I am happy to pass the gavel to Claudette Milner. She is energetic, enterprising, and will be a wonderful leader during 2007. I wish her, and the other new officers, a wonderful year.

I enjoyed my term as President of Wizards of Words. I was fortunate enough to make some lifelong friends. It has been fun and exciting to learn about the new members, and to get to meet some folks in person at our conference in Kansas City that I had not met in Las Vegas.

There were some disappointments during the year. We had more than our share of controversy, and it is now apparent that the only reason certain people posted on our messageboard was to antagonize for the wrong reasons the members who were there for the right reasons. But we handled that and now we're on to bigger and better.

I hope that the New Year will find all of us busy writing, sharing our experiences, asking questions, answering questions, and continuing our quest to become better writers.

I have been busily preparing entries into several contests, and am working on two novels. The River Valley Writers will host a workshop/authorthon at the end of March, and the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. Conference is in May, followed shortly by the Arkansas Writers' Conference. So, I'm excited about those gatherings of some of the best writers in the nation.

Then, our own 2007 WOW Writers' Conference in the fall will be an opportunity to meet some of our members who live in the east. I know that our new President is already hard at work making preparations for that event.

Keep writing. Search for avenues to get your work in print. Enter contests and seek recognition of your talent. Build on your career as an author! You may just be getting started, and have a lot of work ahead of you. Learn everything you can. You may be retired from another career and just writing for fun to fill up your free time. That's okay, too.

I believe those of us who love to write show it in our work. It is a fact, you nurture the things that you love. So, keep nurturing that muse that guides you in your writing.

My best wishes to all of you for a wonderful New Year.

Let me begin by introducing myself to those of you that I have not met. My name is Claudette Milner. I am the author of CHILDREN OF PLAINS ESTATES. This is the first book in a three-book series and I’m currently completing the trilogy.

I’m a native Kentuckian but have resided in Charlotte, North Carolina since 1994. As the new president of WOW, I'm excited to see the growth over the last year. First I want to thank Caryn for her outstanding service as 2006 president and Rebecca for her dedication and perseverance through this past year. Both of these women have done an outstanding job and I applaud both of you.

As your 2006 vice president I took the role of a back seat driver by monitoring the activities of the group as well as on the messageboard. I am a person of few words, but am always available to discuss the direction of WOW and my expectations of both the board members and the officers.

An organization cannot grow without active participation of all its members. I have been familiarizing myself with the websites of all members in order to suggest ways and means to bring everyone together to make this group excel even more.

First, I will be sending out personal emails to each member asking for your suggestions and a list of your skills and talents. Along with the suggestions, please give your opinions. Working together is what will make this organization successful. I would like to take WOW in a new direction this year by building on what we are doing right - sharing ideas and information - to organizing book signings as well as other events in order to promote and improve our writing skills collectively.

David, you have done a wonderful job in posting articles on writing techniques. I am hoping others will join in the process. One thing we are not doing is group marketing. After attending the Author-thon in Florida (headed up by our new board member Maria d’Scaglione, who we know as Doni) I brought back a couple of press kits and am promoting these individuals locally. We have members in cities across the U.S.; some with newspaper contacts some with radio contacts. Each member should be promoting WOW members at their events. Doni has done a wonderful job at getting press coverage for WOW members while visiting her state. We need to follow her example and utilize her expertise in her area. I also would like to see smaller group signings between WOW members in local areas. Of course a marketing strategy must be drawn up in order to garner support of the local community. We need to promote our annual conference as a major event and our own participation is vital.

I realize that each of us has our own project or list of projects that we are trying to complete. As writers our main goal is to sell our work and create a national distribution network. I also realize that in order to achieve that goal it would be to our individual benefit, not only WOW's, to be a support system for ALL our members.

Join me in making this the best year ever for WOW. I welcome and expect participation from everyone.

For every member of W.O.W. 2006 was a banner year. Membership increased, deadwood floated away, and we have seen more good than bad as most of us encountered our fledgling publishing careers one day at a time.

We’ve seen writers of many genres converge at one place and begin to make a difference in the works of others. We’ve seen offers extended, offers accepted, and friendships born that have the chance of enduring for years into the future.

I have been most fortunate in seeing two of my own full length novels published, as well as eleven short stories accepted into the Amazon Shorts program. Late in the year I was most pleased to make the acquaintance of a very talented woman from Australia, a gifted science fiction writer named Eugen M. Bacon. We have teamed to produce five short stories, so far, each of which stands on its own merit. We’ve been accepted into the world of E-book publishers, one of which is FictionWise . We also will be published in Round Robin style this year in Double Dragon. I am pleased that I have three more novels nearing completion, a new book that is being considered at this time for publication, and several more short stories on the drawing board. Research is completed for what is my most challenging writing project yet. PLUS . . . the script for the movie on the born wolf DIE WOLF book is in the hands of a major Hollywood star, and I am anxiously awaiting what I hope will be great news about it. I feel that 2007 will be my most productive year ever, and hope to see my works reach a much wider audience.

