Change of Venue

 

The Thursday Writers' Group is changing its meeting place to the Barnes & Noble store in Town & Country Shopping center in Houston beginning Nov. 1.  Meeting time is still 6:30 PM

 

Here's the address for B&N:

12850 Memorial Drive, Suite 1600

Houston, TX 77024

Quick directions
One block south of I-10 in the Town & Country Shopping Center, at the corner of Beltway 8 and Kimberly.

Sewing up all the loose ends

A handful of writers have found their niche in the world of quilt mysteries

(HoustonChronicle, 10/29/12, p. D-1) 

By Maggie Galehouse

No, Earlene Fowler wouldn’t dream of using a quilt as a murder weapon. “I’d never do that!” Fowler exclaims, aghast at the idea. But wrap a quilt around a dead body? That, she’s done. And Terri Thayer? She killed somebody with a rotary cutter, which slices fabric the way a pizza cutter slices pizza. Thayer and Fowler aren’t murder-ers, really. They’re writers of that überspecific genre, quilt mysteries. And their books, along with those by Clare O’Donohue and several othe rs, are familiar to the tens of thousands expected at the International Quilt Festival Houston this week.

Thayer broke out the rotary cutter for her first quilting mystery, “Wild Goose Chase,” which introduces Dewey Pellicano, a woman who inherits a quilt shop.

“My book cover had a bloody rotary cutter by my name,” Thayer recalls. “That was nice.”

Fowler is an originator of the genre, known for her award-winning series about Benni Harper — a curator, rancher and sometime sleuth who also happens to be a quilter. Of course.

“Back in the early ’90s, Jennifer Chiaverini and I were the only people writing fiction about quilts,” says Fowler, whose fourth Benni Harper book, “Goose in the Pond,” features the corpse in the quilt. “But in the last 20 years, it has exploded.”

Both Fowler, of California, and Thayer, of Colorado, have discovered a doubly rich audience for their books. Quilters love mysteries, they’ve learned, and mystery readers love quilts.

“Quilting is an exacting, mathematical sort of thing,” says Fowler, who learned to love quilts and quilting from her Arkansas grandmother. “A lot of quilters are mystery fans. They want to solve that puzzle.”

Thayer agrees.

“With both, you start with nothing,” she says. “There’s a lot of work to do — some of it tedious — and then hopefully you’re generally happy with the outcome. … It’s about bringing order to something.” A quilt mystery should not be confused with a mystery quilt, which is a quilt made from a pattern doled out in tiny steps — like clues.

Both Fowler, 58, and Thayer, 61, have attended the International Quilt Festival Houston and understand that quilting is a major industry. Both name their books after quilting patterns and work quilting into their plots whenever possible.

In Fowler’s “Kansas Troubles,” the clue is in one of the quilts.

In “Monkey Wrench,” Thayer’s latest, the fabric becomes a clue.

Yet neither writer’s books are particularly bloody.

Thayer says that for the most part, she writes “cozy mysteries,” which means that a lot of the action occurs off the page.

“The violence in my books is off screen,” Thayer confides, “but the sex is not. It’s not graphic, but it’s a little titillating. There’s a hunky homicide detective named Buster. …” maggie.galehouse@chron.  com  .

 

Words and Pictures

Did you ever sit tensely at the keyboard staring at the screen and the next word just won’t come – let alone the next sentence?  Perhaps you need to heed the old proverb that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Three Houstonians are applying that proverb in a creative and entertaining way.  Take a look at the Phantom Hearts project (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1327401305/phantom-hearts-a-steampunk-novel ).  Reema, Micheal, and Danny are writing (composing? Creating?) a steampunk vampire novel that breaks the bounds of word-limited writing.  Their collaboration combines the traditional stream of words with interposed sections of graphic story-telling.  All of us who try to write have been told: “Don’t tell us; show us.”  Micheal and Reema do both at once.

(Disclaimer: While I have read and enjoyed some steampunk, my skeptical nature prevents suspension of disbelief – willing or not – sufficient to view vampire tales or the rest of the supernatural genres as anything other than silly, boring tripe, so I will not attempt any kind of critical assessment of this work.)

