Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
October 7, 2016

Who’s up next . . .

October 11:

October 18:   Millie Mader (poem), Hannah Marshall (poems), Nora O’Reilly (chapter, Bill McCormick’s Bliss), Judith McNeil (???), Tracey Gemmell (chapter 1,new novel), and Amber Boudreau (chapter 9, The Dragoneer).

October 25:

November 1: Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth (???), John Schneller (chapter 6, Final Stronghold), Eva Mays (chapter, Dhuoda), Bob Kralapp (???), and Mike Austin (synopsis and Jim chapter, Before I Leave).

Tuesday eve at the B&N . . .

Guest and now new member Tracey Gemmell joined the circle of first-and-thirders gathered to critique a cluster of chapters. Here’s some of what was shared:

– Amber Boudreau (chapter 8, The Dragoneer) . . . Amber read from the beginning of chapter 8 of The Dragoneer. Pat liked it, but wondered if/when we were going to meet another character from a previous draft (This sounds like the title to a story someone hasn’t written, yet: Character From a Previous Draft. Horror, perhaps?) Amber told her she doesn’t have long to wait. Eva noted a particular sentence that was repetitive. Amber vowed to change it. Kashmira thought one character would show more surprised about the things he was seeing, but Amber said he wouldn’t because he already read about them.

– John Schneller (chapter 5, Final Stronghold) . . . Chapter 5 of Final Stronghold generated an interesting suggestion by Pat, suggesting the story might find a home in graphic books. This concept considers the element of whittling down to essential story-lines.  Interesting idea. The ship sequence in this chapter was found to be more engaging than the mountains, but the goal of the ship’s crew wasn’t clear enough. Shell thought an opportunity had been missed to engage the deeper emotions when Broken reflects on his previous life with a deformed foot. Jerry gave significant recommendations regarding punctuation and sentence combinations.  Thanks to all!!

– Eva Mays (chapter 4, Dhuoda) . . . Several people said that they were surprised by Chapter 4’s ending. This made me very happy, as that had been my intent, but I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. John was concerned about Dhuoda’s head wound getting infected and suggested that I mention the wound being tended to. I am currently considering changing the wound to a knot, as she was lying in a muddy animal pen right after she was hit on the head…kind of unbelievable that it doesn’t get infected, even with washing.

Pat thought that a gentler word than “grabbed” should be used, as it seemed to aggressive for Einhard. Kashmira thought I could use more descriptive language when stating that Dhuoda felt cold. Thanks for the notes, everyone!

– Jerry Peterson (chapters 1-2, The Fire Starters) . . . John Schneller wanted to know what the noise was that Rabun Anderson heard that wasn’t supposed to be in his barn. Several chuckled over the characters’ discussion of the old-timey ways to treat burns while one of them is rubbing butter over a burn. “I like Doc,” Pat Edwards said, but felt his telling the grandchildren about their grandfather being burned could have been summed up in a couple sentences, “unless you’re trying to show the kind of man Doc is.”

November’s Fifth Tuesday . . .

The place for November’s Fifth Tuesday event is not yet set, but the writing challenge is: You are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner when someone knocks at the door.

In the story you write, you must use all of the following five words: stew, excoriates, laxative, bi-lateral, and dementia.

Max length: 500 words.

For poets and writers . . .

Public radio’s Diane Rehm interviewed former poet laureate Billy Collins on her show earlier this week. Collins is ever insightful in discussing poetry and writing, and entertaining as he reads a poem from his newest collection, The Rain in Portugal.

Here’s the link so you can listen to the program right at your computer: https://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2016-10-04/former-poet-laureate-billy-collins-on-his-new-poetry-collection

Audio Poem of the Day

Great classic and contemporary poems read by poets and actors, delivered every day! http://feeds.poetryfoundation.org/PoetryFoundation/PoemOfTheDay

Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction & Poetry Contest Reading

 Friday, October 21, 5:30–7:00 pm 

A Room of One’s Own Bookstore, 315 W. Gorham St. • Madison

Join us at the Wisconsin Book Festival for the best of new Wisconsin writing from theWisconsin People & Ideas 2016 Fiction and Poetry Contest winners. Fiction readers include: Allison Slavick (Cable), Richard Borovsky (Madison), and Lange Allen (Green Bay); poets include Karen Loeb (Eau Claire), Janet Leahy (New Berlin), and Nancy Bauer-King. (Racine).

Free and open to the public, this reading is sponsored by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, with support from Wisconsin Public Radio, the Wisconsin Book Festival, and Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts. Learn more about how to submit your work to our fiction and poetry contests here.

Free eBooks Have Arrived at NOOK Press! If you self-publish, don’t forget to publish on Nook.
Free eBooks have arrived at NOOK Press! Now, publishers have the opportunity to set the price of any NOOK Press eBook to FREE. We understand the importance of this feature and are excited to provide our publishers with this great promotional tool.

To set an eBook to FREE, simply log in to the NOOK Press eBook platformand choose any project. Once selected, you can change the list price to $0.00 and click save. The price update can take a few minutes or up to 72 hours, after which your eBook will be available to customers at BN.com free of charge.

For those of you who currently have FREE eBooks with other vendors, you can migrate these eBooks to NOOK Press without losing your Customer Reviews. As long as the title, author name, and series name is the exact same on your new NOOK Press title, all Customer Reviews will transfer automatically. You can then ask the other vendor to unlist / unpublish their edition of your eBook.

The number of FREE downloads your title receives will be reflected in your sales dashboard under the Recent Sales section.

The editor . . .

 Hannah Marshall  is our Writers Mail editor this month. Send her the good things you’d like to share with your fellow writers.