The Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas was a success

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The Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas was a success

We recently completed planning and hosting the first ever Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas. Based on the feedback from all of the participants it was a great success!! Our featured author was Will Viharo, who has over ten books published (purchase one here on Amazon) and has a passion for writing pulp fiction, Hollywood history (his father was a B-movie actor) and vintage pop culture. In fact his book “Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me” has had the movie rights purchased by Christian Slater. Mr. Slater and Will are finishing up the screenplay and hope to have it filmed in the next five years.

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Will Viharo (center with hat), Ezekiel Tyrus (3rd from left), Nick Halverson (far right) with some of the participants at the Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas.

What exactly is a ‘writers’ retreat’? It involves daily sessions of writing, free time to think, write and be inspired, and times to relax and enjoy everything Costa Rica has to offer. The idea of The Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas came from author Ezekiel Tyrus (“Zeke”). Enjoy the short video at the end of this article (<1 min) to get a glimpse behind what the Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas is all about. From the Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas Website:

Who can attend?  Our guests have included, as described by one of our guests who is a successful Hollywood actor, The Lad from Long Beach, The Lady from Minnesota, The Poet from North Beach, The Pugnacious Floridian, The Seattle Searcher, My New Hero from Stockton, The Gentle Giant from Bloomfield Hills all with sinewy stories and sublime spirits. In short, anyone who has a passion for writing, whether you are an accomplished writer with a bookshelf filled with your byline, a famous novelist experiencing writer’s block, or a novice who has always dreamed of completing that book. This place is for you.

The Mission of The Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas is to create an intimate, luxurious, inspiration-filled environment for writers to write. You may want to pen some essays, complete pages upon your travel-journal, finish your novel, perfect your screenplay, collect some short-stories, write poetry, or perhaps you’ve never written before but feel the time is right to start your memoirs.

Zeke was a guest of ours back in 2016 and ended up staying longer than either he or his family had predicted. He became our Property Manager for a couple of months and during that time he wrote a novel that is to be published in mid-2017 (stay tuned!). Zeke returned to Florida last summer but he missed the beauty, the tranquility and the essence of Costa Rica. The urge to return resulted in him contacting us about setting up a writers retreat in Las Villas de San Buenas. We were excited to have Zeke back in Costa Rica, but we had never planned a writers’ retreat before (although we have had weddings, birthday parties, etc on the property) so we were cautiously optimistic.

Zeke took care of all the writing details and in securing pulp-noir author Will Viharo, and we took care of planning all of the details of lodging, transportation and meals. Collectively, it worked out wonderfully! The all inclusive element of the Writers’ Retreat makes it easy for participants to enjoy their time here. The feedback has been fantastic!! In fact, we already have our next Writers’ Retreat of San Buenas planned for June 10-17, 2017, with accomplished author Vi Khi Nao.

Here’s some testimonials from the retreat:

This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Guest writers and attendee group were amazing. So much energy and creativity! I feel I did my best writing, ever, at the retreat. — Michelle H.

I was afraid that it would be a bunch of feel-good hippie crap, which frankly I do not need and doesn’t really fit my personality…As far as the writing workshop itself, I can truly say that it was life-changing…Probably the most valuable aspect of the retreat for me was the retreat itself: carving out the time to focus on my writing, and doing so surrounded by such an amazing group of writers who were also invested in taking their work seriously. — Ray A.

I am as surprised as you that I actually went on this adventure. A writer’s retreat? Absolutely in my comfort zone. In Costa Rica? Absolutely the farthest thing from my comfort zone outside of going shirtless in public or bullfighting. I guess my inner writer needed to get to the jungle. What a learning experience! — Dustin T

Please contact either us or through the Writers’ Retreat website if you’d like more information about this all-inclusive option.

 


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Will Viharo at the 2017 San Buenas Writer’s Retreat

Will Viharo

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The dates for our premier retreat are January 29-February 4, 2017, and we at The Writer’s Retreat of San Buenas couldn’t be more pleased that Will Viharo is going to be our first guest author and instructor.

Will ‘the Thrill’ Viharo is a noted “gonzo pulp” fiction author, freelance writer, and B movie impresario. For many years he was best known as the producer, programmer and host of the long-running live “cult movie cabaret” called “Thrillville,” which he hosted for many years around the Bay Area and beyond as “Will the Thrill,” along with his wife, Monica “Tiki Goddess” Cortes-Viharo.

Now he has returned to his roots full-time as a freelance writer and pulp fiction author, contributing regular columns about vintage pop culture and the craft of writing to several publications.

His published bibliography includes the retrospective anthology series The Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection featuring all of his standalone novels to date (A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge, Freaks That Carry Your Luggage Up to the Room, Lavender Blonde, Down a Dark Alley, and Chumpy Walnut); as well as the definitive omnibus The Vic Valentine Classic Case Files: Fate Is My Pimp, Romance Takes a Rain Check, I Lost My Heart in Hollywood, and Diary of a Dick. All are now available via his own imprint, Thrillville Press.

Gutter Books reissued the first Vic Valentine novel, Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me in 2013. It was originally published by Wild Card Press in 1995, and has been optioned for a film by Christian Slater. In December 2015, Gutter published the most recent entry in the series, Hard-boiled Heart.

Additionally, Will has written two sci-fi collaborations with Scott Fulks, It Came From Hangar 18 and The Space Needler’s Intergalactic Bar Guide.

For each day of this retreat, Mr. Viharo – now a resident of Seattle, WA – will lead a socially casual but intently focused group session wherein he will constructively critique participants’ writing, provide experiential insights into the “cut-throat” business of publishing (both independent and traditional), and share creative techniques of self-discovery to help aspiring authors achieve their full artistic potential.

Praise for Will Viharo from his peers:

“No human being has absorbed more pulp culture and its seamy sexploitation underbelly than Will Viharo. Thankfully, his warped synapses and calloused, compulsive fingertips are able to repurpose it all and blow it back onto the page–desperate, demented, delirious, D-cupped … and many other D words as well.” —Eddie Muller, Czar of Noir

“Besides the great style, plot, and characters, what I love so much about Will Viharo’s work is his willingness to really go there in his depictions of sex and violence. The dude’s not shy. At all.” – Mike Monson, author/publisher, All Due Respect Books

“Will Viharo has to be the most Chandleresque author I know that’s not actively trying to rip off the legend’s style or paradigm in his fiction. Viharo’s narrative voice is thunderous and commanding. One of the best kept secrets in contemporary hardboiled fiction.”

-Benoit Lelievre, Dead End Follies

“Will Viharo writes not just neo-noir but neon noir, his Vic Valentine novels brilliant paeans to Chandler, Hammett, and other aspects of pop culture that Viharo clearly loves, from old B-movies to Frank Sinatra. But his roots are only a backdrop for Viharo’s modernization of the detective genre. Vic Valentine is a detective who falls hard for his dreams, knowing full well that he shouldn’t.  For Valentine it seems that the greatest defeat would be to give in to the idea that he cannot win. In Will Viharo’s fast paced, witty and wise Vic Valentine novels, there is always hope, however hardboiled it may be.”–Rob Pierce, author of Uncle Dust  and Vern in the Heat

 “In a cookie-cutter literary world chock-full of imitation and repetition, Will Viharo carves out a thoroughly original ride…Think David Lynch and Raymond Chandler catching a matinee together as the world falls apart. Sexy, smart, surreal. Can’t recommend enough.” –Joe Clifford, author of Lamentation, December Boys, and Junkie Love, on A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge 

Visit Will’s website

 

 


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