THE REVIEW

KEEP READING


With such miserable and wet winter weather, it’s that time of year to just curl up with a good book and forget the rest of the world. But if you’re a writer, you just might have to write the book first.

On Wednesday, Ellie read us three poems. “Patterns In The Ice” was a poem about the snow scene in her back yard. And “Winter Pond” was another picture in words from the same yard. The third poem “The Best Word ‘Needed’” was about a grandfather going to help his young cowboy grandson build his own home. It was written with a country flavour and spoke of both the older and the younger men needing each other.

Ellie will be doing a public reading today, Sunday, January 23rd, at the Small Ritual Coffee Society (a coffee shop) in White Rock. Jim said he might try to be there to hear her.

Margaret has had advance copies of her book ordered from Georgia, Holland and Scotland. Nice that we have an international author in the group! She also related a personal story of finding the wing of a fly in her marmalade. When she phoned to complain about it, the Asian voice on the other end said he would send her some coupons, but then was adamant that he couldn’t find thirty-second avenue, he could only find three two avenue. Margaret told him to send them to three two avenue and she would receive them.

The next chapter in “Coffin And Dye” that Margaret read, was “Coffin Moves Again”. Dye wants Coffin to do another job for Mr. and Mrs. Lark at Sparrows Bridge, where human skeleton pieces had been found. Dye wants him to go and look at the bones. Coffin doesn’t want to. Dye tells him to ride his bike, it would only take an hour to get there, and to dress warm.

Jim read Chapter 15 from “Coventry Ghosts”. In this chapter, Sara the kitten ghost is told to follow John, husband of the coffee shop owner, to the casino and keep him out of trouble. So she follows him, but once there she is fascinated by the slot machines and manages to get inside one where she uses her powers to line up similar images, thinking it’s a great game, especially when the humans playing it get so excited at their winnings.

Also had Jim read a short story from the series he’s doing for the coffee shop writing contest. This story was an amusing account of what happened when a patron died on the toilet in the washroom. We told him to call it “Men’s Room Memorial”.

Ellie read my novel and had some good suggestions for minor changes in wordage that would add strength to the story. She also suggested “Ignited” as a title. But then we were all discussing topics and Jim said men like to play with fire, telling us how his Dad sets a fire in his fireplace for lighting in the morning. And right then I grabbed the phrase “Playing With Fire” to use as a title.

I read two pieces that were written on the topic of watching a parade of veterans. The first piece was fictional about a woman going to the vets’ parade every November 11th in honour of her son who had died in Afghanistan. After writing it I felt it could have been a little cliched, so I wrote another piece which I called “The Making Of A Soldier”, which was non-fiction, relating things my son told me through the years to illustrate how he changed and grew away from home through his life in the army, and yet was still a responsible person achieving his goals.

Jason wasn’t able to attend last Wednesday, either, due to family responsibilities. He said he has some writing he wants to share with us, so hopefully he’ll make the next meeting.

And our next Meeting will be Wednesday, February 2nd at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. As Valentine’s Day is approaching, feel free to bring any writing you have on that topic that you’d like to share with us. Hope to see you then.

Lisa