Ever since medieval monks empowered their manuscripts with illustrations, writers have tried to heighten the effect with illustration.  The very earliest printed books included woodcuts and etchings.  The comic books, and their evolutionary descendants, graphic novels, reversed the process by telling stories through pictures heightened with limited narration.  This new approach used in Phantom Hearts may move the process to new levels.

Reema, Micheal, and Danny are pioneers in another way as well.  They are funding their publication through cloud sourcing.  If you like what they are doing and think it will be successful, their web site allows you to invest in their project and share in any profits they make.  You can be an entrepreneur in a whole new direction for literature.  Take a look!

as I have been reading these it strikes me that a collection of these stories by people who have lost family members in the Mexican Drug War would make a fantastic book  -- or at least a long, major magazine article.

I don't feel competent to do itmyself, but some of you surely are.

For more information. go to www.caravanforpeace.org






---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: MAPNews <owner-mapnews@mapinc.org>
Date: Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 12:17 PM
Subject: MN: US TX: Mother Talks Of Losing Four Sons
To: mapnews@mapinc.org

Newshawk: Herb
Pubdate: Sat, 25 Aug 2012
Source: Brownsville Herald, The (TX)
Copyright: 2012 The Brownsville Herald
Contact: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/sections/contact/
Website: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1402
Author: Patricia Lopez
Cited: Caravan for Peace: http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/
MOTHER TALKS OF LOSING FOUR SONS
Four sons of Maria Herrera Magdalena are missing.
"Two of my sons disappeared on August 28, 2008, in the state of
Guerrero," she said Thursday in a visit to the Rio Grande Valley.
"And after two years I again have the same thing happen. Two more
sons have disappeared."
Herrera Magdalena is part of the Caravan for Peace with Justice and
Dignity that is traveling across the United States to promote
bilateral efforts to end the drug violence in Mexico and along the border.
On Thursday, Brownsville was one of the caravan's two stops in the
Rio Grande Valley. The caravan began in Tijuana, Mexico, and is
scheduled to arrive in Washington on Sept. 12.
Traveling with Herrera Magdalena is a fifth son, Juan Carlos Trujillo Herrera.
The mother said in addition to her sons, 15 others from her town in
Guerrero have disappeared.
She addressed a crowd Thursday in Alamo, telling them why she and
others were traveling with the caravan.
"At this time we are not fighting for our own but for each and every
one of the children of the people who are here," she said.
Their hope is to stop the violence, she said.
"We do not want more people to go through the pain that we have been
going through," she said.
Another woman, Leticia Mora Nieto, approached a reporter to show a
photograph of a young woman.
Mora Nieto said it was her daughter.
"I come from Atizapan in the state of Mexico," she said. "I am with
the Caravan for Peace searching for justice."
Her daughter disappeared a year and four months ago, she said.
"She is 24 years old and the truth is, we have not had much of an
answer," she said. "People do not know what it is to live with this pain."
Her life, she said, has completely changed.
"My life is a different one. My family is already broken. I am over
here and they are over there," said Mora Nieto, who spoke with great anxiety.
"I am very frightened because nowadays you see a lot of people being
smuggled. Daughters are taken into prostitution. I am in this country
because there are many American clients and they go across the border
for those services," she said of her efforts to bring change.
______________________________

Build your working vocabulary (Not!):

Abecedarian insult “Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial,
dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic,
jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial,
papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous,
 ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning zoophyte.”
The Superior Person’s Book of Words, by Peter Bowler, 1985

