Military Writers' Conference
Sangria Summit membership will be offered on a calendar basis, at $100/year.
This membership entitles a person to FREE admission to the May 2013 workshop and the October 2013 conference.
The Sangria Summit membership also provides a 5 percent discount at both Dragons And Dragoons and Mandatory Fun for all of 2013.
To obtain a Sangria Summit membership call Mandatory Fun during their normal business hours. They will process your order by phone.
Call (719) 576-0545
Victor Ian LLC, a military gaming and media company based in Colorado Springs, Colo., has announced that it will sponsor the Red Bull Rising blog starting October 2012, with the objective of expanding the blog’s coverage of military writing as a vocation.
The company publishes Lanterloon, an eclectic lifestyle, technology, and military blog; has a physical storefront called “Dragons and Dragoons” located in Colorado Springs; and conducts “Sangria Summit”-brand workshops and conferences for military writers.
Randy “Sherpa” Brown has written the Red Bull Rising blog since December 2009, when he was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan with the Iowa National Guard’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry “Red Bull” Division. He originally wrote under a pseudonym of “Charlie Sherpa,” in part to avoid conflicts between his military and civilian roles. In his military career, Brown reported “lessons-learned” to internal military audiences. Brown is now retired from the military.
In his civilian career, Brown is a freelance magazine writer and editor with specialties in architecture, history, and technology. Much of his work involves community-building and “how-to” journalism.
“With Sangria Summit events, our purpose is to provide both aspiring and established military writers the inspiration, motivation, and tools they need to succeed,” says James Burns, co-founder of Victor Ian LLC. “In the Red Bull Rising blog, we saw a potential partner given its past ‘writing about military writing,’ as well as the author’s digging in and finding out what veterans, service personnel, and mil-families are doing and thinking.”
The inaugural Sangria Summit conference was held in Denver, September 2012. Tentative plans have been announced for other Sangria Summit events in Colorado Springs, Colo., in May 2013 and October 2013. The May event is most likely going to be a writers’ workshop, and the October event a larger-scale conference.
Brown says the sponsorship will allow him to build on the blog’s long-standing mission: “To remember, support, and celebrate citizen-soldiers past and present, as well as their families.”
“Documenting and sharing one’s military experiences—whether for yourself, your family, or a wider audience—has always been part of the Red Bull Rising mission,” he says. “This new relationship will allow me to expand the blog’s coverage, and to make it more concrete: How to improve yourself as a military writer, or find new markets or styles in which to work.”
According to a new “Sponsors” page on the Red Bull Rising blog, “Sponsored posts will always be clearly identified. Sponsors do not have editorial input toward or review of Red Bull Rising content prior to publication.
This post was originally published in Red Bull Rising.
New York Times best-selling author and former Green Beret, Bob Mayer understands first hand the training involved in the Special Forces’ Trojan Warrior Program. With his novel, “Psychic Warrior,” Mayer writes about how the program could have gone wrong. The program takes warfare into the virtual plane through avatars, and then reinsert covert operatives into the real world. The results could be devastating. [Read more...]
Sangria Summit organizers are pleased to have Mark Coker, founder of the e-book publishing powerhouse tool Smashwords, speak at the two-day writers’ conference. Mark understands the e-book explosion and will help conference attendees find our way in the maze of new tools, rules, and pathways to publication. [Read more...]
By Isaac Cubillos
What does it take to write a New York Times best-selling book?
When we first began looking for authors to present for the Military Writers’ Conference, we wanted a wide range of talented people who have a reputation of working in this military-writing genre, and had paid their dues as authors.
Caitlin Rother doesn’t fit the first criteria, but has the credentials that show she has paid the dues, and then some, in the latter.Rother a reporter who worked at the San Diego Union-Tribune and other papers, moved on to become one of the top true-crime writers in the country. [Read more...]
Victor Ian LLC, a military media and gaming company, will host the inaugural Sangria Summit: A Military Writers’ Conference from Sept. 12 to 14, 2012, in Denver, Colo. Drawing from successful writers in the military genre, the Conference will connect established writers with aspiring writers seeking to develop their craft in this niche market. The format will consist of an intensive workshop led by established writers of fiction and non-fiction books. Beyond the workshop there will be panel discussions on writing, self-publishing, traditional publishing, selling your book and author readings. [Read more...]
