Category Archives: General

General category for posts that haven’t been added to other categories.

General, Member's Work

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!

 

General

44 Years in the ER

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Now retired in Granbury, doctor tells ER stories in his book.

Dr. Barna Richards has treated gunshot victims, kids with a bean in their ear, heart patients and even performed his first C-section in the emergency room.

Richards recounts the touching moments, as well as the humorous ones, in his book “44 Years in the ER.”

In one chapter, the doctor recalls a young man who came into the ER with blood all over his shirt.

“I raked around on his chest and couldn’t find a wound anywhere,” he said.

A nurse came into the room and noticed a small wound just below the man’s hairline.

“We later found out that his wife came home and caught him with another woman. She put a .22-caliber pistol to his head,” Richards said.

“The bullet penetrated the skin, traveled around the bone and lodged at the base of his skull. It never pierced his skull.” Shaking his head, the doctor said, “This had to be one of the luckiest men in world!”

Richards, now retired and living in Granbury, joined other local authors for a book signing at the Writers Bloc seminar Saturday morning held at the Waterview clubhouse.

Richards began his medical career in the Metroplex in 1963, before emergency medicine was a specialty.  As an intern at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Richards moonlighted in the ER for minimum wage.

“About a dollar an hour,” he recalled.

Even after he entered practice, he continued working in the ER field to make extra money.

“I could work the ER all I wanted in private hospitals because the more sane, private doctors wanted no part of the emergency room,” Richards grinned and said.

He remembers calling the obstetrician on call one night when a lady came to the ER needing a C-section.

“He didn’t want to come in, and said I could do it with help from the second year guy,” Richards said.

After the incision was made, Richards said he had never seen so much blood.

After suctioning the blood, Richards said everything become clear and the procedure was a success. “The mother and baby did fine,” he added.

During his career, Richards said some of the worst cases involved young people with trauma. “Teenagers sometimes do stupid things,” he said sadly.

He added that shaken babies were also hard to deal with.

“You see all kinds of things in the ER,” Richards said. “But, you know, the ER exists to save lives.”

He has no idea how many thousands of stitches he has given, and estimates he’s seen half a million patients. He’s delivered lots of babies, including one in an elevator.

While in practice, Richards saw about 50 patients every day. “I even worked Saturdays,” he said.

He is both pleased and amazed how new technology has changed the medical field.

“In the early days, everything was a clinical diagnosis,” the doctor said. Patients answered questions so the doctor could diagnose the problem.

“We had X-rays, but that was it,” he smiled and said.

“Now there’s ultrasound, CAT scans, MRIs, flexible endoscopy, and the list goes on,” he noted. “All wonderful advances.”

On a humorous note, Richards recalled a female patient who said she had a bug in her ear.

“Her husband claimed there was absolutely no way that she had a bug in her ear,” Richards said.

When examining her ear, a moth flew out.

“Her skeptical husband exclaimed, ‘Well, I’ll be damned!” Richards said with a chuckle.

dschneider@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 255

 

General, Writing Tips

Writing Great Suspense Novels

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Seven Tips on Writing Great Suspense Novels

(excerpts from Post by Tony Lee Moral on The Writer’s Dig, May 15, 2017)

  1. The number one rule of suspense is to give your reader information, i.e., there is a bomb in the room or there is a ghost in the room.
  2. Use counterpoint contrast. Per Alfred Hitchcock, “Suspense doesn’t have any value unless it’s balanced by humor.” Comedy can make your writing more dramatic and give your reader a chance to reflect on the suspense.
  3. A good story should start with an earthquake and be followed by rising tension.
  4. Never use a setting as a simple background. Use it 100%. Incorporate them into the drama.
  5. At the same time, avoid the cliché in your locations, such as staging a murder in a dark alleyway or at night. The sense of the unexpected and the idea that turmoil can erupt at any moment, will keep your readers on their guard.
  6. Keep your story moving. Use sudden switches in location to change the setting and promote suspense drama changes. Set up the locations at the beginning and use them for action later on.
  7. Avoid stereotypes whether it is the character or the plot. Make your villains attractive, so they can get near the victims.

 

General, Writing Tips

Body Language As A Tag

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Body Language as a TAG

  1. Use body language to add depth to dialog.
  2. Use it because more than 50% of human communication is non-verbal.
  3. Use it to show how your character’s emotions affect his or her actions.
  4. Use it to help you show rather than tell your reader everything.
  5. Use it in moderation. If overused, it can slow your story down.

A few ideas from writerswrite.co.za:

Anger or aggression: shake fist, point finger, stab finger, slam fist on a table, flushed face, throbbing veins in neck, jutting chin, clench fists, clench jaw, lower eyebrows, squint eyes, bare teeth, a wide stance, tight-lipped smile.

Boredom: yawn, avoid eye contact, tap feet, twirl a pen, doodle, fidget, slouch.

Confusion: tilt head, narrow eyes, furrowed brow, shrug.

Defensive: cross arms or legs, arms out with palms forward, hands up, place anything in front of body, hands in pockets.

Embarrassment: blush, stammer, cover face with hands, bow head, trouble maintaining eye contact, look down and away, blink back tears.

Fear: hunch shoulders, shrink back, mouth open, widen eyes, shake, tremble, freeze, rock from side to side, wrap arms around self, shaky hands.

Jealousy: tight lips, sour expression, narrow eyes, crossed arms.

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Deep POV Characters

 

This is a technique that draws us in, so that as the reader we feel one with the POV character. It is as if you are that person. Authors like Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven King), Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games), and Cassandra Clare (Shadowhunters) use this technique effectively.

It is best used in novels that seek to thrill the reader or take them on an emotional journey. It is a technique that cannot be perfected overnight.

The Basics:

Limit your character’s knowledge and only reveal the things your character actually knows to keep readers engaged. Cut our filter words like “thought, wondered, or saw.” Just state it, e.g. She wondered how bad the tornado had been. VS. How bad had it been?

Limit your dialog tags. Use attribute tags instead, e.g. “Are you okay?” she asked. VS.  Are you okay?” She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away.

Employ the ultimate show, and don’t tell. Deep POV is all about getting into your character’s head, so avoid as many instances of telling as possible.

Don’t use the passive voice. No action should be done unto someone. Someone should always do it., e.g. Her shoulder was hit. VS. He hit her shoulder.

Be careful when identifying characters. In Deep POV, your character relationships aren’t easy. Use dialog when possible, e.g. Not “John, her brother, stood next to her” but “John stood next to her.” Or “Eric, this is my brother John.”

Relate backstory with memory flashes.

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