In this episode, we’re talking with William Bernhardt, a novelist with more than 60 books and co-host of WriterCon writers' conference in Oklahoma City over Labor Day weekend (Sept. 1-4, 2023). We’ll hear what’s planned for this year’s conference and why you want to be there!

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Hello and welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast.

I'm Christopher Maselli, and I'm here with my wife Gena.

How's it going, Gena?

It's going really good.

It's actually going great because we have a special guest today that we've

been pretty excited about getting on here, and have been talking about

for a few years about inviting on.

Yes.

So this is a special day for us.

Absolutely.

Our special guest is William Bernhardt.

He's the bestselling author of more than 60 books that includes Shameless,

the Daniel Pike Legal Thrillers.

Two historical novels, two books of poetry, 10 books in the Red

Sneaker Writer series, which are really great craft books.

And he's also the host of the WriterCon podcast and a co-host of the WriterCon

Writers Conference, which we're partnered with too, in Oklahoma City over Labor

Day weekend, September 1st through 4th.

Oh my goodness, I gotta take a breath.

How's it going, Bill?

I'm doing great.

Good to see you guys.

Hey yeah, all you ever had to do was ask.

I'll be there.

Thank you.

Yeah, no we're so glad to have you.

This is good.

We've talked about WriterCon a few times on the podcast.

Quite a few, but we.

I would love to hear your thoughts on it too.

That's why we're so glad to have you here.

And I love being introduced as having over 60 books 'cause it's 61.

So that is, no, that shoulder, that was the 61st one just legit.

So saying over 60 for a long time.

Bill, you have been such a big asset to the writing community

and especially with WriterCon.

And so I, we want you to tell us what is WriterCon and in your words?

WriterCon is many things.

It was originally the annual conference that we put on now, didn't always have

that name, but that's what we call it now and it's every Labor Day weekend

in Oklahoma City, but of course is you already know we've expanded and

we're doing a cruise now every spring.

People are already signing up for the cruise in 2024, for Pete's sake.

And we just finished a small group retreat in Branson's and that was wonderful.

So I know we'll be doing that again.

But the big event is coming up in what, about five weeks?

I guess.

It's not far.

Yeah, it's not long from now at all.

It is coming up.

Tell us who, because I'm pretty excited about the keynote speakers and of course

all the great speakers who are coming.

So talk to us a little bit about who is gonna be there this year.

Sure.

We have more than 60 presenters, mostly authors, but also literary agents

more than we have ever had before.

And that's saying something at WriterCon and an increasing number of people,

I'm gonna call and publishers too, of course, but increasing number of

people I'm gonna call author assistants because there are so many people

looking for help whether they're traditionally published or self-published.

The reality of today and being a writer is you've gotta be involved

more than perhaps in previous areas, particularly in marketing and

publicity but other things as well.

People are hiring assistants because they're, that day when you just sit

in your recliner and in your pajamas and type all day, that's just not

the current writer life, right?

And so we got people to help with everything that might come up.

Our keynotes, which I'm pretty excited about, are Lisa Gardner,

who's of course number one New York Times bestselling author.

One of the top thriller writers in the world today, and one of my very favorites

too, we got Tosca Lee, who is also a number one New York Times bestselling

author who's done historical fiction and works drive from the Bible, like the

book on the Queen of Sheba and whatnot.

And we've also got Susan Meissner, who's, got also been very successful

new U S A today bestseller list.

So terrific lineup of people, and since the WriterCon conference is

basically Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we've got somebody to give a big keynote

address every day, which is perfect.

That's awesome.

And it's not just keynotes, right?

There's so many people actually speaking individual classes where you

can interact with the speakers, right?

And just soak it up and learn one-on-one.

This isn't just just like going to lectures, right?

This is really an interactive conference.

Right, very much.

We've got, of course, classes all day long.

More than 70 sessions of one kind or another 'cause of there are at least

four things going on at most times.

Plus, in the evenings we have the round tables where people can come

and chat in a more relaxed way or chatty way with people, every table

is designated to have some topics.

So if you're interested in this, you can sit, ask some questions, move

to another table later if you want.

And we've got a lot of fun stuff going on too and a lot of private opportunities.

I sometimes forget to mention 'cause I get so wrapped up in the

schedule and the classes, but people are also signing up for manuscript

reviews and private consultations.

The idea being that, you'll meet one-on-one with someone that you've

picked from a list of choices from the speakers at Writer Con, but you choose

and the person will, read the manuscript and you'll schedule a time during

the conference and meet with them for half an hour or so to talk about it.

Same thing for private consultation.

The only difference is that instead of actually reviewing a manuscript, you're

just talking about whatever it is.

We have an advantage because everybody involved in Writer Con

is serious professional who's been doing this for a while.

So you know, we know who the best people are.

