THE REVIEW

SNOOZE-FEST?

Can’t say whether it was the warm temperature or that our writing was boring, but a few eyelids had trouble staying up on Wednesday night when Leah, Jim, Lorelei and Jason joined me here for a meeting. Hope it was just that I didn’t have the air conditioning on high! Kristi was busy with her son’s fifth birthday, and Annette had been marooned in Princeton with a vehicle breakdown on her way home from Grand Forks. We missed them both.


We discussed how best to indicate to the reader there is a change in point of view within a chapter, and agreed additional space between paragraphs is warranted. However, on looking up the subject, the advice I found was: Change of scene can be indicated with an extra space. Change of POV or timeframe will need either the # or ***, in the middle of the space between paragraphs. Jim uses the # key in his writing. I always start a new chapter when I change POV. Each to their own, I guess. Just don’t leave the reader confused as to whose head they are roaming around in.

Lorelie handed around a print-out of what we all surmised to be an attempted scam via email. This one was very well written but we were skeptical that anybody would still be falling for something like that.

Jim read the edited version of the prologue and first few chapters of “Coventry Ghosts – Book I”. The prologue shows the death of Leanne and the first few chapters show how she is learning to haunt the coffee shop. Also, Judge Jeffreys is introduced near the beginning and he tells Leanne the rules of haunting and that breaking them means being exiled to Drakko. Wanting to communicate her thanks to the ladies who had tried to save her, she appears after midnight to each successive cleaning person at the coffee shop, but ends up scaring them all away.

The writing reads much smoother and Jim likes what the editor has suggested, but is still having problems getting the process to move ahead more quickly. At the rate it’s been going, he could see it taking two years for an edit he would like to see completed in maybe a few months. He did say he needs to speak with the editor. Luckily, he didn’t pay up front for the service.

Since Jason has several times asked me what was happening with “Nigel Wingate Is Dead”, I had pulled out the beginnings of that novel that I hadn’t looked at in a couple of years and at the meeting I read the prologue and first chapter. I thought they still read fairly well and Leah said she wanted to keep going and hear what was happening. Jason suggested I include a little more information on where the Cariboo and Watch Lake are located and Leah had the perfect wording to do that, so I will add that information right at the beginning. Jason also told me not to forget that just because this story is based on a true incident, I don’t have to only write what really happened; that I can make the story more compelling by adding fictional elements. He’s right, as I always intended this to be fiction anyhow. And that is when Lorelei perked right up and took notes. You don’t have to be fettered by only the truth when you write.

I also told Jim that I had managed to group all my ‘Honey’ stories in one manuscript file on my computer, and have also done some formatting so the whole thing is visually readable. Next will come the editing. Someone asked if I had decided what order to put the stories in and I said I had chosen an order for the time being. But I may ask someone, or several someones, to read the order and give me their thoughts on the subject.

The Meetings in June will be the usual dates, the first and third Wednesdays. However, as the first Wednesday in July is actually July 1st, a holiday, we decided to move that meeting to July 8th. And since I will be away the end of July and the beginning of August, there will be other changes, as well. So after discussion, here is the intended schedule for June, July and August.

June 3rd
June 17th
July 8th
July 15th
August 19th

All Meetings will be at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Be sure to mark your calendars. Really hope that you will be able to attend. Happy writing everyone!