THE REVIEW

TEMPTATION OF SUMMER

The first day of summer seemed to hold more allure for members than a meeting did! I was here alone Wednesday when Cougar Brenneman, a new member, showed up to check out our group. We sat and chatted for a while and then Annette arrived a little late. She had been babysitting. Cougar is an experienced freelance journalist who is now writing his first novel.

I read first, another new story about life with Honey. It’s called “Copycat” and tells of three incidents where I did something very foolish, and Honey came along behind me and did the exact same thing. And I still don’t know if that was because he didn’t believe me, or because he didn’t want me to feel alone with my stupidity. Annette laughed and said she won’t be able to look at Bryon the same way ever again.

Annette read from another story in her collection about the descendants from characters in “Pride and Prejudice”. This story was about Elizabeth Gardner and Maxwell Duncan, in the 1920s. Elizabeth is a young woman whose father took in Maxwell Duncan, a wounded soldier from World War I, and allowed him to live in their home. Maxwell is disabled and in a wheelchair, which Elizabeth finds repugnant. Her father wants her to go to a dance with Maxwell and introduce him to her friends, and she really doesn’t want to, but finally agrees. On reaching stairs at the entrance, she doesn’t realize he needs help to enter the building, but two young men she knows arrive and automatically offer their help, leaving her nonplussed at how accepting and helpful they were regarding his predicament. This is an interesting comment on how judgemental we can be of another’s disability.

Cougar said he wrote the first draft of his novel with one plot line, and has since decided to add another. So he is in the process of mixing it all together. He’s doing that by re-reading things and deciding to keep portions, or write portions, only if they really grab his interest. This is a logical approach, because if the writer isn’t interested in his own story, how can the reader be interested? Cougar’s novel is set in Iceland and includes elf magic, and he says he is using that magic himself in writing the story.

He read to us an exerpt from Chapter 5, “The Chess Tournament Blows Up”. Nineteen year old Erik accompanies Elfa and Ilya as they enter a large hall where a chess tournament is being played. Ilya is one of the players, Elfa is his girlfriend, and Erik is the outsider who wants Elfa to be his girlfriend. As Ilya plays chess, Erik and Elfa are supposed to use elf magic to boost his mental perception so he can win. They find a back corner to perform the magic from, and become entranced as they do so, but are suddenly stopped from performing by security guards. The whole scene is written sort of tongue in cheek, and along with the teen angst there is lots of humour. This would be a very interesting read and I hope we’ll get to hear more of it.

The next Meeting will be July 4th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. I hope to see everyone then. In the meantime, write on!

Lisa A. Hatton
Author