YEAR END
Annette, Kristie, Leah and Jim all joined me for the last Meeting this year. I am scheduled for surgery on December 2nd, and they thought I should just take the rest of December to recuperate.
Annette read first, Chapter 19 from “A Taste Of Wormwood”. While waiting for her father to arrive, Alyssa tells John a bit about their family background. She’s thankful to see her father, but disconcerted that Mike is John’s brother. Mike can’t stop looking at Alyssa and she at him. Working as an undercover cop, he had been hired by her employer to kill her, but helped her to get away instead. John notices the two of them looking at each other and steps between them and puts his arm around Alyssa to assert his claim on her. We can sense there may be a conflict between the brothers coming up.
Kristi read the next chapter in “Jane And The Midnight Daisies”. Jane had tried to kill the daisies with the weed killer her Grams had made, but it didn’t work. They have a lively discussion showing both their personalities. Jane has a nightmare about the daisies eating her Grams. There is good character development in this chapter.
From a Twitter prompt, Kristi wrote a brief piece that had to be under 500 characters but also include the words: sealed, newspaper, advert, rush and snap.
Leah read next, a short story from the point of view of a horse arriving at a farm thinking it will be where his life is ended for him. But through the day he meets a know-it-all cat, an anxious hen, an unhappy donkey and an angry ram who bashes things. He is well-treated, well-fed and at the end of the day content in knowing he has found sanctuary. It is a great little story showing the personalities of several animals in a farm setting.
Jim read Chapter 62 in “Coventry Ghosts – Book II”. Sara manages to get Joel out of the lab safely and they get back to the hideaway where Ji-Young was lying low. She moves both Joel and Ji-Young to a safer hiding spot and then sets out on her own to stalk the Umbra. She tackles them in small groups, sort of lassoing them with a band of energy each time and then throwing them into Drakko. At the end, all the ghosts were sucked into Drakko, including Sara, again.
I read another ‘Honey’ story called “Reluctant Mr. Fixit”. It tells of Honey dealing with a recent hot water tank failure, the oven door not unlocking after self-cleaning, and my wanting him to assemble a new cutting table I asked him to give me for Christmas. He then tells me I’ve reached my project limit of three for the month.
We had some discussion about the Website. Leah said she is ready to receive the links that members would like to see added as resources for writers. So please feel free to send along any that you like to use yourself, be they contest links, dictionaries, markets, prompt generators, inspirational quotes, or whatever you find useful. Let’s do this!
Annette is still working on her novel she must write during November, as well as coping with some recent health issues and chores on the farm. Jim has been dealing with his daughter and granddaughters staying with him at the same time his computer died and the toilet wasn’t co-operating. Lorelie has been dealing with health issues for both her Mom and herself. Jason missed the meeting as he had to stay home with his kids. We hope Wendy is doing okay. Leah has concerns over the health of her ex in Ontario as well as her own struggle to get her business up and running successfully. It doesn’t seem to have been an easy month for anyone. Time for a break.
Next Meeting will be Wednesday, January 7th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday Season and gets to enjoy family and friends and find a renewed connection with The Muse. Am looking forward to seeing everyone in the New Year!
LISA A. HATTON
Author
Published eBooks available at Kobo Books:
FIRE: http://kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=9780991739615
LOVE FOUND: http://kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=9780991739608
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Friday, November 7, 2014
THE REVIEW
INSPIRED WRITERS
There were seven of us here on Wednesday, some of us inspired writers and some of us looking for inspiration. Lorelei joined us again after about a year’s absence while she was sequestered, looking after her aging mother. Wendy also felt well enough to attend and we were so glad to see her as well. These two joined Jason, Annette, Kristi, Jim and me for a lively meeting.
Kristi read first, her second chapter in “Jane And The Midnight Daisies”. It’s the morning after Jane has learned that the daisies devoured her parents, and when she agreed to bring them ‘fresh meat’ in exchange for her own freedom. She sees blue streaks in her hair, and when telling her Gran what had happened and crying, her nasal mucus is also blue. She tells Gran she wants a plan to kill the daisies. Since Gran was already brewing weed killer, they start planning what they will do. And Gran tells her that as a last resort, they can always call on the Dryad.
Annette read the next chapter in “A Touch Of Wormwood”. John arrives at the cabin where Alyssa is hiding out, and helps her talk to her family. She still tries to protect them by not telling them too much of what has happened, but at the same time wants their love and support. Later she gives John a USB flash drive with all the dirt on George West. She had made copies of everything when she worked for him, all his contacts and all the dirty cops on his payroll. We were all glad that she had been smart enough and courageous enough to risk doing that.
I read a first person account called “The Prompt”, which I wrote after reading prompts in “A Writer’s Book Of Days”. It has a writing prompt for each day of the year. The story tells of an encounter with a spiritual entity through a friend who acted as a channel for a spiritual guide.
Jim read his next chapter in “Coventry Ghosts – Book II”. Sarah and Joel are inside the compound and she is trying to keep Joel invisible from both the soldiers and the Umbra. Inside the lab, Abigail, the computer, tells Jason that someone had arrived there. Abigail starts shooting bolts of energy and Jason calls in the soldiers who start shooting bullets. Sarah is warding off both bullets and bolts of energy. Abigail is shot by a boomeranging bolt of energy and starts to shut down.
