THE REVIEW

BETWEEN HEAT WAVES

Our Meeting Wednesday was between heat waves. Annette, Cougar and Chris joined me to honour The Muse.

Cougar read first, from Chapter One in his novel “The Viking Elf Cult Conspiracy”. It starts out with two people in Iceland talking about their suspicions about a Russian spy. This was third person past tense. It then changes point of view to Eric, a young American who is the main character, talking about graduating from college and not knowing what to do with his life. This was first person past tense. Then there was a section further into the future where Eric is talking in first person present tense about writing his story of what happened after he left college. And then the next section goes back in time again and shows Eric thinking about going to Iceland. The Chapter ends again with the first two characters talking about spying on the Russian spy, but also thinking they must watch out for Americans too. We discussed this chapter for quite a while. As readers, we found it confusing the way it jumped around in the time frame, and had been written sometimes in past tense and sometimes in present tense. We suggested moving some parts around so the story line wasn’t so broken up, and the time sequence not so confusing. Cougar said he already knew he had to be consistent with which tense he was using. The chapter used a lot of very good dialogue and both Eric’s predicament and his reactions showed a lot of humour. It promises to be an interesting read.

I read next, another “Honey” story. This was titled “My Small World” and relates an incident last year when I was in a motor vehicle accident with a semi, and had been unable to contact Honey. It also tells of Honey driving home from the dump and seeing my totalled vehicle being loaded up by a tow truck, and Honey doing a U-turn to ask a policeman what happened to the driver, his wife. Someone who talked to him that day later told me how upset he had been and that he really, really loved me. So nice to know.

Annette and Chris didn’t read. Charity had said she was unable to attend on Wednesday. We had some discussion about when the next Meeting will be. It was decided there will be no Meeting on August 1st and the next Meeting will we Wednesday, August 15th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Here’s hoping the extreme heat will be over and done with by then. Keep writing in the meantime and hope to see you on August 15th!

Lisa A. Hatton
Author

PS: Here are four short sentences to illustrate points of view, the simplest explanation I’ve ever seen.
First person: I bought the candy.
Second person: You love eating candy.
Third person: Honey stole the candy and ate it.
Omniscient: Lisa thought the candy was hers but Bryon ate it because he wanted it.