Angels Camp, CA… Hold onto your writer hat for the three-day Writers Roundup Retreat presented by Manzanita Writers Press October 14 to 16, 2016. It is a three-day bonanza of activities, workshops and seminars for writers, artists and entrepreneurs during the Mark Twain Wild West Fest in historic downtown Angels Camp.

Friday begins with The Social Media Frontier: Marketing Your Creative Side on Facebook with The Get Smart Group (a major sponsor of the Writers Roundup Retreat), guiding participants in making Facebook a successful money-making business pillar and crafting advertising and selling strategies. In the afternoon, Linda Lee’s Web Site Wrangling, Blogging, Alternative Media Marketing is a gold mine of methods for designing powerful websites and using blogs to drive markets home. A Roundtable Discussion will follow with participants of the media workshop sharing their media marketing experiences.

On Saturday, Manzanita Arts Emporium and Book Booth will be the place to meet local artists and make contact with writers and publishers. The afternoon will feature Filmmakers John C. Brown and Bert Simonis, who will discuss and share clips of their film documentary 88 Days in the Mother Lode: Mark Twain Finds His Voice. A Liar’s Corner open mic for sharing historically-based whoppers and Costume Contest, a chance for people to come dressed as favorite authors or historical figures, will round out the day.

The venue for Sunday will be the Angels Camp Museum Carriage House and opens with literary historian and Mark Twain reenactor Pat Kaunert’s Telling Tales Out West, which focuses on humor writing in the style of Mark Twain, using exaggeration and understatement as effective writing tools. In the afternoon, nationally published author-historians Julia Costello, Sal Manna, JoAnn Levy and Antoinette May will meet in a seminar, Driving the Truth, to offer valuable insights and tips for effective research in primary sources and raw materials. A panel discussion, As Fleeting Gold Dust: A Symposium on Truth in the West, with journalist Scott Thomas Anderson, and authors Jim Fletcher and Stephen Archer, will follow and address the pitfalls of online research and how to interview witnesses to history. Sunday’s last event, Mark Twain Out West, will bring back Mark Twain reenactor Pat Kaunert to deliver with wit, wisdom and true Twain humor Mississippi River memories and Gold Rush folklore.

The cost for Manzanita Writers Press Writers Roundup Retreat: Friday-Sunday, $170;Friday or Sunday only, $90; Saturday literary activities are free. Contact Manzanita Arts Emporium at (209) 728-6171 or the manzapress.com website to rustle up tickets for this lively weekend.