I go to conferences all year long.

I know you do too.

I've been writing for more than 30 years, so I feel like I know what's what.

And that helps obviously because when we program things, we know who to look

for and where to go for top quality.

When I'm looking to choose people, my first qualification is

basically, are they a nice person?

Because I don't want any grumps of the conference.

And second, do they have the credentials to be speaking on this topic.

And I'm really proud of our lineup this year.

I think it's a terrific roster or faculty.

It really is.

And I think you've touched on it there.

I think one of the things that I love so much about WriterCon is how generous the

speakers and the people who come are.

How they are.

I know that I have stopped people after conference or after attending

a session just to ask 'em a question.

And I know other people will stop me after my sessions to ask questions.

And I just think there's this beautiful just, I don't wanna say camaraderie 'cause

that's probably not the right word, but it is just a really supportive environment

that I think Writer Con has and that that I think has been created there.

So that is just a beautiful thing, and I think that's so important

for new writers coming in.

For emerging writers to come in to feel like there's a space for them.

That's true.

I think sometimes when people are starting, everybody

feels a little bit insecure.

Do I have any idea what I'm doing here.

Do I have any talent?

Are people gonna laugh at me?

We've all been there, right?

But let me tell you, nobody at Writer Con's gonna laugh at you.

You hear me?

Every year of the opening what do you call that?

Orientation?

Talking about how look Writer Con is a family and we're all in this together.

And it's true.

You'll never find a better group of people who will.

Support you because we all want the same thing, right?

We want to write a good work and we wanna get it out there so other people

can read it and that's another benefit of the conference that you can't really

even put on the website that it's true.

People make friends, they build writing groups or critique groups and stay in

touch long after the conference is over.

One of the things I really enjoyed last year were those round tables, because

you got these, it's just a big round table, but with a topic on it, right?

And everyone who sits at that table is interested in that topic.

And boy, that discussion just started going and it didn't matter where,

whether it's, some people were, had been in the industry for 30 years, or

others that had never been in it, right?

They were just starting.

Everyone started to just share tips and tricks from their heart to

ask questions and provide answers.

It was really a nice give and take situation.

Collaborative.

It was collaborative that, that made everyone feel welcome and a part of it.

And it bridged that gap between the newbies and the professionals.

And it just made everyone writers right, and that was something special.

I thought that was a great addition last year and we're doing it again.

The only difference you learn as you go, we're still doing it, but this time we're

gonna put it in two different rooms, so it's not quite as noisy as it was.

It was noisy.

There were a lot of people in there.

Yeah.

No, we'll, we learned we're to do it differently.

It was still fun, but it was a little noisy after a while.

What else?

We do a lot of things in the evenings that are just pure fun.

We've got karaoke night, which I have never seen you at, Chris.

I bet you'd be really great.

I'm really not.

We've thought about bringing our daughter just because we're like,

she's a very good writer, but she's the singer in the family.

So we're like maybe we could bring her, we'll just do backup.

Oh, you need to, and we got open mic one night so people can read, their

poem or a selection of the work.

And at one point, we play games, we got jeopardy and it's just a fun time.

And of course we've got some new additional features this year too.

That's, I was just gonna ask you about that.

Tell us about what's new.

I didn't know if I should just roll right into, but two things

that I'm really excited about is this year we've added a fourth day.

In the past we've had Monday master classes.

One or two deep dives into a topic like the fiction.

We've got two fiction master classes, one taught by Lisa

Gardner, the other by Tosca Lee.

How great is that?

Wow.

Yeah.

And but on Monday, we're for the first time having what we're calling ReaderCon.

I'm embarrassed to say that I went through days of thinking,

Celebration of Books, Writers Unite.

Isn't the obvious companion for Writer Con.

It is Reader Con, but still it took me days to, but anyway, Monday is

a writer's conference, which is completely free and open to the

public, but the focus is different.

This is people who love to read books, have a chance to meet their authors.

Prominent.

Lisa will be there, Tosca will be there.

And 20 plus other people will be there.

You can get books autographed.

Plus we've got all kinds of fun things going on.

We've got oh gosh, I don't even know where to start.

We've got a contest.

We've got a mystery thing going on.

We've got panels all day long.

We've got a different exhibitor's room.

Safe haven is bringing rescue animals.

So people, yeah, people will have a chance to read bedtime stories

to a doggy and I, how can you read it and not wanna take 'em home?

So I'm hoping animals adopted too.

I love that.

That is a riot.

That'd be fun to see.

I love that.

And that is free to the public, so that Monday session.

Now, don't come for writing advice 'cause that's not what we'll be doing that day.

We'll be completely open to the public.

Another new thing, we're adding this here is Pitch Fest,

which is on Saturday at noon.

We've done pitching practices before and we still will just not during

the noon hour, but this idea, we're letting people make a, what's a bid?

