Saturday, November 21, 2009

THE REVIEW

ECLECTIC


Six of us braved the storm on Wednesday and met to honour The Muse.

Bob was feeling stressed over all the electronics turmoil at his house during the past few weeks. But he phoned me since Wednesday to say his computer is up and running again and he could now receive his email. I told him he must write a story about his computer and T.V. saga of despair.

Margaret read her next chapter in “Coffin & Dye”. Dye had leased a small, shabby office over Reeds Books, for the new partnership of Coffin & Dye, Ghost Eradicators. Coffin was not impressed that Dye had signed a lease for 2 years. However, Dye had also placed an ad in the local paper and their first customer arrived, a Jordan Fox. Margaret has also sent an item to Today’s Seniors Newsmagazine, which she thinks will appear in their December issue.

Ann brought a poem to read that she said was a happy piece compared to the darker ones she had read previously. She read “The Gray Goose Goober”, a humorous animal story in meter and rhyme that illustrates the circle of life and death and also points out the need of animals, too, for familial companionship.

Jason had re-written, again, his Chapter 1 and read it to us. This time it captivated listeners right from the very beginning, portraying a frustrated sexual encounter between Greg and Jodie, and also exposing the fanciful menace that will permeate this urban fantasy he is writing. We were spellbound as he read and we all gave him two thumbs up on it.

Jim read some erotica for seniors, a short story called “Dirty Old Man” which portrays the very lusty sex lives of a married couple in their 80s and the acceptance and emulation of same by all their offspring. Jim also said his story “Janina”, about a young woman’s struggles on a houseboat during a violent storm, has been accepted by Eclectica Magazine for publication in their Issue #7. Congratulations from all of us.

Lastly, I read a new short story I wrote on Monday, “Enemy At The Gate”, a humorous account about disaster striking during the 2010 Winter Games. Everyone laughed at the end, so I think I accomplished what I wanted with it. The next day I submitted it to Eclectica Magazine and it has been accepted for their Issue #8, which comes out Jan. 21st, perfect timing just before the games. Thanks to Jim for their website address.

Next Meeting will be Wednesday, December 2nd, at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Look forward to seeing you then.

Lisa

Friday, November 6, 2009

THE REVIEW

WINTER’S APPROACHING


With both the time change and wet and stormy weather, I’m afraid there’s no stopping Old Man Winter from arriving soon. But the threat of his appearance didn’t stop The Rams from meeting again last Wednesday. There were eight of us here to honour The Muse.

Margaret read first, her second chapter called “A Day Of Judgement”. Coffin has a sleepless night after Dye made him a job offer and arises with a pounding headache. He discovers a message from Dye to say he has leased office space for the ghost hunting business, and asks Coffin to meet him there. Coffin rides his bike over and is quite pleased to find the leased office space is luxurious, and has a gorgeous secretary. When Dye arrives, Coffin tells him, of course he’ll work with him. But then Dye explains that Coffin was at the wrong address. Margaret also had a picture of the Rolls Royce that Dye drives, from the 1930s.

Danny said he is going to chop his long manuscript into 2, and Book 1 will deal with the time he spent on the racing circuit. He read a section of Book 1 called “Taking One For The Team”, which details the lurid sex lives of those who traveled the circuit and congregated on the infield.

Bob wrote a fan letter to Mr. John Henry, principle owner of the Boston Red Sox, telling him why he had been a happy fan since the mid 1940s. Danny thinks the letter will result in Bob receiving some free offering for such long-time loyalty.

I read two items that I will be submitting to the anthology the Murrayville Library Writers’ Group is producing. One was my poem “Sweet Betrayal”, about a man’s obsessive love for a woman who turns on him and kills him, only “she” is the bottle. The second piece was a first person humorous prose piece about my ‘Honey’ finally going to see his cabin up in the Caribou in March one year.

Jim read a chapter from the 3rd book of his trilogy where he introduces a new character who will work for Joseph and his pregnant wife in a company that uses green technology in construction to “better’ the world. The new character is a young Aztec woman who grew up and achieved an education in spite of the racism she experienced where she lived in Mexico. Both the green technology and the issue of racism are timely topics in today’s world. And the way Jim portrayed her first day at a secondary school vividly describes the culture she came from.

Jason, when he first signed on for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, had made an appointment with an agent, but later thought that might be premature and didn’t know how to get out of trying to sell an unfinished product. However, at the conference, he learned the agent was a no-show and he was given a time slot with another agent. But at the meeting, he learned the second agent only handled non-fiction. Strange how prayers are answered. However, he did learn his particular genre is called urban fantasy. Now he has a definite pigeon-hole to define his work.

Gemma’s “Collateral Damage” is in the November issue of Today’s Senior News Magazine. Two thumbs up, Gemma!

Ron had done some research on Hungary from the 1800s and brought a print-out to show Gemma, as he couldn’t read it. It was in Hungarian, and Gemma is our official translator of Hungarian into English.

November 11 is fast approaching. I hope you buy a poppy to remember the fallen and to support the living vets.

Next meeting will be Wednesday, November 18th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Look forward to seeing you then. Bring your Muse, your talent and your love of the literate. I’ll supply ice water to drench all egos and cookies with calories to inflate them back up again.

Lisa