THE REVIEW

YEAR’S END

Jason, Annette, Kristie, and Margaret F. all joined me Wednesday night for the last meeting of 2015. I did manage to do some holiday decorating before the meeting so the place felt a little cozier. Unfortunately, Charity and Christine were unable to attend.

We started by letting Jason vent. He was extremely upset that his Mac desktop computer had frozen while he was on a roll. He had written very productively for several hours when this happened, and sad to say, he hadn’t stopped regularly to save his work. The computer froze, he had to unplug it, and lost everything he had written. This was especially frustrating since any prolonged writing time is very hard to find in the busy life of parents with young children. Please accept our condolences, Jason, for the loss of your treasured canon.

Kristi read first, a story called “Not The North Pole”. This was a hilarious true account of her family’s doomed expedition to ride The Polar Express out of Squamish one Christmas season when her children were very young, and not in the best of health. Their excursion was raucously punctuated by one or the other of the children vomiting in various places there and back. And the train ride itself left much to be desired by those who rode, and those prohibited. Too funny!

Margaret read Chapter Five from “Babes In The Wood”. This chapter centers around her need to see if she can determine exactly when the children were murdered. She spends a great deal of time doing research at the Vancouver public library, reading archived newspaper articles written just after the bodies were found. She wanted to know why the curator at the museum had noted their date of death as being more than one year before the date in the coroner’s findings. She ends up with more questions than answers.

I read “The Perfect Size” from my collection of ‘Honey’ stories. It’s about my wanting a dress form for sewing and Honey finding a partial used one at the Salvation Army. It needs him to make a stand for it, but this is advisable over him wrapping me in duct tape to achieve a mold that he would have to cut me out of. Everybody laughed at the telling. This story has already been published in one anthology, but I still maintain copyright for it.

Jason read the next chapter about Damianos and Kwen. She wants to leave the jungle and return to her people on the plain. As they travel, he asks her about her people, and she talks non-stop about her tribe and their need to reclaim their sacred stolen city. Damianos calls her on her faith and beliefs, telling her she’s delusional to think that’s what her people need. He is speaking from lengthy and extensive experience.

Annette read Chapter 3 from “Within The Tangles”. In this chapter young Janna is abducted by Gage, after getting Abby to leave her bedroom window open at night for him to enter. Abby thought she was going to have an assignation with Gage, but she slept through the night and awoke to Janna’s brother, Foster, looking for Janna. Then Janna’s father thinks Gage, being a family friend, just wants to spend some time with her and will bring her back unharmed. But he hasn’t seen the duplicity Gage expended to abduct her that the reader has seen. We are all worried about what’s happened to Janna.

The next Meeting will be Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! I look forward to seeing you all in January!

Lisa A. Hatton
Author