I’m back. Sorry about the last meeting, I couldn’t make it,
I had grandpa duties to attend to. When your eleven-year-old great-granddaughter
asks you to attend her singing debut, you go! She did well, I might add.
Regardless vs Irregardless: we all know ‘Irregardless’ is
not an official word, but how often do you see or hear it in your everyday lives?
It’s one of those colloquialisms that pop up in conversations and quick notes across
the English-speaking world. I’m not sure if other languages have a similar
word, but I’ve even found myself popping it into a conversation once in a while.
Regardless, try to remember: use ‘Regardless,’ not ‘Irregardless’, in your
everyday spoken language, and you will be less likely to drop it into your
writing.
Gary Conkol gifted those of us present with proof copies
of his newest ‘ENATAU’ series, Martian Contact, Interplanetary
Similarities V1, and The Death of AI – (Artificial Intelligence)
– Bad News and Good News. Gary is an engineer (by his own definition,
semi-retired) who is venturing into fiction with the ENATAU series. As a Master
Engineer with extensive experience in technology, Gary offers insight into
interplanetary travel and the possibility of contact with species that might
have inhabited Mars in the past. He incorporates the team concept into his tale,
highlighting the potential for great achievements if the world's societies combined their abilities and talents. He read from the latest installment of his series, Volume 3, as Mark, a robot tasked with translating The Martian Chronicles into English, recounts the fate of the Martian population for the team leaders.
Roberta Molaro, also venturing into prose fiction
from her comfort zone of Poetry, reads from Chapter Six of The Reluctant Heiress.
Jennifer has traveled to a small town in Pennsylvania, where her birthmother
once lived. She is looking to fill in her history, as her adoptive parents had
only a few sketchy details of her past. There, she meets a lady named Clare
Kelly. Jennifer is convinced that Clare knows something about her history and
accepts a dinner invitation with Clare and her family at their farm. Who is
Clair? What does she know? Why did she invite this complete stranger to dinner?
For all of us who’ve been following Bruce Haedrich’s
tale of Nadia, we know Chris and Nadia are a couple, even though
she is not human and he is. In Chapter 44-New Worlds, Chris has
chosen to forsake his human girlfriend, Nancy, and continue his relationship
with Nadia. Some facts have been revealed. Due to government interference, the
company that produced Nadia has been disbanded and can no longer support the
life-giving nutrients the humanoids need to live as long as the average human.
The humanoid’s lifespan may only be fifteen or so years, but Chris is willing
to accept that.
Hikau is an interesting form of poetry when you look more
closely. Scott Anderson is studying the form and writing prolifically.
Each poem has a structure and meaning to the writer, but may have a significantly
different meaning to the listener. As Scott writes of the color of a bloom, we
see the change in our lives as we age. The travel of a worm across a garden
becomes the flight of a spacecraft across the universe. Hikau evokes
feelings, imagination, and vision to all who read, hear, and write.
Tom Grubb, a fairly recent attendee, shared an interesting
chapter with us this week. In a piece with the working title of Getting
Ready, Tom shows us the mental workings of a person who has psychological
issues stemming from substance abuse. In a masterful bit of writing, we see the
torture in the mind of one man. How does he steel himself to face the world?
Will he recover mentally and or physically? Does this bring back dark memories
in the reader?
As Ursula Wong took the floor, we anticipated and received
a cliffhanging spy thriller. Grace Urban created an AI program that can change
the world. She paid a ransom for her friend using the program as payment. In
turn, the Georgian Vory leader with whom she bargained used the program as
payment to a Russian GRU officer in an attempt to provide protection for his son, thus releasing the
program’s power on the world. Now Grace must destroy the program; success will
destroy her work; failure will destroy the world as we know it.
Well, that pretty much wraps up our meeting this time. Be
sure to join us again at the Nokomis Fire House on June 17th at 6:30
PM, we always have fun, and you might just learn a little bit about writing, or
even about yourself. Until then—READ, Read, and read some more, then WRITE,
Write, and write some more, and KEEP ON WRITING.
