July 18-20, 2024 | St. Louis, MO
2024 CONFERENCE FACULTY
Our Keynote Speakers
Allen Arnold
ALLEN ARNOLD is an author, speaker, and Executive Producer of Content for Wild at Heart—the worldwide ministry founded by New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge. As the founding Fiction Publisher of Thomas Nelson, he oversaw the launch of more than 500 novels. He now helps creatives live better stories by helping them pursue their dreams and gifting actively with God.
He is the author of five acclaimed books: The Story of With, Chaos Can’t, Waves of Creativity, The Eden Option, and his new release, Risk the Real. He’s drawn to blue oceans, black coffee, hot salsa, and big ideas. Discover more at withallen.com
Carla Hoch
Author and Teacher
Carla Hoch is the author of the Writer’s Digest book Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes. Her blog, FightWrite.net, has been named in Writer’s Digest Top Websites for Writers four years in a row and is a two-time CAN Gold Crown Award winner. Carla is a Writer’s Digest University instructor, a writer for the WD blog and is a correspondent for Rolling Times magazine. She teaches the craft of writing fight scenes as well as the mechanics of fighting for writers. Carla is a world champion jiujitsu fighter and has experience in almost a dozen fighting styles. She lives and trains outside Houston, Texas.
Chris Skaggs
Founder, Soma Games
Chris Skaggs is the Founder and Chief Operations Officer of Soma Games and Soma SoulWorks. Created in 2005 Soma Games fancies itself the “C.S. Lewis of video games” and strives to do the epithet honor by making artistically excellent games for people who may never go to church, but find themselves having fun while pondering eternal things. Soma SoulWorks is the ministry side of Soma’s coin producing teaching and podcasts that seek to reach young adult “creatives” especially those working in arts and entertainment. Chris is an Intel Black Belt recipient and frequent speaker at mobile and game-developer conferences, including GDC (Game Developer Conference), CGDC (Christian Game Developers Conference), Casual Connect, Serious Play, and Intel Innovators Forum.
Shannon Dittemore
Continuing session
Shannon Dittemore is the author of the Winter, White and Wicked duology, as well as the Angel Eyes novels. She is speaker and contributor to the blog Go Teen Writers, which has been a Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers selection for five years running. Her book Winter, White and Wicked was called a “propulsive, adrenaline-fueled ride through a dangerously chilling and thrilling landscape” by the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. When she’s not at her desk, she can be found in the wilds of Northern California, adventuring with her husband, their two children, and a husky named Leonidas.
Allen Arnold
Continuing session
ALLEN ARNOLD is an author, speaker, and Executive Producer of Content for Wild at Heart—the worldwide ministry founded by New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge. As the founding Fiction Publisher of Thomas Nelson, he oversaw the launch of more than 500 novels. He now helps creatives live better stories by helping them pursue their dreams and gifting actively with God. He is the author of five acclaimed books: The Story of With, Chaos Can’t, Waves of Creativity, The Eden Option, and his new release, Risk the Real. He’s drawn to blue oceans, black coffee, hot salsa, and big ideas. Discover more at withallen.com
Nadine Brandes
Continuing session
Nadine Brandes has been known to do wild things (like ride a sleeper train across Russia) in the name of book research. She’s the 4-time Carol Award-winning author of seven Young Adult books and has been a professional editor for over 12 years, editing for New York Times bestselling authors, indie authors, and publishing houses like Enclave Publishing. She is passionate about Jesus, motherhood, and creating with the Creator. When she’s not busy inventing worlds and magic systems, she’s adventuring through Middle Earth with her Auror husband and their four Halfling children.
Julie & Lucas Hall
Continuing session
Julie Hall is a USA Today bestselling, multi-award winning author. She writes YA paranormal / fantasy novels, loves doodles, and drinks Red Bull, but not necessarily in that order. Julie’s daughter says that her super power is sleeping all day and writing all night… and well, she wouldn’t be wrong. Julie currently lives in Colorado with her four favorite people – her husband, daughter, and two fur babies.
Lucas Hall is a marketing and technology expert with the heart of a teacher. He is a Project Management Professional with an EMBA, a keynote speaker, and has been featured on dozens of national shows to inspire people to make more money with technology. He assists Julie with the operational aspects of independent publishing, and helps to catalyze her genius marketing ideas into tangible products and promotions.
Kara Swanson
Teen Track
Kara writes stories about fairytales and fiery souls. She spent her childhood a little like a Lost Girl, running barefoot through lush green jungles which inspired her award-winning Peter Pan retellings, DUST and SHADOW.
