THE REVIEW

TRICK OR TREATERS

Luke, Charity and Annette joined me here last night and since I’d only had four Halloween trick or treaters the night before, there was lots of leftover candy out on the table to feed The Muse.

To start, I asked Luke and Charity how they made out at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. Luke said in a casual discussion before supper on the Friday night, he was invited by Donald Maas to submit his manuscript for “The Heart Of The Earth”. That happened unexpectedly and Luke was so pleased.

Charity went to the Conference as a volunteer and did a lot of networking with possible mentors. She learned she should be treating her writing as a business and should set a realistic timeline. She analyzed her present time commitments and realized she spends about five hours a week writing. When her youngest starts kindergarten next year, she hopes to double the amount of time she can devote to writing.

Luke chimed in that he makes sure he writes a bare minimum of 200 words per day, even if it’s not until he climbs into bed at night, just before he goes to sleep. This all reminds me that I need to make a plan to devote time to writing as well. If I’m working on something new and have a deadline, I can usually produce what I want. My problem is going back and re-writing something, or prepping a manuscript for submission, or doing cover letters or synopses. I find those to be such tedious tasks and tend to avoid them. What do you do to keep yourself focused and on track?

Luke read first, and we see Goren at the raging river as a body stuck in a tangle of branches floats towards him. He tries pulling the unconscious woman out but she’s too entangled. He is pulled underwater and is close to drowning, but grabs onto her hand and they’re carried downstream. They go over the waterfall and eventually reach the bank. Lots of tension and excitement in this scene.

Charity read more about Trixie. She huddles by the fire in the ruined cabin and then lances the wound on her leg. She dresses and collects her gold coins and then fires three shots with her father’s gun to bring the Preacher to her. She needs his help to get out of the canyon, even though she knows he wants to turn her over to the posse. He helps her climb out of the canyon and then looking for shelter she heads to a cave she sees has a campfire inside. As she enters, Fat Marley points a gun at her. She just seems to go from one bad situation to the next.

Annette read the next chapter about Maxine and Jarod. She’s back at the ICU, watching him sleep and talking to him about their deteriorating relationship. She remembers all the times he pushed her away when she wanted a kiss or a hug and wonders why he didn’t want her. When she smells the lunch trays she gets hungry and heads to the cafeteria where she thinks she’ll use Claire’s tips for getting the best food there. Each chapter expands on Max’s reasons for wanting to leave Jarod, and her frustration that she feels she has to stay to look after him.

I read an older, true story entitled “Forgotten Details”, about the effects of using visualization to produce desired events and solutions to problems. Unfortunately, when two people visualized results for the same problem, they weren’t looking at the same picture and one family fell apart with heart wrenching results.

The next Meeting will be Wednesday, November 15th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see you then. In the meantime, wear a Poppy and remember our veterans how very lucky the rest of us really are.

Lisa A. Hatton
Author