THE REVIEW

DEDICATED DUET

Luke and I were the only Rams here on Wednesday night. Charity had come down with a cold and Kay said she had to work late. I don’t know what happened with anyone else. But Luke and I had lots of time to discuss various issues, which was enjoyable.

I read first, a short piece called “Haunted” which was a second place winner in the Wired Monk writing contest back in 2005. It was about the guilt I felt after refusing to give money to a pregnant woman who stopped me at a fast food restaurant and said she hadn’t eaten in three days.

Luke read the next scene in his novel, which has Goren in the den of the spine snake, which is littered with the bones of previous victims. He is engaged in a battle with the snake but is able to pin it to the ground and then he slices its head off to take as a trophy. He lets the other animal live and they both dine on snake meat. Later in the chapter some backstory explains about Goren’s preference for tracking and exploring over military combat. After betrayal at school, he prefers solitude and freedom. The conflict for Goren will be in learning to accept help from others. I asked Luke if he could put more tension into the battle with the snake to better engage the reader. That’s when Luke said he is much more a world builder than an adventurer and that he prefers reading all the detail of foreign environments himself. It’s true there are all kinds of readers and that tastes differ enormously. Being a girl who doesn’t like snakes, I needed something to entice me to keep reading.

I then read another “Honey” story, this one called “Face To Face”. It’s about when I wanted a new cell phone mostly for taking pictures but ended up with an Android that has internet access on it with Wi-Fi, and how I became so absorbed with using it that Honey had to email me to get my attention. He had tried calling me with it but I didn’t know how to get out of the game I was playing and answer the phone. Luke said he liked the story and thought it was funny.

The next Meeting will be Wednesday, May 3rd at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Keep writing even though it’s spring and you want to be outside playing!

Lisa A. Hatton
Author