out? We go through shout outs during our monthly meetings, but if you want your shout out distributed to our mailing list, simply log in and fill out the shout out form . If you're not currently a member of Diamond Valley Writers Guild, why not become a member and enjoy the perks of membership?

As a writers' guild, we are here to help authors and writers along their path. Many people look at this as a daunting task, but there are lots of resources available to help you along the way, or you can always just ask someone that's done it. Some people say the first step to becoming an author is to figure out what type of author you want to be. As someone that's been using the Internet before Google, or even the world-wide-web for that matter... don't worry about your author identity, you can figure that out as you go. Just like the homesteaders, the first step is to claim your place on the world wide web. Register Your Domain If you haven't already done this, you need to do this as soon as possible , even if you're not an author or writer. Domains don't cost that much, but it protects your home on the Internet, indefinitely. Try to get a .com, but there are many other domain extensions available and they aren't all the same price, some can be a bit pricey. Why? Your future is unwritten, maybe someday you'll need to raise funds for something, maybe you'll run for office, maybe you'll become an author and publish a book. Fame or infamy can happen in an instant! If you suddenly gain popularity and don't already own your domain name, others WILL register a domain for your name, allowing them to do anything they want with it and it may not be in your best interests. Sure, they may sell it back to you... for a significant profit, but they could also use it for nefarious purposes. For the more nefarious stuff, sure you can get it removed, but then there's legal costs and it will take some time. It's far easier to direct someone to "firstnamelastname" or "firstname-lastname", than to redirect them to "myname-author" or "mywritingplace". You are welcome to add a middle initial to your name, just make sure the domain name matches the name you publish your writing under. In the event that you have a popular name and can't register your name or any iterations of it, maybe consider writing under a pen name?! If you do have a popular name and you think there's tons of "myname" out there, but the domain name is still available... grab it!  Having a popular name and having the base domain for that name is golden. It will sure help people find you when they search for you. The biggest reason is that YOUR domain is always under YOUR control!  You can do anything you want with it and it will follow you no matter where you go in life. Even if you only have a Facebook page, most domain registrars allow you to FORWARD your domain, so you can tell people to go to " yourname " instead of that long domain name to go direct to your Facebook page. Then when a new, best, social platform becomes your favourite, you can just redirect your domain name to that and all the previous footprint building you've done is not lost! Although, you really should have a website/webpage. Where do you register a domain name? Some hosting services, like Wix, SquareSpace, Weebly, etc allow you to register your domain name directly through them when you create a website with those services. We DO NOT recommend doing this , because it locks you into their service. Sure, they may offer you a free year of domain registration, but it often creates problems in the future if you ever want to move away from that service. The Diamond Valley Writers' Guild uses and recommends GoDaddy.com , they're one of the largest domain registrars on the Internet and they have a good DNS management system (Domain Name Services), and you can build/host your website with them as well if you choose. NOTE: Kevin Kindle, our webmaster, also runs a hosting company called Dawn Patrol Publishing , so he can help register your domain name, or answer any questions you have and can often assist you with email or a website, if you want. Create your Author Site Even if you don't have anything published, you need to begin establishing your online footprint. You don't need to spend $$$ to create a professional website, there are free alternatives out there, plus most domain providers have the ability to do domain forwarding. You can get started with a service like Wix  for free (they put a small ad at the top of your site), but then when you can afford it, you can easily upgrade to one of their Premium Plans and then watch for their 50% deals and lock your site in for three years cheaper than most of the other pay sites. Social Media Platforms Hopefully, you're not putting all your effort into a single social media platform as your readers and future fans probably use multiple platforms. Just like having a domain name, you should probably try to establish at least some presence on the most popular ones. Then, even as a basic author website, you can make a single page website that contains a contact form and a list of the social media platforms they can find you on. Build Your Brand There's a number of ways to build your brand, the trick is to always do them and make them habit! Email Address Now that you have your own domain name so, just like the website, you should use it to create an email address for your writing. Having an email address on your own domain name, means you will never lose control of it! Using an email address that is NOT your domain name can work, but if it gets hacked, you may lose it and all your brand building is kaput! Having an email with your domain name also helps direct traffic to your website! Email Signature Make sure the email address you use for your writing has an email signature that includes a TEXT link to your Author Website. Avoid putting links to all your social sites... the more links you include in an email the higher the chances are that your message will get marked as spam. This is what your author website is for, it is your HOME , under your control , that is linked to everything you want the public to access on the Internet. Business Cards If you attend events with other writers, it's always a good idea to bring business cards. These business cards should point people to your domain name, so they can always find you. I would warn against advertising email addresses, unless the email address uses the domain name that you control. If you don't have an email address under your domain, then just advertise your domain name and let them use a contact form or whatever other information you have on your website. I would also advise against advertising your phone number or mailing address, if you really want someone to have that information... write it on the card for them! That's why the back of the card should be plain white paper (not glossy)... it's easy to write on! Oh, and always carry a pen or three! You can have stuff printed on the back, but leave space to write. We hope this guide helps you establish your digital author footprint. If you have any questions, feel free to email DVWritersGuild@gmail.com .