THE REVIEW

WINTER FORTITUDE


In spite of the inclement weather of Wednesday, four of us still met to honour The Muse.

Margaret read a letter by Danny Halmo that was in the Langley Times on December 31st, thanking the people of Langley for their generosity of spirit to those less fortunate this past Christmas season. It was a good reminder of how difficult the holiday can be for some people.

In further adventures of Coffin and Dye, Margaret read of a stranger sitting down across the table from Coffin at a pub and the stranger telling him about how hard it is to keep tenants when the apartment building he owns is haunted by ghosts. Coffin tells him to just paint the premises and advertise the building as newly renovated. Dye receives a call from Mr. Creeps to tell him not to bother coming to exterminate ghosts, as he’s going to renovate the building. And Coffin is told by his landlord’s nephew that he has to vacate temporarily as his suite is being renovated.

In December I was invited by CBC to enter a flash fiction contest they were running, where the entry was between 100 and 250 words and started with “The snowman grinned malevolently…” and ended with “…buried alive.” I wrote a piece and submitted it, but didn’t win. Without saying who wrote which piece, I read my entry and the winner and two runners up. Margaret picked mine as the best, although the winning entry was also good. It’s nice to know I have a loyal audience.

Jim read Chapter 14 of “Coventry Ghosts” where we see the villain Jason return to his lab in Mexico with his laptop that has captured ghost essences. He’s hoping to resurrect his dead parents and keep them with him forever. This Chapter is setting up the character and his background so we understand what drives him.

Ellie read a piece recently written called “Walking A Winter Picture”. It is a very literary description of a recent walk in a snow-covered field and is a painting in words. You could feel yourself there, too, looking through her eyes.

I want to re-title my novel and was asking for suggestions. Ellie kindly offered to take it home with her and skim through it to see if anything suggested itself from the page. I did purchase the 2010 Canadian Writers’ Market and am planning on submitting to book publishers in Canada. After doing some research, I was quite surprised to find many of them saying they do not accept online queries or submissions, and a number of them even requested submission of full manuscripts in hard copy. Very interesting. That probably cuts down on the number of submissions they receive and have to deal with, n’est-ce pas? And of course that would definitely restrict the number of American writers submitting north of the 49th.

Jason emailed that he wasn’t able to attend the Meeting due to not feeling well.

Bob called to inform me he would not be attending meetings, for awhile anyhow, maybe permanently. He said he had lost interest in writing. I was so sorry to hear that and his presence will be sadly missed.

Next Meeting will be Wednesday, January 19th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Sweep the winter blues out of your house and away from your Muse. Think of spring and renewal and write with your longing for life. And then come and read your words on the 19th. Hope to see you then.

Lisa