Hi Alphas,<\/p>\n
We\u2019re starting Alpha Season XIII today. We\u2019ve got a lot of mileage behind us\u2026 an amazing lot, when you think about it. Right now I\u2019m cutting the virtual Season XIII ribbon and popping the champagne bottles, and I can see the season ahead as a squeaky-clean, as yet unwritten blank page eagerly awaiting our creative talents to cram it full of writerly gems.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s my official opening speech. I appreciate the deafening applause that drowns out my words:<\/p>\n
Welcome to Season XIII, Alphas!<\/strong><\/p>\n Four months away from Alpha is a long time. I\u2019m looking forward to your company and to getting immersed in an atmosphere where writing is our priority and our one common passion.<\/p>\n The main event during the break was the publication on the 1st<\/sup> of July of the Alpha Decade Book. It went through a two-year gestation period, but the resulting book is worth all the labour. I hope most of you have managed to get a copy \u2013 and enjoyed it.<\/p>\n I hope you\u2019ve had a good break and that you\u2019ve split the extra time equably between holidaying, writing and life generally. I look forward to that surge of motivation and inspiration once we get the Alpha season under way.<\/p>\n Alphaday 1 sets the ball rolling. Olaf will send out the brief for Challenge 1 and from then on there\u2019s no stopping us.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be sending out the necessary information for this season in separate emails.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve prepared the following:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some of this will be familiar to most of you, but I have added and subtracted here and there, and I\u2019d advise a read-through to refresh your memory.<\/p>\n Membership:<\/strong><\/p>\n Most of you are returning after the break and I\u2019m pleased to welcome our Alphas back and introduce you to our two new members: Dianne <\/strong>and Pamela. <\/strong>A very warm welcome to both of you!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Dianne<\/strong> isn\u2019t a true newbie. Many of us remember Dianne from New Zealand who was a member for many years \u2013 and Log editor \u2013 before taking a break that somewhat exceeded the usual four months.<\/p>\n Welcome back, Dianne! It\u2019s great to have you with us again.<\/p>\n Pamela <\/strong>is from Scotland. She\u2019s a prolific writer in a wide range of genres and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll benefit from her input into our activities. Welcome to Alpha, Pamela. I hope you\u2019ll enjoy our company.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll briefly introduce the rest of our group for the benefit of our new and nearly new members.<\/p>\n I\u2019m Christine <\/strong>and I\u2019m the group coordinator. It\u2019s my job to make sure the whole thing hangs together and for that purpose I\u2019m assisted by volunteers who\u2019re in charge of various tasks. I\u2019ve persuaded them all to send out emails to the group to present their special niches.<\/p>\n Olaf<\/strong> is the founder of the Alpha Group and he\u2019s busy with PR and recruiting.<\/p>\n Rosemary <\/strong>is our web mistress. She\u2019s got many other strings to her bow which I expect she\u2019ll tell you about.<\/p>\n Sally, Morgen and Suzanne <\/strong>each have a special slot that they put together \u2013 with members\u2019 contributions \u2013 every Alphaday. They\u2019ll be in touch about how they want to run their slots this season.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our rank & file members are lively contributors to everything we do. They also set challenges and join in discussions. They\u2019re Chris, Lesley, Paul, Rose, Sarah, Stephen, Sue and Zena. <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We\u2019re a group of very different individuals with one thing in common: our passion for writing. We don\u2019t have rules as such. We expect members to join in as much as they can in a positive spirit; show us what you can do and tell us what you think.<\/p>\n We\u2019re proud of our cosmopolitan nature.\u00a0 At the moment the distribution is as follows:<\/p>\n England: 9 members<\/p>\n Scotland: 2<\/p>\n France: 2<\/p>\n Australia: 1<\/p>\n New Zealand: 1<\/p>\n Japan\/Canada: 1<\/p>\n I wish you all an inspiring, productive and satisfying Alpha Season XIII.<\/p>\n I also wish you a very happy Equinox. Starting a new season on such a special day seems to me to augur extremely well!<\/p>\n Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi Alphas, We\u2019re starting Alpha Season XIII today. We\u2019ve got a lot of mileage behind us\u2026 an amazing lot, when you think about it. Right now I\u2019m cutting the virtual Season XIII…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n