General, Member's Work, Promoting Yourself

Writer of the Month~Dr. Victoria Calder

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Dr. Victoria Calder was born and raised willy-nilly in Fort Worth Texas. She
spent her early years eating dirt, exploring fields, swimming, running wild, and
reading constantly. Her favorite childhood books included Little Women, The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew series, and Critique of Judgement. Victoria earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University ofTexas at Austin in 1984. She is dual-licensed in Texas as a clinical psychologist and school psychologist, specializing in threat assessment, disaster behavioral health, and the psychology of terrorism.

Victoria has sailed and eaten lobster for many years in the West Indies, Caribbean, Greece, and wild blue yonder. She enjoys scuba diving, oil painting, and exploring the backroads from Canton to Cairo. Victoria and her husband love traveling to favorite stops in France and the southern United States.

Victoria retired in 2015 from her position as Executive Director of the Texas School Safety Center—a state agency and research center at Texas State University, funded by the Texas legislature to oversee safety and security for Texas schools. While leading the Center, she authored technical publications, including portions of the Texas Homeland Security Strategic Plan and legislative reports. Victoria served on the Texas Homeland Security Council and was invited to the White House several times to receive awards and participate in security-related events.

Currently, Victoria contracts as an instructor at the National Emergency Management Institute in Maryland, and across the United States for the United States Department of Education. She is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences and serves at disasters with the Red Cross Mental Health Disaster
Response Team.

Victoria is writing her first novel, a suspense, and plans to complete it in 2019. She is grateful for critique from members of the Granbury Writer’s Bloc. Her keyword for 2019 is “Serenity.”

General, Member's Work, Members in the News, Monthly Contest, News on the Bloc, Tips for writing, Writing Tips

Bragging-Writes

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Yes, I’m bragging on two of our most faithful members. Brian and Mary Lou Condike have had a great week of success. The good news is their success can be your success. For the past few years the dynamic dual have set in motion a monthly short story contest to give members  encouragement and to practice and improve our writing skills. Their own write has improved so much they have now began receiving awards on a state level.

In the Katheryn Mc Clatchy 2018 Flash Fiction  Contest, sponsored by the Writers Guild of Texas, both of Condikes placed as follows:

1st Place – Brian (“Any Dang Fool”) – $150 and the short-story will appear in their newsletter and on their website in April.
3rd Place – ML (“A Purple Lizard”) – $50 It will appear in their newsletter and on their website in February.

“We attribute our success to participation in the monthly contest sponsored by the GWB. “ Mary Lou said. “ I always enter for feedback only and Brian enters under a pen name.” 

 

 

 

General

December 10th Pot Luck Meeting

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Remember, our annual holiday party will be Monday, December 10th from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the 2nd Floor Activity Room at Waterview. It’s a pot luck affair, so bring your favorite dish and significant other and join us to play ‘Guess the Author.’

Interested members will bring one copy of an unsigned, ~1,000-word story. We’ll roll the stories into scrolls and place them in a basket. Writers will pick a story to read aloud, and everyone will try and guess who wrote it. The person who gets the most correct guesses will win a prize!

So please come and join us for some good food and even better fellowship. Hope to see you all there!

General

coming to Granbury – Charlaine Harris author of the hit series Aurora Teagarden

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The best kept Mystery – coming to Granbury – Charlaine Harris author of the hit series Aurora Teagarden and many, many top selling books (see below:

Regular Meeting

  • The Point at Waterview – 2nd Floor

  • 5:00 p.m. Monday September 24th

  • Charlaine Harris is the featured speaker

  • 101 Watermark Blvd.

  • South Side of Pearl Street

  • Near the Hilton Garden Inn

Charlaine Harris (born November 25, 1951 in Tunica, Mississippi) is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over twenty years. She was raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and, later, teenage angst, she wrote plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She began to write books a few years later.
After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris launched a lighthearted series “starring” Georgia librarian Aurora Teagarden, with Real Murders, a Best Novel nominee for the 1990 Agatha Awards. Harris wrote eight Aurora titles. In 1996, she released the first of the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses. Shakespeare’s Counselor, the fifth–and last– was printed in fall 2001.
After Shakespeare, Harris created The Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series about a telepathic waitress who works in a bar in the fictional Northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first of these, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each book follows Sookie as she tries to solve mysteries involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The series, which now numbers nine titles, has been released worldwide.
Sookie Stackhouse proved to be so popular that Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under, announced he would undertake the production of a new show for HBO based upon the books. He wrote and directed the pilot episode for that series, True Blood, which premiered in September of 2008. It was an instant success and was quickly picked up for a second season.
In October 2005, Harris’s new mystery series about a young woman named Harper Connelly debuted with the release of Grave Sight. Harper has the ability to determine the cause of death of any body. There are now three Harper titles (GRAVE SIGHT, GRAVE SURPRISE, AN ICE COLD GRAVE) with a 4th (GRAVE SECRET) to be released in 2009.
Harris has also co-edited three very popular anthologies with her friend Toni L.P. Kelner. The anthologies feature stories with an element of the supernatural, and the submissions come from a rare mixture of mystery and urban fantasy writers.
Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance. Personally, Harris is married and the mother of three. She lives in a small town in Southern Arkansas and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously!

 

Writers’ workshop and writing group