July 18th 2018

I'm ba-ack, well sort of.

We started the meeting with our authors giving us an insight into their projects, completed and still in the works. Hearing what others are doing often sparks writers who find themselves procrastinating or stuck on a project. Interesting projects were presented by each author.

While two of our authors, Peter Frickel and Rod Digruttolo, have books listed in Public Libraries of Sarasota County, make me think there are others but they weren't present at this meeting. Let me know if you have books on the Library shelves.

We moved on and our writers presented work still in the draft stages.

Peter McNally presented the first chapter of his work chronicling his recovery from two massive strokes which wiped his memory and severely damaged his ability to rationalize. Entitled Rewired, his story shows the confusion and dysfunction created by the disruption of brain circuitry. In this tome, he attempts to answer questions such as; What happened? Do I remember? Why do I write? Powerful stuff here.

Doug Sahlin came prepared with a chapter from his newest Yale Larson tale, Sour Grapes. A California vintner moves to Florida and engages Yale to investigate the death of his sommelier. As usual, Yale can't resist a mystery.

The second part of the short story, Emma, by Don Westerfield, explores the relationship between a young naval Lieutenant and an exotic princess. Assigned to escort the young woman, the lieutenant is given a single piece of advice by his boss, "Keep in in your pants, sailor." Having fallen in love with the beautiful woman, he fails to heed the advice. It's now twenty years later and he receives a message...

Our last reader was Peter Frickel. This was more than a reading, it served as a lesson on, Do We Write How We See Life? His piece Bird's Eggs forged a lesson on the description of the bird and what the author sees. Using visual descriptions to show the reader action and audible descriptions allowing the reader to hear the world around the subject the author even describes odors or odors, pleasant or unpleasant.  In his work Tree, he describes the sound of a falling leaf. How does a leaf sound when it falls? How do you describe a pond, death, a dog walking, loneliness, dating, remembering, or a more specific genre, a Congo Fighter, a terrorist, a drug dealer, an attacker? Think about this, how do you perceive these things from simply seeing the word, do you have experience with these things, do you write how you see life around you?

Join us the first Wednesday on August, 1st, 2018, for our next meeting. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Until then, keep on writing.