She’s also the co-founder of the Author Conservatory where she has the honor of teaching young writers to craft sustainable author careers.
You’ll find her with her toes in California sand as a SoCal resident, belting Broadway show tunes on weekend drives to Disneyland with her delightfully-nerdy husband, or chatting about her love of magic and mayhem on Instagram.
Donald Maass
Electives
Donald Maass founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996),Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He is a past president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc.
Steve Laube
Electives
Literary agent and president of The Steve Laube Agency, Steve has been in the book industry nearly four decades, first as a bookstore manager where he was awarded the National Store of the Year by CBA. He then spent many years with Bethany House Publishers where he was named Editor of the Year by AWSA. In 2003 he became an agent where he and his agency have represented nearly 2,000 new books and Steve was named Agent of the Year by ACFW. He was also inducted into the Grand Canyon University Hall-of-Fame by their College of Theology. In addition, he is the president and owner of Enclave Publishing and serves as president and owner of The Christian Writers Institute and author of The Christian Writers Market Guide and Book Proposal Tips and Tricks. His office is in Phoenix, Arizona.
Carla Hoch
Electives
Carla Hoch is the author of the Writer’s Digest book Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes, and proprietor of the award winning FightWrite™ blog, podcast and YouTube channel. Carla is a Writer’s Digest author and instructor and seasoned Realmie who regularly teaches workshops on the mechanics of fighting for writers as well as the craft of writing fight scenes. She has experience in almost a dozen fighting styles, and trains outside of Houston, Texas where she lives with her family, paranoid guinea pigs and judgmental cats.
Rowena Kuo
Electives
Rowena Kuo is the CEO, Executive Editor, and Producer for Brimstone Fiction, Brimstone Books and Media, and Brimstone Fire. With over 15 years of ministering to children, youth groups, young adults, women, and family groups, Rowena advocates for writers to build God-centered support systems consisting of people, perseverance, practice, and most of all, prayer. Her specialties include Author Legacy and Financial Literacy. She is the web talk show host for Don’t Be Cinderella and has written for Christian Devotions, Written World Communications, Splickety, the 168 Write of Passage, and Scrivenings Press. When not working on words or films, she is a full-time mom with secret aspirations for spaceflight.
Steve Nedvidek
Electives
Steve Nedvidek is an award-winning graphic novel creator, cartoonist, innovation professor, actor, feature film model builder, but primarily is a world-class babysitter of his two beautiful granddaughters.
Lisa Mangum
Electives
Lisa Mangum has worked in publishing since 1997. She has been the Managing Editor for Shadow Mountain since 2014 and has worked with several New York Times best-selling authors. While fiction is her first love, she also has experience working with nonfiction projects. Lisa is also the author of four national best-selling YA novels (The Hourglass Door trilogy and After Hello), several short stories and novellas, and a nonfiction book about the craft of writing based on the TV show Supernatural. She has edited several anthologies about various magical creatures, pirates, and food for WordFire Press. She regularly teaches at writing conferences, including hosting a writing weekend in Capitol Reef National Park through UVU. She lives in Taylorsville, Utah, with her husband, Tracy.
Amy Michelle Carpenter
Electives
Michelle is the publisher for Monster Ivy Publishing, an “edgy, clean” fiction house. The company focuses on fantasy, thrillers, horror, and romance at a PG-13 or less rating with faith-filled or inspirational messages. The company has a number of bestselling and award-winning titles, and The Kiss List was recently made into a movie and is slated for release soon. In her personal life, Michelle recently earned her MA in Publishing under New York Times bestseller Kevin J. Anderson. She is the mother of four little girls, and she loves new adventures
James Hannibal
Electives
Former stealth pilot James R. Hannibal is no stranger to secrets and adventure. He has been shot at, locked up with surface to air missiles, and chased down a winding German road by a terrorist. He is the Silver Falchion and Selah Award winning author of spy thrillers, fantasy, and adventure for adults, teens, and children. He is also the developer of Lightraiders, an interconnected realm of games and stories.
Pre-conference Session
Donald Maass, literary agent
Post-conference Session
With Chris Skaggs
Founder, Soma Games
Come to the Dark Side!
Narrative Storytelling for Video Games
No matter what the medium, story still is, and always will be, the real gold in all we do. Right now, Video Games are blowing up and we can barely keep up with writing at all, much less good, quality writing by believing, spiritual mature authors. We Need You! (and we have Hotpockets)