Among the high points of my personal achievement in 2006, I place my election as Vice President of the Wizards of Words at the very top of the list. Over the past few months I have enjoyed the daily give and take of the members on the WOW messageboard.

The WOW group is made up of diverse individuals, each talented, and each willing to help the others in whatever way they can. Each member brings his or her own unique style and range of expertise to the group, and as a result we see the embryo of a new and vastly clever group of writers, an organization that I believe has the potential to become a force in the literary arena. By banding together we become stronger than we would be as individuals, and with that strength comes a voice that we can use to the betterment of each of us. We must, however, seek to use this newfound voice wisely, and with that in mind I have closely examined those aspects of the group that I have access to and found that there are indeed some things we can improve upon. This is in no way reflective on the past leadership, as I believe each of them, with no exceptions, have given expert guidance to the group, and have been instrumental to the growth and survival of the very difficult first year. It is, rather, a statement of things to come, and I believe we must start by soliciting each member to become more active in the day to day postings on the message board, and by visiting the chat room on a regular basis. Only through increased involvement of all of the members will we see the growth this organization is capable of. I believe that continued growth will only come from members who take a hands-on attitude, and who will reach out to other authors with the news of what we are doing here.

I was introduced to WOW through an email from Larry Evans, and I in turn passed along the excitement to a couple of others, resulting in the membership of Phil Whitley late in the year. I think that if each of us will commit to recruiting at least one more author to join our ranks in 2007, we will experience the new growth that is so vital as we reinforce and sustain the vision of Rebecca when she first decided to organize the group.

I am looking forward to an exciting 2007, a year in which I hope to cement some of the relationships I have found here, a year in which I hope to meet and get to know many more such talented and committed individuals, and a year in which WOW will continue to grow - becoming the strong, independent writers organization that we know it can be.

We are unique, in that we embrace writers of all genres.

"I was born a child of the 50s, learned to dance to the beat of rock 'n roll. Television was my friend, I Love Lucy, Rin Tin Tin, kissed my first girl when I was 10 years old . . . ". That song by the Statler Brothers is a parody of my life. I am definitely a child of the 50s.

Born just after the end of the big one, WW II, I was a six-month baby, a preemie under two pounds, not expected to live through the night. Of course, this is all hearsay on my part, mostly from my mother, who you can believe and some from my father, he was touch and go. Much to my and everyone else's amazement I lived through that first night and spent the first six months of my life in that hospital, without a name, an official name that is. My mother was going to name me William Richard, but they didn't want to waste a good name. A nurse, so I was told by my grandmother, named me Larry Lynn, for reasons unknown. It was amazing that my birth didn't discourage my parents from having more children. The next one arrived 14 years later and then number five, two years after that.

I attended public school, following a jock brother and an honor roll sister - Goody-two shoes and the Wuss. I ran to a different beat then my older siblings and tended to hang out with what my mother designated “bad company”. On occasion we did get into mischief and explored other entertainment venues.

After graduation from high school, another questionable achievement on my part, I bounced around from job to job until I ended up at General Motors Truck & Coach. In the mid-60s, I was fortunate enough to receive correspondence from the U.S. Army requesting my presence, lucky me. After six long months of training, I ended up in the garden spot of Southeast Asia, Viet Nam. I spent two tours, the first one in combat with the Vietnamese Infantry unit and the second as supply sergeant at the main PX in Saigon, just prior to the 1968 Tet offensive, again lucky me.

After the service I went back to the assembly plant, met my first wife, the coral snake. I dubbed her the coral snake because she was beautiful and deadly. About two years later we went our separate ways. To this day I regret not killing her.

I decided the assembly line wasn't where I wanted to spend my life, so with the GI Bill in my back pocket I went back to school, first to get an Associates Degree in Commercial Art, and then a Mechanical Engineering Degree. In 1974 I married Jann Marion who was even more beautiful than the coral snake. I was well on my way to my degree when I applied for an engineering position at the plant. I got the job and was immediately put on nights, working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I dropped out of school, vowing to return as soon as possible. That never happened. I took courses here and there, enough to get promotions into management, but I never finished my degree.

As youngsters deny, and seniors realize much too late, time flies. Our kids took on lives of their own, as they should, while Jann and I had our ups and downs as all couples do, but all in all we had a pretty good life.

