THE REVIEW

TRIDENT

Cougar and Margaret Florczak joined me last night for a trilateral meeting of late summer scribes. It was great to see Margaret again after nearly a year. She was definitely looking tanned and fit and happy.

We started with some discussion about Polar Expressions’ writing contest. Margaret had entered and received acceptance of her story in their upcoming anthology, and wanted to know what others had experienced with this contest. I had pulled out six previous anthologies that all included a story of mine, and there was one where I was an honourable mention on the back cover of the book, though not a winner. I have been happy to enter most years as my writing is usually included in the anthology each year, and that gives me more writing credits. Other Rams have also had their writing accepted: Annette, Gemma, and I think Charity might have as well? There are no entry fees, the author maintains copyright, and if you purchase the anthology you will have something to leave your grandchildren. Ha! Ha!

I read first, my story “Grief Or Guilt?”, which is the story accepted by Polar Expressions this year. It was based on a true experience of a friend threatening suicide and the narrator calling police in a different jurisdiction to intervene. But then the friend dies of serious health problems anyway, and the narrator feels guilty for not having gone to see her. I let Bryon, my husband, read this story and he said I can’t complain any longer about slow, sad Karaoke songs he sings when I was writing my own sad stories.

Cougar read to us Chapter 5 in his novel. It starts with the plot-line about the Icelandic police sure they have found a spy. Then it moves to the plot-line abut Eric as he leaves Iowa and heads for Iceland. Eric does a lot of soul-searching and asks why he wants to shut out his uncle, who only wanted to help him. Cougar had said that since he is trying to interweave both plot-lines, it is taking longer and is sometimes more difficult than he thought. He had started with just the story about Eric, but added the second plot to amp up the storyline. This chapter did flow well and wasn’t confusing, so Cougar is succeeding so far.

Margaret read a first person article she wants to submit to a senior’s magazine. It’s called “Younger Now” and the title refers to her feeling more alive and younger and freer, at 71 years of age, than she ever has before. Up until the last couple of years, her life had been all about taking care of others: grandmother, husband, children, grandchildren. Finding love again with her former teenage sweetheart after all these years, has given her new opportunities to live and experience and explore many things she didn’t think she could ever do. This was an excellent article and we hope it sees publication. I told Margaret to let me know what happens with it.

As there was still time left, I re-read “Back-Up”, my short story that I read last time. I had kept tweaking it every few days so the conflict would be more apparent to readers, and Cougar said it read much better this time, that the suspense and the story arc worked well. But Margaret was disappointed that the ending didn’t include explanations about everything that had happened to two peripheral characters who had been mentioned. I thought about her observation and have decided to add a little more at the beginning to make it even clearer that the story is about the protagonist’s dilemma about making a decision, rather than who caused a fire and who might have been killed or injured. Asking questions of the writer always stimulates the creative juices!

Charity told me that I have her permission to let you know she has been absent from Meetings due to ill health. She had been hospitalized with internal bleeding, she said, but is now home and bed-ridden. She says she is missing us all very much.

Annette has been busy with all the end of life duties after her husband passed away and was also committed to another activity on Wednesday. We hope she’ll be able to join us again soon.

Next Meeting will be Wednesday, September 19th at 7:00 p.m. here at my place. Hope to see everyone then! Keep writing!

Lisa A. Hatton
Author