We had a lively monthly meeting this past Saturday!
We started out critiquing Susan Bell’s short story, “Autumn Picnic,” and the first two chapters of my work-in-progress, Missed Cue. The feedback we got was encouraging and helpful. And I have to say I am in awe of Susan’s ability to vividly create a setting which becomes a character in and of itself. I can’t wait to read more of her work! At our April meeting, we’ll critique additional chapters of Missed Cue and the first chapter of Linda Rees’s Unwilling Donor.
Next came our business meeting, in which we tentatively decided that we’ll hold our one-day spring retreat from 10am to 4pm on June 5th at General Butler State Park. V-P Carol Preflatish is coordinating. At the meeting, we’ll work on visioning for our chapter—where we want to go from here and how we can get there! We’ll also do some writing, and Carol has suggested the possibility of a speaker as well.
We voted to offer all speakers a $25 gift card to Barnes and Noble or an honorarium to cover gas for out-of-town speakers.
We discussed the national membership requirement for local chapter members and decided to table the issue. I’m going to follow up with the liaison for SinC’s local chapters and see how we can best approach this. Carol and I both spoke up about the benefits we’ve received from being part of the national organization. We appreciate, however, that not everyone wants to join the national organization ($40 a year for active members and $50 a year for professional members) and we want to be welcoming to all and grow our membership. I suggested that we have a Friends of Derby Rotten Scoundrels’ category for those reluctant to join the national organization, but I’m going to research this further before we make a decision.
In addition, there’s a question Elaine brought up about whether chapters have a “honeymoon” period in which potentially interested folks can attend a certain number of meetings before being asked to join both the local chapter and the national organization.
Following our business meeting, we had a fascinating talk by Elaine Munsch on the history of women crime writers. Elaine took us all the way from Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent, published in 1861, through the Golden Age of Mysteries in the 1920s and 1930s, and all the way up into the 1970s. She also gave us a handout listing notable titles and reference works about women crime writers.
Next month, our guest speaker is me! Here’s the blurb about my talk on “Writing Realistic Young Adult Fiction: Some Dos and Don’ts”
Have a hankering to pen a young adult novel? The teenage years are rife with drama, conflict, angst, and plenty of humor—all great ingredients for fiction. But keep in mind that the world in which young people are coming of age now is dramatically different from the one we grew up in. And the fiction today’s teens are reading is a far cry from the novels of our youth where characters were almost always white, middle class, and heterosexual, and the biggest problem was finding a date for prom.
We’ll talk about dos and don’ts for writing realistic fiction for teens, as well as ways to get started on your own young adult novel.
I hope you’ll join us for our April 10th on-line meeting. Our secretary, Susan Bell, will be sending out a Zoom invitation and an agenda for the meeting ahead of time.
Until next month…
Lynn