The Write Tips

            I read as much as I write, but my reading is far better onemight say. That being so, I'd like for my writing to excel and reach out andgrab a reader who will sing my praises to the blue sky's and eagerly await mynext novel.
            So I dream on.
            I tend to study all the writing tips that appear in thenewspapers, magazines, and study what successful novelists have to say.
            I've come to a conclusion. One that I learned as a teenagerfrom my primary doctor. Dr. J. J. Whitsett told me over and over as I left myteens and settled into my adult years something I've always remembered.
            I continually asked him questions on how to maintain ahealthy body. When I was eighteen years of age I came home from my freshmanyear at the University of Texas, severelyanemic. My hemoglobin was so low he wanted to put me in the hospital, butdecided that we'd try liquid iron for three months.
            That brought up my count and I had energy. Energy I was notaware that I lacked. I started with books and pamphlets on health and irondeficiency anemia.
The more I read the more it echoed in my head what Dr. Whitsett toldme.
            It is so very simple and I'll share it here.
            Consider this, in one week, month or year, an item will appearin our newspapers, magazines and TV.  This item will be extolling the virtuesof a wonderous cure-all ointment, pill or liquid that will make us healthy,happy and rich. With our minds so saturated with this info, we clean out ourcupboards and fill it with the new, safe stuff.
            Time will pass. It always does and soon we hear, threetimes over how we've been poisoning our bodies with the heretofore healthystuff.
            Now, I'm using the above as an example, but it can beapplied to every level in our lives. One day we hear that X is good for us.  Wego out and we fill our cabinets with X. With this accomplished, more timepasses, lots of it and we discover that X is not good for us.  We need Z. Onceagain our minds are saturated with some special or horrible information and itgoes on ad infinitum.
            Think how we banned eggs from out diet and now we can enjoyour eggs with out guilt.
            Writing hints are the same.  It depends on our voice, ourtopic and the rhythm that is natural to us. 
            I've applied thistheory to my writing.
            Just last month a new list of tips on improving one'swriting appeared in one of the magazines I read. The article compared a longopening sentence from one of our literary treasures. The sentence could haveseveral drawbacks, one being, the reader may never get to the period.
            On the other hand, there's Herman Melville's classic: 19thCentury Novel, Moby Dick.
            "Callme Ishmael." was the opening sentence. Can't get much shorter than thatexcept in the Bible.
          So, for me, I consider the flow andrhythm of the words. That may not make me a good writer, but I enjoy myrelationship with my keyboard.
          I've got to go load the coffee pot andcheck on Perry Mason, who's in the other room. Goodnight Mr. eMachine.
By: Pauline Hallard (7-11-2012)

LOOKING FOR HOUSTON WRITERS

Our group is currently interviewing potential new members in the Houston Area.

If interested email d9_dun@hotmail.com.

Don't try this at home:

Opening sentences are supposed to be short, pithy, and grab the reader's attention.  Nobody told Charles Dickens that when he began A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

(Thanks to Ken Hoffman, who reminded me of this clunker in his Houston Chronicle column, 6/14/12

The art of writing may not have changed much since Dickens' day, but the craft surely has.
Compare this list from Bleak House with the contents of your desk:

 a long list of items retailed by the legal stationer Mr Snagsby, together with
 “office-quills, pens, ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and
wafers ... pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; string boxes, rulers,
inkstands glass and leaden pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other
small office-cutlery”.

from "World Wide Word", June 9

A friend just asked me a question, and I think the answer may be of general interest to this group:

So here's the situation: my sister is using photos, sketches and other media to create the images we are going to use. We want to know, can she use any images off the internet if she edits them? What kind of images can & can't she use and, to what percentage does she need to alter them if she uses them?
***

Unfortunately, my best answer is a (somewhat) expensive one: consult with a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property.

The basic rule is that copyright attaches to any expression (but not to the idea behind it) as soon as that expression is reduced to a tangible medium -- and that includes images reproduced on the internet.

The copyright holder may prevent any reproduction of that expression, including derivative works, or collect damages for unauthorized copying.  So if I took the famous photo of Marilyn Monroe on the subway grate and made a charcoal drawing based on that picture, Iwould probably be quilty of infringement.

The exception is that one can copy part of a work for the purpose of "fair comment":  the use for some social purpose like criticism, satire, political comment, etc. and that does not interfere with the commercial use of the original. The key case is that the Supreme Court held that the Boyz2Men version of Roy Orbison's "Pretty woman".

If you use all or part of someone else's expression without permission, you run the risk of being sued (a very expensive undertaking, even if you win) and of being held liable -- or even criminally guiilty -- of infringement.

Additionally, if your work includes a recognizable image of a real person and if you have not received that person's permission to publish it, you may be liable for violating the rights of privacy or publicity.

Have I scared the shit out of you yet?  Good.

Two or three hundred dollars to consult with a good lawyer might be the best investment you ever make.  The Houston Bar Association  has a good referral service.

SteveBerry’s 11 Rulesof Writing
(in Houston Chronicle, 5/29/12)

1. There are no rules.

2. Don’t bore the reader.

3. Don’t confuse the reader.

4. Don’t get caught writing (or, Don’t allow your authorial voice to intrude where it doesn’t belong).

5. Don’t lie to the reader (although it’s OK tomisdirect).
6. Don’t annoy the reader (with excessive punctuation and the like).
7. Writing is rewriting.

