Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
February 6, 2013

Notes from 2/5/2013
A new person, Andy, joined us for the evening!

Lisa starts us off with a rewrite of a chapter nine from Follow the Yellow. Pat thought the dialogue was more realistic and the blocking better during the fight that takes place. Pat wonders if another character would be as flirtatious if she had been raped. Jen thinks Lisa is adding the rape to help explain another characters’ over protectiveness. Around the table, we decide the rape doesn’t really add anything to the character. Jerry has a question about a couple of terms the cop and the construction worker use with one another. Jen had some issues with page three and four and POV.

Clayton shares Chapter eighteen of Fishing Derby. Clayton wonders if Miker does a little too much star-gazing—the group thinks so. Pat suggests putting a lot of the exposition into dialogue amongst the group at the table; if they’re kids then there should be more monkeyshines going on. We discuss the age of the kids and what kind of things might be happening around those times in school. Pat wonders if Clayton should establish a little more backstory on how his main character knows what he does. Jerry wants to see an aloof clocktower.

Amber shares Chapter seven of Noble. Pat likes the eating of the rocks. Lisa wondered how big a one-ton dragon would be. And other great comments I’m not fast enough to type.

Millie shares Chapter forty-one of Life On Hold. Amber wonders if Millie is trying to kill off another character. Andy thought it happened a little too fast and thought the main character would have put up more of a fight, but we all agree around the table that that’s not the main character. Pat thought there were a few too many step-by-step movements for her but another section lost her completely. Lisa suggests one character overhear one side of a phone conversation in real time instead or relating it later. Jerry says the cop isn’t going to give the two characters a ride home.

Pat shares her poem The Evidence had been There. Immediate gut reactions from Clayton and Jerry. Amber liked it also. Only when Pat read it did a couple of us realize that in the first stanza is from the character’s POV. Could we use the first line of the poem as the title? Clayton gets the how, but he’s looking for the why and is frustrated with wanting to know more.

Aaron shares part three from his script of Whole Again. Pat likes the main character’s personality shifts—she’s very mercurial—and likes that she’s being kept guessing. Clayton wonders if the character with the left arm is the one with more sinister intentions. Millie is looking forward to reading more about the feelings two characters share.

Thanks to Amber for writing this up!

Millie’s Book Review

BOOK REVIEW
EARLY’S WINTER
BY JERRY PETERSON

A moonscape of snow blankets the 1950’s Kansas countryside. Cars slide off nearly impassable county roads into frozen gravel shoulders. Ice churns behind the sparse traffic in the frigid air. We remember Sheriff and rancher, James Early, from the first novel, Early’s Fall. His folksey, clipped speech and helping spirit are sorely tested in this new mystery. It is peopled with friends and neighbors. The vivid dialogue and the descriptions of the land and times, allow us to visualize the whole scene—but dangers abound.
Action zig-zags around every bend on the winter-bound Kansas trails. Early discovers a luxury car that has skidded into a drift on a lonely country road. The driver is buzzed and unable to stand. This leads to a gripping murder. A family of five is found dead, with no clues as to who or why. A gambling tip leads Early and his deputy, a Native American, John Silver Fox, on a trip to Kansas City.
In an unprecedented move for “top gun” pilot, author Peterson, his protagonist, James Early, has his first, gut wrenching flight. He hates it, becomes nauseated and embarrassed. Worse is to come as their D.C. 3 is buffeted through a thunderstorm and a blizzard.
Here we meet Frontier Airlines stewardess, Maddy Stansworth, personable and helpful. A Nevada girl, former nurse– who takes a belt of Jim Beam now and then– Maddy befriends Early and “Big John.” She later accompanies them to the gambling den. We decry the fate that awaits her. Complex action abounds. More flying– Early abhorring it, but honor and duty summarize his character. He has a mission
We are now introduced to the novel’s diaphanous preacher. He of “pearl-like skin, flowing hair and no eyebrows”. We soon realize that he appears at opportune times. His calling card is Teaberry gum.
Now back home, Early faces the yet unsolved murders, along with a new auto theft ring. In this, he is assisted by an old nemesis, Sonny Estes. The young man is a “Sundance Kid” type character, now reformed and on military leave from nearby Fort Riley.
Blizzards continue to swirl across the Kansas plains, roads are drifted shut and cattle are starving. Early heeds a call to assist, gamely on board a transport plane, dropping bales of hay to the stranded cows. An unimaginable accident propels Early earthward out of the rear of the plane. He again meets the mysterious preacher.
Does Sheriff James Early survive nearly insurmountable obstacles? Will the murders and the car thefts be solved? As one of Jerry Peterson’s fellow authors enthuses—“If our sheriff was on the screen instead of in a book, no one would leave the room.”

Other Odds and Ends
The University of Wisconsin- Madison will be holding their 24 Annual Writer’s Institute Conference. It’s being held at the Concourse Hotel from Friday,04/12/13 08:30 AM – Sunday, 04/14/13 04:30 PM
For more information please visit http://continuingstudies.wisc.edu/lsa/writing/awi/. I’ve already signed up.

Writing Contest
Yes, it’s NPR’s three-minute fiction round 10, the short story contest from Weekends on All Things Considered.
Here’s the premise: Write a piece of original fiction that can be read in about three minutes. No more than 600 words.
Contest judge Mona Simpson – her most recent book is My Hollywood – says your story in the form of a voice-mail message.

“It doesn’t have to be crazy, but it could be crazy,” she says. “By nature, first person – basically, a soliloquy or a monologue. It could start out, ‘Hey, it’s me, I’m glad you didn’t pick up,’ or it could start out, ‘You don’t know me, but …’ It could be any number of dramatic scenarios which will unwind in the three minutes.”

Write right now because you have to get your submission in by 11:59 p.m. ET this Sunday, February 10.
Here’s the link that will get you to the place where you post your entry: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/02/170802328/three-minute-fiction-round-10-leave-a-message-after-the-beep?sc=emaf

Another Contest
But you’ll have to be fast because the deadline for this one is Thursday evening (February 7) at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time. That’s 6:00 p.m. our time. It’s Nathan Bransford’s 5th Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge!

This note from YA author and blogger Bransford: “It’s the grandaddy of them all. The big kahuna. The 32 oz porterhouse with a side of awesome. It’s our FIFTH Sort-of-Annual um don’t point out that the last one was two years ago oops too late Stupendously First Paragraph Challenge!!!

“Do you have the best paragraph of them all? Will you make Charles Dickens wish he ditched ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ for your paragraph when he wrote A Tale of Two Cities?”

The first prize is a free read of your partial manuscript by Bransford’s agent, Catherine Drayton of InkWell.

You don’t have to write a new first paragraph. You can enter the first paragraph from a novel or short story in progress, one you are currently writing.

Here’s the link to the contest rules and the place where you post your entry: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/

Coming Soon…
February 12: Carol Hornung (scene), and Jack Freiburger (chapter, Jesus at the IHOP). If you’d like to be on the schedule, contact Carol.

February 19: Clayton Gill (???), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter 18, The Cheese Logue), Bob Kralapp (???), Michelle Nightoak (chapter, memoir), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter, Lincoln’s Other War), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 2, The Last Good Man).

March 5: Lisa McDougal (chapter 10, Follow the Yellow), Amber Boudreau (chapter, Noble), Millie Mader (chapter 42, Life on Hold), Pat Edwards (???), Clayton Gill (chapter, Fishing Derby), and Aaron Boehm (film script/part 4, “Whole Again”).