Margaret Moffatt had a short history of Burnaby published in the November issue of Today’s Senior Newsmagazine. Kristi said she submitted her short story “Of The Moon” to the CBC literary contest. Annette said she is entered in the NaNoWriMo, which is the National Novel Writing Month, where during the month of November, you write a whole novel. She has a goal of so many words per day, and will meet weekly with other entrants. And Bob Jacoby phoned me to say his daughter-in-law had attended the Surrey International Writers’ Conference and achieved some success with her writing, and had two agents asking to represent her. Exactly what she entered and what she wrote, I’m not clear on, but good on her anyhow.
We spent the last part of the Meeting discussing plans for the website and looking at the mock-ups that Leah had dropped off. It was agreed that only Leah and myself should be the ones to enter the outgoing blurbs on the Twitter account, and we will use it as a news feed. It should work great whenever there is a contest notification or a call for submissions to post. We will not publish incoming responses to our Twitter account.
And all members are now asked to consider submitting things for two of our pages. One is the Resources page, where we will publish on our own website things like critique guidelines, or plot diagrams for short stories or novels, or any other material we put together that site visitors can download and print for themselves. The second page is for Links, where we will list writing links that we find helpful for writers in some way. You can submit things you’d like to see on these pages to Leah now.
Annette said she designed and built her own website and we asked her how she did that. She said she got all the instructions from www.w3schools.com . The rest of us were thinking that might be more than we want to tackle.
The next Meeting will be Wednesday, November 19th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see you then.
LISA A. HATTON
Author
Published eBooks available at Kobo Books:
FIRE: http://kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=9780991739615
LOVE FOUND: http://kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=9780991739608
There were seven of us here on Wednesday, some of us inspired writers and some of us looking for inspiration. Lorelei joined us again after about a year’s absence while she was sequestered, looking after her aging mother. Wendy also felt well enough to attend and we were so glad to see her as well. These two joined Jason, Annette, Kristi, Jim and me for a lively meeting.
Kristi read first, her second chapter in “Jane And The Midnight Daisies”. It’s the morning after Jane has learned that the daisies devoured her parents, and when she agreed to bring them ‘fresh meat’ in exchange for her own freedom. She sees blue streaks in her hair, and when telling her Gran what had happened and crying, her nasal mucus is also blue. She tells Gran she wants a plan to kill the daisies. Since Gran was already brewing weed killer, they start planning what they will do. And Gran tells her that as a last resort, they can always call on the Dryad.
Annette read the next chapter in “A Touch Of Wormwood”. John arrives at the cabin where Alyssa is hiding out, and helps her talk to her family. She still tries to protect them by not telling them too much of what has happened, but at the same time wants their love and support. Later she gives John a USB flash drive with all the dirt on George West. She had made copies of everything when she worked for him, all his contacts and all the dirty cops on his payroll. We were all glad that she had been smart enough and courageous enough to risk doing that.
I read a first person account called “The Prompt”, which I wrote after reading prompts in “A Writer’s Book Of Days”. It has a writing prompt for each day of the year. The story tells of an encounter with a spiritual entity through a friend who acted as a channel for a spiritual guide.
Jim read his next chapter in “Coventry Ghosts – Book II”. Sarah and Joel are inside the compound and she is trying to keep Joel invisible from both the soldiers and the Umbra. Inside the lab, Abigail, the computer, tells Jason that someone had arrived there. Abigail starts shooting bolts of energy and Jason calls in the soldiers who start shooting bullets. Sarah is warding off both bullets and bolts of energy. Abigail is shot by a boomeranging bolt of energy and starts to shut down.
Margaret Moffatt had a short history of Burnaby published in the November issue of Today’s Senior Newsmagazine. Kristi said she submitted her short story “Of The Moon” to the CBC literary contest. Annette said she is entered in the NaNoWriMo, which is the National Novel Writing Month, where during the month of November, you write a whole novel. She has a goal of so many words per day, and will meet weekly with other entrants. And Bob Jacoby phoned me to say his daughter-in-law had attended the Surrey International Writers’ Conference and achieved some success with her writing, and had two agents asking to represent her. Exactly what she entered and what she wrote, I’m not clear on, but good on her anyhow.
We spent the last part of the Meeting discussing plans for the website and looking at the mock-ups that Leah had dropped off. It was agreed that only Leah and myself should be the ones to enter the outgoing blurbs on the Twitter account, and we will use it as a news feed. It should work great whenever there is a contest notification or a call for submissions to post. We will not publish incoming responses to our Twitter account.
And all members are now asked to consider submitting things for two of our pages. One is the Resources page, where we will publish on our own website things like critique guidelines, or plot diagrams for short stories or novels, or any other material we put together that site visitors can download and print for themselves. The second page is for Links, where we will list writing links that we find helpful for writers in some way. You can submit things you’d like to see on these pages to Leah now.
Annette said she designed and built her own website and we asked her how she did that. She said she got all the instructions from www.w3schools.com . The rest of us were thinking that might be more than we want to tackle.
The next Meeting will be Wednesday, November 19th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see you then.
LISA A. HATTON
Author
Published eBooks available at Kobo Books:
FIRE: http://kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=9780991739615
LOVE FOUND: http://kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=9780991739608
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