Board Members
President
Diane Rogers
Even as a kid, Diane (Wilson) Rogers loved to read. Her favorite books were the Nancy Drew Mysteries, which made her want to pen a book of her own someday. Her first effort, a Nancy Drew-like story attempted in the fifth grade, didn’t go quite as planned. Two chapters into it, Diane was lost and gave up. Following another failed attempt at novel writing in her thirties, Diane succeeded several years later when she decided to write about something she loved—history.
Diane, who writes as D.L. Rogers because her step father (an avid reader) told her once he refused to read anything written by a woman, loves to weave her fictional stories into the fabric of the events that built our country. Having grown up in New Jersey, but with lots of family in Tennessee and the Carolinas, Diane has always had an intense interest in all things Civil War, and that interest is reflected in most of her books.
At the beginning of the Ebook explosion, Diane had five books published as Ebooks by Awestruck Publishing. Unable to get hard copies through Awestruck, she turned to a local publisher, who put those books into print. Taking to the road, Diane “hawked” her books at every arts and crafts festival she could find, spoke to whoever would listen (and still does), and is now working on her fourteenth novel.
Recently widowed, Diane lives on fourteen acres south of Harrisonville in Cass County, Missouri, the focal point of so many of her stories. She has two wonderful children who have given her five (also) wonderful grandchildren that Diane loves to enjoy in her “down time.” Diane also enjoys country dancing and reading as many books as she can get her hands on.
Author Links:
Website: dlrogersbooks.com
Facebook: @dlrogersbooks
Email: dlrogers2@peoplepc.com
Vice President and Program Chair
Alfie Thompson
Alfie Thompson received her first “we’re buying your book” call in December 1989. That first book was a Christmas story, published the following Christmas by Harlequin. Is it any wonder that she loves Christmas for more than the usual reasons? Since then, writing as Val Daniels, she has sold 9 more books to Harlequin/Silhouette, including 8 Romances, 1 Shadows (romantic suspense) and 1 Special Edition. Her books have been published in 22 languages and 32 countries. More than 5 million copies of her romances are in print.
Running Press (a division of Perseus) published her non-fiction book about learning to write fiction by watching movies. Lights! Camera! Fiction! A Movie Lovers Guide to Writing a Novel by Alfie Thompson. Alfie has given writing workshops from New York City to Hawaii. She is currently publishing a series Tip, Tricks and Tools of the Writer’s Trade based on her most popular and requested workshops. Currently, Point of View, Understanding Which P.O.V. is Best for Your Story and Using it Effectively and Writing for the Reader are available as e-books on Amazon.com. The next one, It’s Just Emotion, Writing for Emotional Impact will be published soon.
During her five years on the Board of Directors of the Romance Writers of America, Alfie proposed and initiated the first ever “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing, which has raised over $1,165,000 for literacy since its inception in 1990.
Author Links:
Amazon Author page: Val Daniels
Twitter: @valfie
Secretary
Darlene Nicholson
Darlene was born and raised in Southern California, moved to Georgia in her mid-twenties, and now lives in the middle of Kansas with her husband of thirty years and their three fur babies. Her time is spent volunteering for her church, helping her mom and mom-in-law, and doing her best to turn the characters, quests and adventures running rampant in her head into stories she can share with others.
For Darlene, nothing is better than getting lost in a story where the settings and characters come alive in your mind. Like Linus with his blanket, books have always been her security blanket. She truly never goes anywhere without a book.
When she was little, her mother instilled a love of stories in her by reading to her every night. After she started reading for herself, her mother took her to the library and she discovered “The Grey King” by Susan Cooper, the “Wizard of Oz” series by L. Frank Baum, and “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster, to name a few. Years later she stumbled across a copy of “The Flame and the Flower” by Kathleen Woodiwiss in a neighbor’s bookshelf and her love of romance novels was born.
In the years following, her tastes have expanded to include suspense, mystery, and paranormal. Her goal is to combine all of them along with a loving dose of romance into her in-progress paranormal romantic suspense novel.
Author Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/darlene.nicholson3
Treasurer
Sally Berneathy
Sally grew up in a small rural town in southeastern Oklahoma where her family’s favorite entertainment on summer evenings was to sit outside under the stars and tell stories. When she went to bed at night, instead of a lullaby, she got a story. That could be due to the fact that everybody in her family had a singing voice like a bullfrog with laryngitis, but they sure could tell stories—ghost stories, funny stories, happy stories, scary stories.
For as long as she can remember she’s been a storyteller. Thank goodness for computers so she can write down her stories. It’s hard to make listeners sit still for the length of a book! Like her family’s tales, her stories are funny, scary, dramatic, romantic, paranormal, magic.
Besides writing, her interests are reading, eating chocolate and riding her Harley.
Author Links:
Website: sallyberneathy.com
Facebook: SallyBerneathy
Twitter: @SallyBerneathy