8. Writing is rhythm.

9. Shorter is always better.

10. Story never takes a vacation.

11. Tell a good story.

Eldorado writer publishes digital erotic fiction as new career path

Neuroscience graduate left field and found her niche writing romance

Phaedra Haywood | The New Mexican
Posted: Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 5/19/12

·        "Thinking he was trying to embrace her, she pulled away and found herself back against the brass railing. By the time she gathered her flustered thoughts, her wrists were handcuffed to the rail behind her. Mortified, a bit afraid and -- worse --suddenly and wildly aroused ... ."

So reads a teaser excerpt from Sapphire, a digital novel written by Eldorado resident Jeffe Kennedy about a female executive who enters into an affair with a man "determined to prove that she longs for the loss of control he can give her."
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Kennedy was a little girl who was good at math and science -- who grew up, she said, at a time when little girls who were good in math and science were "pushed."

In college she double-majored in biology and comparative religious studies and went on to get a master's degree with a double major in zoology and physiology, specializing in neuroscience.

She intended to be a neurobiologist. But while living in Wyoming and studying for her doctorate, she attended a conference of neurobiologists. She didn't like what she saw.

"Everybody I talked to didn't seem happy," she said. "And all they could talk about was their work. So I sat myself down and I said, 'If there were no ifs, ands, or buts, what would I do?"

Writing, she was surprised to find, was the answer.

She started taking some classes at the University of Wyoming, and one of her personal essays struck the fancy of one of her professors. He passed it on to his sister, an editor at the University of New Mexico Press. She contacted Kennedy.

"She asked if she was in time to publish my first book," Kennedy said. Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and the Weather Channel," a hardcover collection of Kennedy's essays, was published in 2004.

The book got good reviews, Kennedy said, and it gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling to walk past a bookstore and see it in the window. But it didn't sell.

Then she saw a request from Samhain Publishing for "red-hot fairy tales." Kennedy said she had always wanted to write a "nasty" version of Beauty and the Beast.

So she did.

Petals and Thorns, Kennedy's racy version of the classic fairy tale, didn't get picked up by Samhain, but digital publishing house Loose Id liked it, and it was published online in 2010.

Kennedy cried. Because, she said, she didn't imagine such a book would be her first published novel.

But, she said that "people really liked it and it didn't take me so long to write, and I thought this could be a good way to build my career."

Since then, Kennedy has published Feeding the Vampire and Sapphire. Both are erotic-romance novels published by different online publishing companies.

She doesn't get big advances for the books. But the publishers provide editing and marketing, and she gets a generous chunk of the royalties every time someone pays to read the book on their digital reader.

"The advent of the e-reader has made a huge difference in that people have more privacy to buy and read romance and erotica," she said.

"People look down on romance," she said. And in the past the "clinch covers," showing a couple locked in a steamy embrace, "would shout out what you were reading."

Kennedy said romance is now the fasting-growing genre of online books. "The whole idea that romance is only for dumb women has been debunked." Indeed, Fifty Shades of Grey, the novel at the top of four of The New York Times best-seller lists, is a racy romance novel that began online.

Some critics have said the strong BDSM -- bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sadism and masochism -- themes in Fifty Shades of Grey (which also appear in Kennedy's book Sapphire) glorify sexual violence against women and perpetuate antifeminist ideas that women long to be dominated and controlled.

But, Kennedy said, "There are a lot of people giving opinion on it who don't read it, haven't read it or would never read that sort of thing."

"There has always been, especially in American culture, this deep discomfort with people enjoying sex, especially women," Kennedy said. "But BDSM is not about day-to-day life. It's about sex and power exchange and intimacy and that is the part that people miss. It's something you do in the bedroom that you don't do in the office, and that's part of what makes it fun."

Or as Barbara Walters said when discussing Fifty Shades of Grey on The View last month, "Women like us," (who work hard and have high-profile jobs), "when you get home, you want the guy to be in charge."

Kennedy's next book, Rogue's Pawn, will be published online in July. She is still not a full-time writer yet -- she supplements her income as a freelance environmental consultant-- but she is having fun.