What's the word?

Suggest that they'd be, wanna be a part of a pitch fest.

And the idea is that we get everybody in the room, all the agents, all the

publishers, assistants, influencers.

We've got some, TikTok or Instagram book reviewers coming

and pitch to everybody at once.

And you get five or six minutes on the stage and we will work

with you to help make the pitch as good as it can possibly be.

Lara and I went to the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, which was fun.

And I just thought, why can't we do something like this in books?

'cause the point of the is people to bring their indie films and try and get a

distributor, which is very similar to what authors do, except you're looking for a

publisher who will distribute your book.

Here's the chance to have basically that film festival experience with

books and I think it's gonna be a pretty dynamite opportunity for people

who want to connect with agents or publishers or whatever you're looking for.

That's an important kind of session to go to also, because, even if you

don't pitch your own book, hearing other people's books being pitched

like that, you will learn so much about what you should be doing in your

own pitch so that even if you're not a part of the more public display of

that, even if you just want to meet one-on-one with an editor or an agent.

You'll gain a lot of confidence in just seeing, okay what do I need to do?

That's right.

That can actually make a connection with someone else,

with manuscript I've created.

That's so right.

That's what I always tell people about.

The first page panel, which we do, I think is Friday at noon this year,

where people in advance submit the first pages of their manuscripts and

then we get a panel of experts, usually a couple of agents and a publisher.

Who, someone else will read it aloud and they'll listen and basically say, stop

when they hear the stopper, the red flag?

Or the thing that would cause this agent to move on to the next one, which

of course, if you're sitting in the audience, they do that to your work.

It's painful, but they don't announce the names.

They're not gonna call you out or anything.

But this is not only useful to the people who submit, it's useful to everyone.

I think you can learn more from listening to somebody else's first page, getting

critiqued maybe, than from your own.

You hear that and you think, oh, good point.

Remind me not to do that on my first page and then go home to edit it.

And sometimes manuscripts get rejected really just because

agents are drowning in them.

And publishers, if they even accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, get

too many, and so they just can't, they glance at it and move on.

Here's a chance to try and find out what are the red flags these people are

seeing that are causing your manuscript to not get picked up so you can fix it.

In some cases, not always, but in some cases it's a pretty simple fix

that can significantly increase the chances of your book being picked up.

Yeah, that's good, now this is in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

It is central in the US and I, there are a lot of people around the Oklahoma

area, the Dallas-Fort Worth area that come in, but there's really people

from all around the world, right?

There we get people from everywhere.

So we had, it's still time to book your plane tickets.

Yeah.

Am I remembering we had 14 different states in three

different countries this year?

I'm just going from memory, but I think that's right.

Wow, that's amazing.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

So if you wanna find out more, you can go to WriterCon.com.

That's like writer conference WriterCon.com, and you can check

out not only the tickets for the conference, but you can get all the

information about the contests and the different critiques and all that

sort of thing that you can submit to.

That's all on the website.

You'll see all the speakers, you'll see the schedule, what

everyone's talking about.

You'll see everything you can just immerse in for three days.

And go from there.

And then you can also find out about Reader Con.

And do they need do they need tickets for Reader Con or just for Writer Con?

Nope, just for Writer Con.

Reader Con is Free.

And I don't even know what you'd be registering for.

Just come and join the fun.

Just come walk in the door.

You're welcome.

Yeah?

Absolutely, and I also wanna point out that the this is at

the Renaissance Waterford Hotel.

And there are special discounted rates for the WriterCon attendees.

So when you wanna go ahead and get on that quickly so you can take advantage of that.

Oh, you know what else?

Get started now.

Get going.

Speaking of discounts, we've got a special discount code for everyone today.

If you're listening, you can put this in on the Writer Con website and save $50.

That code is, we are writers, all one word, W E A R E W R I T E R S.

I had to look over as I was saying that, to make sure I wouldn't misspell it.

We are writers.

I always write it in all caps.

I don't know if that matters though, does it?

Probably not, but good to do, just in case.

Definitely.

Thank you, Bill, for being here.

We are so excited.

We just really encourage anybody watching us or listening to us today

to take the time over Labor Day Weekend for Writer Con in Oklahoma City.

That's September 1st through the 4th.

We'll be there.

September 4th is going to be Reader Con, which is gonna be just like a

party for readers and books and authors.

All right, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe,

and share it with someone else who you know needs to go to Writer Con

so they can get that discount code and join us all at the conference.

Bill will be there.

Gena and I will be there because this whole writing

thing is not a solitary venture.

This is something that's better when we do it together, right?

Yeah, definitely.

So what happens Gena it's best what?

Together we have writing momentum.

That's right.

Bye-bye.

Good to see you guys.

Thank you.

You too.