THE REVIEW

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER


Since I didn’t write a Review after our meeting in April, I will have to include news from two meetings this time.

On April 1st, Bob and Margaret joined me and Margaret was the only one who read. From the Peabody collection, she read “The Intruder”, which sees Marie come back to the smelly manse after staying overnight at the Inn. She opens the doors and windows to air the place out, then goes to get eggs at a farm. Meanwhile, Peabody gets up to a cold house and calls police to say there’s been an intruder, and the policeman tells Marie, who thinks it’s bad luck because the Xmas tree was removed before New Year’s. Peabody tells her he feels guilty for removing the tree, so then she feels sorry for him and puts the kettle on.

In Seniors Today, there was an article called “Just for Laughs” by Laszlo Tamas, Gemma’s husband.

On May 6th, Bob and Margaret again joined me for another meeting. Margaret brought pictures showing a brass plaque that’s on a pole in Vancouver. The plaque has Margaret’s story “Dinner At Love’s Café” on it. Isn’t that a great way of preserving an author’s work?

Bob read from his jewellery history, about the hub of the business being in the area of Hastings St. and Cordova. There was a very large diamond robbery on 1906, with $8500.00 in rings stolen, and a shot fired at a clerk pursuing the thieves. One thief was caught with 9 diamonds in the butt of a revolver. Bob also read an account of this episode from the Vancouver archives.

Margaret read about Reverend Peacock’s Christmas at Marigold’s in Gretna Green. Unfortunately, he fell out of the hole in the wall bed and Marigold called a vet to attend to his injuries. The vet was more interested in Joey, the squawking parrot. On his return home, he started interviewing for a new housekeeper. He kept praying for another Marigold.

While Sonny and Chantal and baby Grayson stayed with me in April, I asked Chantal to read my novel “Fire”, which she did. She said it was a good read and she really wanted to learn the identity of the arsonist. She also said there weren’t any parts in the book that she felt she had to slog through. This was all very pleasing for me to hear. Chantal is well educated and an avid reader of fiction, so I highly respect her opinion as a reader. After that good news, I sent off my first submission to an agent, which included cover letter, synopsis, and first two chapters.

Now I am getting organized to start another novel. I plan to continue with the same characters in the same setting, but this will be a murder mystery.

Ann is currently taking a course in the History of Africa at Kwantlen, and plans to take a creative writing course in the fall. Her community hosted a talk by Doris Reidwig about having her first novel published.

In yesterday’s Langley Times there was a call for submissions of poetry or short stories to a contest where a lot of submissions will be included in an anthology. You might want to take a look.

Next meeting here at my place on Wednesday, May 20th at 7:00 p.m. Hope to see you then, even if you haven’t written anything.

Lisa