Our keynote speaker is best selling and award-winning author Gina Wilkins. She sold her first novel to Harlequin Temptation in 1986 and has been a full time writer ever since. A four-time winner of the prestigious Maggie Award for Excellence sponsored by Georgia Romance Writers and a former nominee for a Lifetime Achievement Award by Romantic Times Magazine, she completed her 90th project for Harlequin and Silhouette in December 2007.

Gina was born, raised and still resides in central Arkansas. An armchair adventurer from the time she learned to read as a preschooler, she announced her intention to become a writer when she was only five years old. She prepared for the career with a degree in journalism from Arkansas State University and working in advertising and audio-visual production until fulfilling her dream with the sale of her first book. She and John, her most loyal supporter and husband of more than thirty years, have raised three "extraordinary" children—two daughters and a son—all pursuing careers in science and medicine.

A member of Romance Writers of America, Diamond State Romance Writers and Novelists, Inc., she is a past president of Fiction Writers of Central Arkansas. She is a frequent speaker at civic organizations and writers' clubs, but she particularly enjoys speaking to middle school and high school students about literacy and goal setting.

Suzanne Arruda

I've never been to Spain, but I kinda like the music. Researching places distant in location and time.

Suzanne Arruda is the author of the Jade del Cameron series of mysteries set in post WWI Africa. This series features an American woman, whose life reflects the growing adventuresome spirit of women at that time. The series fulfills the author’s dreams of living in an exotic place and time—when much of the world was unexplored and laced with adventure and danger. Learn more at www.suzannearruda.com.

Suzanne was raised in southeastern Indiana and trained as an ecologist at Purdue University (BS) and Kansas State University (MS). She is a former zookeeper turned science teacher with a M.Ed. from Washburn University. After teaching middle school and high school science, she taught environmental science at Pittsburg State University before retiring to full time writing.

Suzanne, an avid hiker and lover of chipmunks, is a charter member of the SE KS Women In The Outdoors (WITO). The mother of twin engineering sons, she now resides in southeast Kansas with her husband, Joe; a cat, Wooly Bear; and a dysfunctional parakeet, Ozymandias.
Suzanne is also the author of several young adult biographies. She has published science and nature articles in Grit, Cobblestone, Boys’ Life, and Cricket.  She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters In Crime, Kansas Center for the Book, Missouri Writer’s Guild and is a past president of the Joplin Writer’s Guild.

Margaret Daley

Pacing:
How to Grab Them
and Keep Them Hooked

Margaret Daley has been writing for over twenty-seven years. As a little girl, she told stories while playing with her dolls and on long trips with her family. From those early beginnings grew a love of entertaining people with a story.
Married thirty-seven years to her husband Mike, Margaret has one son, Shaun. Until recently she taught students with special needs, but finally retired and is devoting her time to writing and her family.

She is an award winning, multi-published author in the romance genre. Recently one of her romantic suspense books, Hearts on the Line, won the American Christian Fiction Writers' Book of the Year Contest. She has been a finalist or won the FHL's Inspirational Readers' Choice Award, Holt Medallion, RT's Reviewer's Choice Award, the Golden Quill, the Gayle Wilson's Award of Excellence, and the Barclay Gold. She currently writes inspirational romance and romantic suspense books for the Steeple Hill Love Inspired lines. She has sold fifty-seven books to date. 
See more of her titles, as well as Margaret’s helpful articles about writing at her Web site, http://www.margaretdaley.com.