Our thanks to Authors First’s Lou Aronica for this guest post!

I belonged to two significant tribes when I was growing up: guys in rock bands and guys who loved baseball. I was briefly in the guys-who-play-baseball tribe as well, but it turned out that you had to have a talent for baseball to stick in that tribe.

There was very little overlap among the members of these tribes for me, but one thing that was consistent between them was conversation. Lots of conversation. About equipment, technique, best guitarists of all time. About batting averages, clutch plays, best shortstops of all time. We consumed many hours every week “talkin’ music” and “talkin’ baseball.”

When my career started, I had less time for both of these tribes and much less time for the conversation. My work introduced me to a new group of people who didn’t care nearly as much about these things, and my marriage introduced me to yet another circle with other interests.

I became a member of different tribes, like the publishing industry tribe and the dad tribe. These tribes had less “talkin’” in them, though. I rarely found anyone terribly interested in discussing the architecture of the book business with me, and even fewer who wanted to break down what being a father meant to my generation. I loved being associated with these tribes and some very good friends came from them, but I missed the talkin’.

About a decade ago, I joined the writer tribe. I’d left my last corporate publishing gig and published my first novel, The Forever Year. I e-mailed writer friends and I joined writers organizations. It was nice to be part of this community. But again, no talkin’.

If anything, there was less talkin’ here than in any tribe I’d been involved with. Writers would check in with each other and support each other, but they didn’t get on the phone with each other to discuss process or exchange lengthy e-mail about craft. As the cliché goes, writing is a solitary profession.

Then, at the beginning of the year my friend and colleague Aaron Brown spent a few days at my house while we were prepping for a marketing meeting with Perseus, the company that distributes our publishing house, The Story Plant. Like me and like my business partner Mitchell Maxwell, Aaron is both a publishing professional and a novelist.

During those days, Aaron and I spent a great deal of time “talkin’ writing.” I realized then how much I missed doing this sort of thing and also how natural it was to discuss the pursuit we loved so deeply. That’s when it came to me that there needed to be a place where “talkin’ writing” was readily available. No more than a week later, we’d come up with the basic structure for Authors First, our virtual writers conference. The site launched in late May.

Authors First has a number of components. There are sessions on a wide variety of writing topics from professional writers who also happen to be good teachers. There are exercises and illustrations to help aspiring and developing writers hone their craft. There are the first two videos in our 120-second writing tips series designed to help writers make big improvements very quickly.

There are two contests, one for novelists and one for short-story writers. And then there’s the talkin’. We’re really hoping that our forum gets a wide variety of conversations going. About writing software, and creating sympathetic characters, and the best shortstops crime novelists of all time. We’re hoping this happens because we think writers would benefit from being a part of this tribe. To be honest, we’re hoping this happens because we think we would benefit from being a part of this tribe.

We all need tribes. They help define and refine us. Any tribe can be good, but what I’ve come to discover is that talkin’ tribes are the best.

So, WWW tribe, let’s hear some talkin’! And meanwhile, check out their cool (and FREE competitions mentioned above. The direct link to those is http://www.authorsfirst.com/the-contest/