In May of 2002, Jann became ill; we had just purchased a motor home and were exploring Hershey, Pennsylvania. Jann, a gourmet cook and a lover of chocolate, thought Hershey was heaven on earth. On April 1, 2006 I lost her, the same day my retirement went into effect. Talk about bittersweet, to attain what you worked for all your life and to lose the reason for it all on the very same day. During the four years of Jann's illness, I spent all my nonworking hours taking care of her, most of it spent just sitting with her. I had an old desktop computer, a Microsoft Office program and lots of free time. So I just banged away until I had written a book. Then I kept on pounding and before long I had two books, then three. It was after my first book was published that through a message board I heard about WOW, the Wizards of Words. The rest is history, a pleasant history.

Writing is a hobby for me, an outlet. I don't have any goals, no wants or wishes, fame requirements, riches or glory. I just want to be able to enjoy myself and play a round of golf now and then.

Greetings: I'm David Rosenberg, recently elected director of Wizards Of Words.

I'm originally from Cleveland, Ohio, but now live with my wife in the middle of snow country near Syracuse, New York. I was a utility industry business consultant for twenty years. That career demanded precisely structured technical writing while creative writing exists at the opposite end of the spectrum. After banging my head on the books for a few years, I've managed to make the conversion as a creative writer.

Last year the second book in my political thriller trilogy, titled INFUSION OF EVIL was published. During the year, I completed an E-book titled THE COMPACT GUIDE FOR THE CREATIVE WRITER that condenses information that I use to improve plot and character development, dialog, and dramatic content. Also, I wrote another political thriller about China, Russia, and the United States called THE HUNGRY DRAGON. This book attempts to predict political strife in the near future.

In order to share what I've learned about creative writing with others, I started a thread on the WOW message board called "Right-on Writing."

With regard to creative writing, I have two personal goals:

1. To improve my writing and create a best-selling novel
2. To inspire someone else to write his or her best- selling novel

The information posted on the WOW message board is given with that altruistic intention.

During 2007, I'd like to make better use of my fearless gift of gab and my passion for creative writing to start seminar sessions. I plan do do this locally to test its success, hone my skills, and pass the torch to others. Perhaps WOW will grow an educational program based on these efforts. Also, during the next year, I'd like to expand the message board postings to include "Right-on Marketing." Two years ago I started a thread on a publisher's message board called "Marketing Ploys." Since all authors, who are serious about promoting their books to the public, face the same marketing problems, sharing expertise in this area benefits everyone. That thread eventually became a major forum discussion topic on that message board. I have no doubt that a similar thread would be useful to all of us affiliated with Wizards of Words.

I'm on the docket to provide two workshops at the 2007 WOW Writers Conference in Charlotte NC. At last year's conference in Kansas City, my presentation included ways to expand creativity. I guess it was well received (no one threw fruit). I'll do my best to provide more of the same to help everyone climb their ladder of success.

Hello everyone! D’Maria Scaglione has entered the building. Let me introduce myself and who I have been for the last, uh, so many years of life (oh no, I'm not telling my age, you figure it out).

Years ago my life was surrounded by police officers, emergency technicians and fire fighters. For eight years I served as a duty officer, dispatcher and bonded deputy at different agencies (yeah, you were thinking I was in jail . . . LOL . . . ummm, it could have happened). I also worked for NASA Security at Kennedy Space Center when I went to college in the '80s. It was a great job and I had one of the highest security clearances in the country. I was also a commentator at the Tour Center at KSC (not KFC, no chickens where I worked, just astronauts and engineers).

My younger life ran at a very high adrenaline level from being a part-time radio DJ to working part-time as Rudolph the Reindeer (a huge puppet in a small house) in a local mall in Pinellas County, Florida. Being a single parent, there were times I worked three jobs to support my son who had serious medical problems from toddler to six years of age. I have degrees in electronics (military spec) as well as many commendations and awards from college and law enforcement, but being a single parent was probably one of the hardest jobs that I ever had. Even though my son has a very high IQ, due to his emotional, physical and learning disabilities there were many times I felt as though I was raising six children all by myself. Today my son is thirty, healthy and strong. He has been the greatest gift I've received and has taught me so much about myself.

In the '90s I had decided to go back to school to become an art therapist when illness struck. The apartment that I was living in was environmentally unsafe and for the first time in my life my adrenaline rush and love for life diminished quickly. Many doctors and prayers for healing followed. One doctor even told me in 1997 that my life span would be very short. Well, he was fired. After that there were a series of more lost jobs and homes (due to illness) and I finally had to go on disability. I felt my life was over. Art, always being a passion, had become a hobby. Then people began to buy my works. My self esteem slowly started to come back.