"Romance writers are so generous with advice and help," she said. "They love what they are doing. It's really a terrific community to be part of."

RESEARCH TIP: What’s It Called?

As I wrote the short story, “Tunnel Vision,” for The Final Twist
anthology, UNDERGROUND TEXAS, 2011, featuring a female property
manager overseeing a new tenant buildout, I constantly found myself searching
for information on what actual building products were called. Internet construction
materials websites were a lifesaver. The sites showed the exact tools in color,
including cables, electrical connections and, thank goodness, the names
construction crews used. I learned more about Romex (bright yellow) cable and
junction boxes, two-way radios, electrical conduit, massive computer servers,
electrical meters, insulated tools and protective gloves, steel shelving and
anti-static cloths. Just another resource to make our stories more authentic.

by Sally Love

E-book demand cramps writers

Think you're not working hard enoughat your writing now?  This was re-printed in 5/13 Houston Chronicle:

NEW YORK TIMES

For years, it was a schedule as predictable as a calendar: Novelists who specialized in mysteries, thrillers and romance would write one book a year, output that was considered not only suf­ficient, but productive.

But the e-book age has accelerated the metabolism of book publishing.

Authors are nowpulling the literary equivalent of a double shift, churning out short stories, novellas or even an extra full-length book each year.
They are trying to satisfy impatient readers who have become used to downloading any e-book they want at the touch of a button, and the publishers who are nudging them toward greater productivity in the belief that the more their authors’ names are in public, the bigger stars they will be.

“It used to be that once a year was a big deal,” said Lisa Scottoline, a best-selling author of thrillers. “You could saturate the market. But today the culture is a great big hungrymaw, and you have to feed it.”

Scottoline has increased her output from one book a year to two, which she accomplishes with a brutal writing schedule: 2,000 words a day, seven days a week, usually “starting at 9 a.m.

and going until Colbert,” she said.

The British thriller writer Lee Child, who created the indelible character Jack Reacher, is now supplementing his hardcover books with short stories that are published in digital-only format, an increasingly popular strategy to drum up attention.

Publishers say that a carefully released short story, timed six to eight weeks before a big hardcover comes out, can entice new readers who might be willing to pay 99 cents for a story but reluctant to spend $26 for a hardcover.

That can translate into higher preorder sales for the novel and even a lift in sales of older books by the author, which are easily accessible as e-book impulse purchases for consumers with Nooks or Kindles.

Jennifer Enderlin, the associate publisher of St.

Martin’s Paperbacks, said the strategy had worked for many of her authors, who saw a big uptick in hardcover sales, book over book, once they started releasing more work.

“I almost feel sorry for authors these days with howmuch publishers are asking of them,” Enderlin said. “We always say, ‘How about a little novella that we can sell for 99 cents?’ ”

Two On-line Tools



I just found two new (at least new to me) on-line tools that look useful:

On-Line Etymology Dictionary http://etymonline.com

University of Oregon Slang Dictionary http://slang.uoregon.edu/pub_search.lasso

The names are pretty descriptive

River Oaks Bookstore

Sally Lovr and I were prepared for the appearance of The Final Twist Writers to sign at the River Oaks Bookstore yesterday. There was to be a panel discussion and I was to be the moderator. Unfortunately, we were basically the only customers in the store with the exception of one man who bought one of the older anthologies. Too much going on in the city was our conclusion. In preparation for moderating, I read most of the stories earlier in the day and I must say they were damn good!

The Origins of the Creative Arts

Ihave just read The Social Conquest of Earth by E. O. Wilson, Harvard's grand old man of the studies of ants and of evolution.  Many writers will find the chapter "The Origins of the Creative Arts" both informative and provocative.

The extended quote from E. L. Doctorow on the relationship between history and historical fiction is, by itself, worth the price of admission.

He also repeats Picasso's call to arms: "Art is the lie that helps us see the truth."  





Who Are We?

The Thursday Night Writers Group is a small, informal collection of authors, both published and aspiring, that meets weekly for mutual cricism of our current works.  We are an eclectic bunch. with mystery writers, fantacists, memoir writers, poets, and non-fiction specialists.  We even recreate our youths by having some creators of childrens' literature.  Most of us find the cross-genre conversation both helpful and stimulating.

If you would like to know more about us or to visit our group, please post a comment and one of us will email youwith more information.