April 17th, 2019

Okay, I know I’m late getting this out. No excuses. The dad-blamed Easter Bunny didn’t stop at my house and nine little great-grandchildren would have been disappointed. So, I spent half of Saturday (the day I usually write this blog) getting Easter eggs filled with candy, cash, and love. I blinked once and it was Tuesday. So here I am on Wednesday, writing what should have gotten done on Thursday or Friday of last week. 

Well, I’ve gotten that off my chest so it’s time to talk about writing and the meeting last Wednesday. It was a great meeting attended by fourteen writers. We opened the meeting with the usual ten minutes of meeting stuff and launched a discussion. We talked about editing, a continuance of a previous discussion, but it drew lots of feedback. That’s great! With the topic of backstory on the agenda, we looked at how some of our authors handle this sensitive subject. I read an article noting some ways writers use backstory. It’s a tricky issue and what seems to be proper in the beginning often changes as the story progresses. When you stop and look at the story, it will tell you how to handle backstory. A mystery story is seldom a biography of an individual. Mentioning an experience or situation from the past may work if the writer doesn’t dwell too long on the subject. A short clip of the incident may well suffice to tell the reader why a character reacts or doesn't react to different stimuli. This differs if writing in other genre's. For instance, a historical novel is mostly backstory.

Use your head, don’t get carried away with backstory, if it’s that interesting, write a standalone story about your character, his biography if you will. Maybe it will be as good as the story you’re working on in the first place. 

Still excited about the discussion, we moved into the reading phase of the meeting. Our old friend and longtime member of the group Ed Ellis unlimbered a story somewhat out of the ordinary. It appears there may be Alien life forms living in South Beach. An attractive young woman, a scientist en route to a remote outpost, has a layover in Miami. With an evening and the rest of the night to kill, she embarks on a night of frolic in South Beach. Meeting a young man who she finds attractive, she accepts his invitation to dance. They dance several times and each dance becomes more suggestive and passionate. As the evening wanes, they enter into a temporary liaison. The tryst ends in a chilling twist and her scientific mind is shocked.

Another adventure in Zululand comes from the pen of Peter Frickel. We heard a version of this story some time ago, it now resurfaces with some changes and a few changes in word choice. How can you cure a broken heart? A South African Witch Doctor helps a man grow a second heart to cure one broken by a lost love. Potions, incantations, and strategically placed bones begin a process which takes many visits, but after a time, the beat of a second heart fills the chest.

It’s 311 AD and a gypsy fortune teller entices a Roman Tribune to visit her camp. Dinner and entertainment fill the evening ending only when a promise of information is fulfilled. Ernie Ovitz spins a tale of Roman power struggles twixt three competing Ceasars, each wanting to be named Augustus of all Rome. Will the information obtained by the Tribune Basisus tilt the balance in favor of Constantine.

An escaping murder suspect leads Yale Larsson on a merry chase in Doug Sahlin’s latest tale. Ignoring the doubts of local police, Yale follows the suspect across the waters of Sarasota and Tampa Bays to Egmont Key. Acting on Yale’s information the Coast Guard, Sarasota Police and Sheriff’s deputies from three counties corner the killer on an abandoned gun emplacement of historic importance. Do killers ever surrender quietly?

Do you think something as simple as a blade of grass could inspire a story? Well, this simple item inspired two flash fiction stories by Bruce Haedrich. In the first story, Townies and Country Kids compete in life around a small Pennsylvania town. The Country kids devise a warning signal, a whistle. By holding a grass blade stretched tight between the thumbs and heels of both hands and blowing a stream of air over the taut blade, a sharp whistle fills the air. One boy, Henry, is exceptionally adept with the blade-whistle. Unfortunately, Henry's life is cut short. Years later, while camping in a park outside the old hometown, a whistle which could only emanate from such an instrument warns a family to take cover as police apprehend a band of escaped convicts lurking in the family’s campsite.

The second story concerns an errant blade of grass which refuses to be cut by a lawnmower. When plucking the blade by hand, the mower operator discovers a diamond ring encircling the stubborn sprout. It lies below the level of the mower’s blades and is undamaged. The ring returns to its rightful owner after a little investigation.

