The First Wednesday in October

The first Wednesday in October saw a really great turnout in spite of the Presidential debate scheduled for later in the evening. We welcomed four newcomers, Jim Stoner, Bob Sutherland, Chad Brockhoff, and Chalise Bourque, and we welcomed back an old friend when George Collias returned as well.

After the usual greetings and cordiality, the meeting kicked off with Rod DiGruttolo holding the gavel and allowing me to speak briefly about the upcoming Florida Writers Association Convention October 19^th, 20^th and 21^st. Full details of the upcoming conference can be found at http://www.floridawriters.net/2012_FWA_Conference.html. I was pleased to announce Don Westerfield has donated the profits of his great book of poetry, Casting Shadows, to the Nokomis Volunteer Fire Department, our gracious hosts for our meetings. We usually collect five dollars from our members twice a year as a donation to the NVFD to show our support and thanks for the volunteer organization. Don's gracious contribution is greatly appreciated.

Rod started the readings with Roger Satowski's great piece titled How to Write Stuff Nobody Reads, or, really, what constitutes a novel? Discussions followed briefly, then the truncated meeting resumed with Don Westerfield reading his rewritten The Photograph. We thought it was excellent before, but the discreet smoothing and tuning made it really great. Don also read the excellent poem from the piece called “Secret Places.”

Joanne Phillips cautiously read the next chapter of her book, Memoirs of a Sea Hag. Joanne felt one critique of her last chapter was a little too caustic. No fear, her continuing story about sailing the Bahamas and the Glass Window Bridge on Eluthera used intertwined dialog and descriptive narrative to capture everyone's attention. Well Done!

Susan Davis again had everyone in her power as she read “Eating My Way Up the Coast”. The one passage that insured rapt attention was, “Orgasmic! No, said his wife, it was better than sex!” They were talking about swimming after a great shrimp dinner. No one missed a word of the narrative! Susan will soon be published in the Venice Gondolier with articles of local interest to the community. We look forward to her column!

Kat Levato read her poem, “Inflamed,” and showed the wordsmithing and care used to define really sensuous writing. Really, really nice work! We do hear some really nice poetry at the meetings, and Kat is another welcome addition.

Andrew Parker read Chapter Four of his Robot Story, Crash, and showed his ability to tell a griping story and hold everyone's attention. We noticed the manuscript had 327 numbered pages, so we look forward to more. What happened to Mary and Tommy after the crash? We'll have to wait to find out.

We wrapped up the shortened meeting with a reading by a welcome FWA member, Chalise Bourque. Chalise read a short piece entitled, That Kind of Guy, and immediately made fans of the entire audience. This was Chalise's first meeting with our group, and we look forward to seeing her in the future. Her book, “One Right Thing,” will be on sale at the Convention.

And with that, we took a break and everyone who wanted to watch the debate made their goodbyes. When the break was over, we basically had only a few who didn't have too far to travel, so we all said our goodbyes until the next meeting, October 17^th.

See you then,

George