National bestselling and multiple award-winning local author Susan Wiggs joins Vicki today to discuss her latest work, Return To Willow Lake. Later, former Microsoft senior manager Whitney Keyes shares her 5 essential steps towards accelerating your business for the future! Enjoy this encore presentation of Conversations Live! Vicki returns live next week!

Conversations Live airs every Monday at noon Pacific on KKNW 1150AM or 94.9FM HD. Follow us on Facebook, and keep up with Vicki on Twitter, too!

Susan Wiggs continues the immensely popular Lakeshore Chronicles series with her latest offering, Return To Willow Lake. The drama is off the charts, and the timing is uncanny as an election scandal unfolds while the pressures of women making major career choices amidst a family illness. Known for her strong women’s fiction, reviewers are calling Return To Willow Lake Wiggs’ best work yet. She is a three time Rita Award winner, and has also won the Dorothy Parker Award of Excellence, in addition to being a #1 bestseller on the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly charts. Being a local author, living on Bainbridge Island has influenced her work greatly, and her success has led to her nurturing a number of local writers, as she speaks regularly at Washington writer’s conferences. She will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Emerald City Writer’s Conference in October.

What does a Fortune 500 company like Starbucks have in common with a small meat vendor in Malaysia? Surprisingly, a lot, because when it comes to marketing, size doesn’t matter. In PROPEL: Five Ways to Amp Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business, author Whitney Keyes shows readers how to remove challenges holding a business back, identify new marketing opportunities, and turn ideas into action by creating a customized plan. As Keyes notes, anyone can do marketing, but true success lies in how it’s done. For over 20 years, she has been on the front lines of bringing success to organizations and individuals. As a senior manager at Microsoft, she managed global marketing campaigns, including the launch of Office 2000, and helped create the company’s philanthropy program, Unlimited Potential. Prior to that, she worked for the City of Tacoma helping over 500 small businesses stay afloat while managing her family’s retail store. Today she serves as a fellow for the Center for Strategic Communications and as a professor of Global Reputation Management at Seattle University. She will be speaking throughout the greater Seattle area during the latter half of September, you can view her speaking calendar here for an upcoming appearance!

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