Poetry is inspiring and heartwarming for most of us, but sometimes it’s also heartwrenching. Scott Anderson’s masterful work causes emotion to swirl in the room as he reads. This week’s entry, Martini Kisses, was no different. I hope to see Scott’s poems in an anthology soon.

Well, better late than never, or something like that. I hope we will see you at the next meeting, May 1st. Until then, keep writing and writing and writing.

Oh, by the way; we received this by email this week. 

Sarasota Writers Group does not recommend or solicit entries for any contest. This is for information only.

April 3rd, 2019

The first Wednesday of April 2019 was an awesome meeting.

Our last meeting presented a learning opportunity but only a couple of people got the chance to read their work. This meeting was dedicated to reading with only a few minutes taken for announcements. With 22 members in attendance, half of them requested reading time.

Peter McNally began the evening’s activities by reading the rewrite of his opening chapter of Rewired, a story of surviving multiple strokes. Peter’s writing has improved greatly and his story-telling skills are becoming well honed. His story begins with a really bad morning and gets worse as time passes. He awakens from a night’s sleep more tired than when he went to bed. A splitting headache and vision issues add to his misery as the morning unfolds. He goes to work but ends up going to the hospital. He's faced with the reconstruction of his life with his memories gone and only a few vague images remaining in his damaged brain. Stay tuned as to his progress and look forward to reading his book.

Taking us on a journey back in time to 311 A.D., Ernie Ovitz details a mission of emissaries to the court of Augustus Galerius of the Eastern Roman Empire. Galerius is dying and vultures in the form of ambitious men wishing to claim his throne begin to circle. Constantine, Augustus of Rome, sends his delegates to meet with Galerius and those seeking to claim the throne. The Tribune in charge meets a fortune teller, pleasing to the eye and intuitive to his ambitions. Future chapters will let us see what develops.

The Egyptians play a large role in a tale written by Mary Shaffer. While hubby is taking care of unfinished business in Pennsylvania, Mama tends to business in Florida. A telephone conversation with Hubby on the road, halfway home and too far for a return trip, includes the revelation he's bringing back a pair of stone carvings appearing to be part of a building's wall. He's retrieved them from a storage unit in which they've resided since the family's migration to Florida. They now ride in the back seat of his car and are coming to Florida. At the time of the artwork's original purchase, a small daughter looked them over with a critical eye and said to the artist who'd created the work, “We don’t want them, they’re broken.” Purchased anyway, they became a part of the family. After many years, daughter and son were reluctant to visit Mom and Dad in Florida. Trips to the sunshine state conjured up memories of multiple trips to Disney World and Dad’s rescue of The Egyptians is a blatant attempt to lure both children, invested in busy lives in other states, into visiting in Florida. Will this shameless ploy work? When the story is published we may find out.

A river’s journey to the sea in There Runs a River is a lyrical work of  Peter Frickel. The river speaks to us as it flows; changing daily it parallels the course of life and time. In the Congo, little boys carry weapons, rifles, machetes, and long knives. They fight and die in a violent revolution. In his sensitive look at Jungle Fighters, Peter's moving poetry paints a picture of what happens to innocence. In a move to poetic prose, a series of Letters written in Peters mind from Mother to Son, Friend to Friend, Son to Parents, and a litany of others fill a book giving us an insight into the lives of people all over the world. Reading one touching letter from a former French Foreign Legionnaire to an old comrade and friend, Peter lets us see his life of loneliness after his wife passes. These and many other Letters stand ready to be published and available for purchase on Amazon very soon.

When we’re young we do many things on the spur of the moment, but few of match the impetuous behavior of John Koehler. Beginning his memoir with an after-work rendezvous with the love of his life. Here comes a turning point in his life. Jilted by his love, and impoverished by circumstance, his car burns to the ground and his heart is broken. However, this misfortune provides John with an opportunity to tour Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for the next year and a half with little or no money and only his wits to survive. What in the world was he thinking of? I guess it all turned out alright, he lived to write about it.

Reading for the last time this season, Bill Elam read a portion of his work about the nameless old man, his wife, and the myriad of people they helped along the way. The book is entitled Ripples and the chapter shared this evening was called, The Whisperer. What else would you call the voice telling you the story and willing you to write it down for others to enjoy?