As far as writing goes, I have written since I was a young child. I still have boxes of manuscripts from years ago accumulating dust. After my father died of Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, I decided to finish a manuscript. I had always dreamed of becoming a published author. Life was just too short and I was suddenly reminded how my father had never realized his dreams. So one day I flipped through my many unfinished books and got an idea. I found two incomplete children's stories, so I decided to combine the two. My first book - A UNIQUE BUNNY - was born and published.

Even though life still is a learning and healing process, I am so blessed to be a part of Wizards of Words. An author by the name of Ashley invited me to join. Thank you Ash, wherever you are. I miss you. The WOW Organization has been supportive and informative and it has been such a pleasure meeting the authors and writers. I am also a member of the Florida Writer’s Association.

There are more blessings and friends that come into my life every day. Faith and the love of God, has really made me the person that I am today. My life is an ongoing quest of love, forgiveness, spirituality and passion to create.

For those who don't know me . . . I am many things: adventurer, truck driver, photographer, and storyteller. I use the term storyteller rather than writer or author because that is how I look at the craft. I don't get caught up in worrying about the technical aspects of writing, instead I concentrate on telling a good story. So instead of Hemingway, Dickens or other authors of classics, think more along the lines of Louis L' Amour, Terry Brooks, and John D. MacDonald when you think of me.

I grew up in Colorado but have been in Washington State for the last 20 years. With my wife I live way back in the woods northwest of Spokane on a twenty acre ranch that we call the "Round 2 It Ranch."

The future of WOW is looking very promising as we have among our group a number of very talented writers. The number of our members that are consistent contributors to the Amazon Shorts program proves that we have some very dedicated writers in our group along with the constant accomplishments by our founder Rebecca Buckley. Our name is getting some recognition with the people at Amazon. When I have spoken on the phone with John Hart of the Shorts program he knows who we are.

Anything that we can achieve as individuals only adds to the success of the groups of which we are members and we have many gifted people in our group. We have charted a course that is taking us to places many of us thought would be beyond our reach as individuals. But with the encouragement of others and their participation it has strengthened us as a group.

My best hope is that we continue to chart new ideas and goals as we forge ahead into this new year.

This past year was a great year for me, personally. I wrote and published another book, a collection of short stories – LOVE HAS A PRICE TAG – which also includes two of my stage plays and a screenplay that are dear to my heart (all three based on truth). So if I keep this up - a book a year - I’ll be very pleased with myself. And with nearly completing my third book, another contemporary romance novel – LUNCH AT THE LOUVRE – I’m on the road to accomplishing my one-a-year goal . . . three years running. MIDNIGHT AT TRAFALGAR SQUARE was my first. This time, however, I’ll be looking for an agent. That is, if I don’t find a publisher to my liking before then.

And speaking of publishers, R. J. Buckley Publishing (yes, that’s me) opens for business on January 15. So you can check it out at www.rjbuckleypublishing.com . We’re a small independent house and will be extremely selective in what we accept to publish.

Aside from promoting and selling myself and my books on the Internet and elsewhere, the above is basically what I’ve been doing outside of Wizards of Words.

As founder and CEO of Wizards of Words, this organization is very special to me. Being a member of Romance Writers of America and having witnessed how that company has grown and continues to do so every year by giving back to its authors, gave me the impetus to form this non-profit org of writers helping writers. With the original WOW members who gathered in Las Vegas for what was primarily a two-day booksigning on the Strip, we began what was to become the present WOW organization. And all I can say is WOW! What a year this has been! All the changes, the ups and downs – working together to get us to where we need to be, it has been a whirlwind . . . sometimes a category five tornado.

Nothing has daunted our spirit, and I want to say how thrilled and happy I am to have met most of our members in person. I’m so grateful we’re of the same mind-set and desire to become the best writers we can be, to exchange writing business experiences with each other, and to encourage and support whenever called upon. I hear almost everyday how our group has been helpful to new writers.

Because of the inquiries that have been coming in, it's foreseeable that our group will double in size this coming year (That's numbers, folks, not weight. Although . . . ). Add that to what is developing into the best ever WOW Writers' Conference coming up in October in Charlotte NC (organized by Claudette Milner), next year promises to increase our numbers even more. I believe with every conference we’ll gain new members. It’s a given. (Our October 2008 conference will be in Phoenix AZ, and we're gearing up for that one, too.) The more members we have the more experience we can exchange and the more we can learn about writing.

So, fellow Wizards and all of you who would like to join us as a writing wizard, a wizard of words, check out our website and while you’re there, come on into the WOW Chat Café messageboard, and introduce yourselves. We also have a chat room, where you can have a real-time chat as in instant messaging. Hope to see you there in the near future. Costs you nothing to read and post on the public message board or chat in the real-time chat room.

Okay, guys . . . we’re off to the best-seller lists. Write those books! Revise those books! Publish those books!