Happy Wednesday to you.

Did you see our last blog? Registration pricing information is UP! Check out the aptly named "Registration/pricing" link in the header for details of this year's packages.

Updates will be coming fast and furiously in the next few weeks. Check back often. Or better yet, follow us @siwctweets, on your blog reader, or on Facebook to keep up with all the news.

In the spirit of fast and furious updates, I'm going to introduce you to four presenters today. We are delighted to welcome them to SiWC. Say hello to editor Kaylan Adair, agent Rita Rosenkranz, and authors Ken Scholes and Jack Whyte.

Kaylan Adair is an editor at Candlewick Press, an independent, employee-owned children’s book publisher located in Somerville, Massachusetts. Among the novels she’s edited are Swim the Fly, Beat the Band, and the forthcoming Call the Shots by Don Calame, Down Sand Mountain and What Comes After by Steve Watkins, and Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson. She is also the editor of numerous picture books, including And Then Comes Halloween by Tom Brenner, illustrated by Holly Meade. She is the American editor of the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness, as well as his latest novel, A Monster Calls. Kaylan is looking for fresh, original voices and characters with a lot of heart, whether the story itself is humorous, quiet, sad, or gritty. She tends to shy away from poetry, non-fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy. Welcome, Kaylan!

A former editor with major New York houses, Rita Rosenkranz founded Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency in 1990.

Fall book season is upon us, and with it, this year, more video trailers than ever for new releases.

Among the offerings are these two Very Intriguing trailers from long-time SiWC supporters Diana Gabaldon and Jack Whyte. Check them out! 

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Looking forward to both these books! Know of other SiWC presenter book trailers? Tell us about them in the comments.

It's a rainy Saturday night here at SiWC Central, the first time the weather's been anything less than gorgeous and sunny here for weeks, so it's a perfect night for surfing. Tonight's links include a win, an answer, and a free promotional opportunity for writers. Great stuff!

Congratulations to 2010 SiWC presenter Julia Quinn for her third RITA win this past week in Florida for What Happens In London. You can check out all this year's RITA winners here: http://www.rwanational.org/cs/2010_rita_award_winners

Are you thinking about attending SiWC for the first time, but wondering if you're really ready for a writers' conference? You're not alone. It's a question that comes up a lot in my email. Longtime presenter and friend of the conference Jack Whyte has a great answer to that question on his blog (hint: yes, you are!). Check it out here: http://jackwhyte.com/node/754 

Former presenter and SiWC friend Wally Lane offers a brand new way for published authors to promote their books at no charge. Here's Wally in his own words: Just a note to let you and the SIWC know about my new project. I have added a page to our website Belva's List.com (Belva's Book Nook) where I spotlight writers and their books. I post their photo, an imprint of the front cover of their book/books (3 book limit per author), and a link to their website or a website where an interested party can get more info or hopefully buy the book. There is no cost to the writer, this is a free service.

At last...the winners of the largest category -- the Storyteller's Award.

This award is sponsored by its judges -- let's meet them, shall we?

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, NYT-bestselling Outlander novels, described by  Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting “Scrooge McDuck” comics.” The adventure began in 1991 with the classic Outlander (“historical fiction with a Moebius twist”), continued through four more New York Times-bestselling novels—Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, and The Fiery Cross—
and a nonfiction (well, relatively) companion volume, The Outlandish Companion, which provides copious details on the settings, background, characters, research, and writing of the novels, and has most recently produced A Breath of Snow and Ashes,
winner of the 2006 Corine International Fiction Award, and the 2006 Quill Award for <ahem> “Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gatti/gabaldon/

Now that our remarkable list of presenters is available on the site, we're getting many questions about this year's content. What workshops will be on offer? Which panels will be available to choose from? Who will the keynote speakers be this year?

Fear not -- step one of the scheduling process is now complete. If you check over at the menu on the right, you'll see a new button for 'Conference Overview'. Our WebWizard has spent long hours re-working the code for this new section, and it's now up and running. The next step is to begin loading the more than 70 workshops, panels, keynotes and more that will be on offer at the conference this year.