On Saturday, September 10, a dozen of us gathered for a combined in-person and Zoom chapter meeting held at the Middletown Library. After a short business meeting, Miki Reilly-Howe gave an excellent presentation on the second half of Chapter Five from Janet Burroway’s classic craft book, WRITING FICTION. One of the things we especially value about Miki’s presentations is the outstanding examples she chooses to illustrate her points.
Following Miki’s presentation, we heard from our guest speaker, chapter member Carol Preflatish, author of the Nathan Perry mystery series, who provided us with a plethora of handy tips about how she stays organized as a writer. She shared her novel “bibles” in which she keeps track of everything she may need to refer to, ranging from character descriptions to research about her setting and subject matter, to her submission records. She advised developing a writing process and method of organization that works for each of us as individual writers. Carol shared lots of tricks she uses to remember plot or character ideas she thinks of at random moments, including a tiny recorder and A LOT of post-it-notes! And she reminded us of the importance of backing up our work.
Our October 8th chapter meeting will be another combination in-person and Zoom meeting which will be held at the St. Matthews Library in Louisville. Our featured guest speaker will be private investigator Susan Spaulding.
MEMBER NEWS
Elaine Munsch is happy to announce the publication of her latest Dash Hammond adventure, A HAUNTING AT MARIANWOOD. Mystery & Horror LLC, the fantastic publisher of MYSTERY WITH A SPLASH OF BOURBON, will be publishing the book in October. She looks forward to sharing the cover with you soon.
Carol Preflatish appeared on the Star Chamber Show Blog Talk Radio on Wednesday, September 14. To listen to the recording, go to: Star Chamber Show
Lynda Rees reports that she’s submitted queries for FLIP OR FLOP, MURDER HOUSE, to a couple of publishers. One asked for the complete manuscript, stating it scored really high on their rating system. All fingers are crossed!
Lynn Slaughter’s novel, LEISHA’S SONG, received the Silver Falchion Award for best juvenile/YA mystery. On September 29 and 30, she’ll be at the Heartland Book Festival where she’ll do a Friday student workshop, “Let’s Cook up a Mystery,” and a Saturday presentation, “Intro to Writing Young Adult Fiction.”
All for now. We hope to see you on October 8th at our next chapter meeting.