Poetry was in vogue tonight, Susan Haley brought four pieces of her work to share with us. Each of these poems filled a special place in her life and each of us felt a twang of our heart-strings as we listened. In A Solitary Stone, we felt the loneliness and longing in her heart. Twixt Mountains Twixt Souls brought a soaring flight of feelings unique to each person as we listened. In the Belly of Detroit was a gritty trip to a sick, maybe dying way of life. Twilight captures a sense of longing for what we try to achieve whether we reach our goal or not.

When Scott Anderson took the floor, we had no idea of what to expect as he’d not read his work previously. He began reading his poetry and the room was breathless. In his first selection, a bit of whimsy and humor came through with his reading of Victorian Blue Jeans which ended with an astute observation as of how Victorian men had so much more to imagine than do today’s males. Remember the Drive-in Movie? Scott does and his poem about watching Elvis, or not watching Elvis while entangled in the arms of his date brought back memories to this old writer. Time stood still in his piece entitled 10:17 and even chapter and verse seems to fall on that number. A Broken Clock is an enigma, and in this piece, it seems as if time stops. How much is a Penny worth? It’s worth is determined by the holder. How many of us would admit, we don’t like to dance but we do just so we can hold our lover close? Scott admits this in Dancing and says it’s the only reason he dances. In his work The Last Kiss he tells us, this last kiss must last forever. A Nightgown and the wishful Trading Places concluded his reading, but then he addressed us, his audience, and explained the origin of these works. His wife passed away several years ago and he’d written these poems as well as 400 letters in 400 days with most of these writings included in those letters. That’s the bad news, the good news is, he’s come through the ordeal, met a wonderful lady, and is happily remarried. What they say may well be true, a poet’s heart must break to write so beautifully.


Don Westerfield came forth with three wonderful poems about an old man he’d observed over a period of several days in a city park. While visiting his daughter, Don spent some time in the park watching people. There, on a park bench, sat an old man with a pad of paper watching the people around him. Every so often the old man would jot down a few words. Although he never ventured to meet the old man, Don gave him a purpose for being there in a  poem, The Park Bench Poet. A second poem, The Lonely Widower, was inspired by the same man, poignant and haunting, the words elicited feeling in this writer and, as I gazed around the room, I saw others enthralled, listening in rapt attention. Blue Moon and People in the Park followed. In the final stanzas, we were left with the thought, “A wooden bench is a ship which sails among the people in the park.”

Have you ever been scuba diving? We were treated to a unique experience last night as Rene’ Fletcher took us with Eva on an undersea adventure. Searching in an unexplored part of the Bahamian Island chain for what might be the remnants of the lost continent Atlantis, we took a boat trip to the dive site and encountered a small pod of dolphins who, when Eva falls overboard attempting to don her wetsuit in the confines of a small boat, usher her back to the boat. Under the sea structures with markings, hieroglyphics, picture language, and a perfectly preserved tile floor now inhabited by nurse sharks appear almost untouched by the sea, wind, and weather. As Eva stands on the tiled floor, images of commerce and people living their everyday lives fill her mind. Is it real or a dream, could it be rapture of the deep?

This writer was informed by an upset detective as to the fact in previous blogs, I’ve misspelled his name. Proud of his Swedish heritage, Yale Larsson informed me his name is spelled with two esses, not one. My profound apologies Yale. Doug Sahlin regaled us with another chapter in the Larsson saga. A concert at the Van Wetzel, sponsored by a local developer and featuring the band THE FROG PRINCE 5, gives Yale the opportunity to watch his number one murder suspect, the band’s drummer, in action. Things go awry when the lights go out and the drummer bolts under cover of darkness.

Wow, what an evening. Everybody who wanted to got to read, and boy did we hear some really good stuff. Our friends Bill Elam and Linda Bond are going back north this week. They promise to return next fall and we look forward to that time. Keep in touch and read the blog.

Our next meeting is in two weeks, April 17th, and we hope you can join us once again for a fun-filled inspiring evening. We plan to have a discussion on backstory and touch a little on editing. Until then, KEEP ON WRITING.