Even though it meant being late to his mandatory office Christmas party, Phil Arnold stopped by our December meeting long enough to officiate over the election for new chapter president. John Migacz was elected, and took the reins when Phil made his exit. John has been a member of SCWW since September of 2002. He is the author of three Science Fiction / Fantasy and Speculative Fiction novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays. John's work has been published in the last two SCWW anthologies, Catfish Stew. Congratulations, John, and Phil, thank you for your inspired service. (Keep in mind that the title 'President-for-life' is still available.)

The results of the statewide SCWW election are in. Please welcome the newest members of the SC Writers Workshop Board of Directors:

• Betty Beamguard
• Leland Beaudrot
• Mary Eaddy (returning)
• Sandra Johnson
• Brenda McClain (returning)
• Linda Shaffer
• First Alternate: Pat Graney
• Second Alternate: Jason Zwicker
• Third Alternate: Dan Barber.

Congratulations to all. The Board's first meeting will be on January 22, 2005 at the Cayce-West Columbia Branch Library, 1500 Meeting St., West Columbia. We are extremely pleased that the Greenville Chapter of SCWW will be well represented by Leland Beaudrot. Congratulations, Leland. We look forward to hearing about the Board's activities.

With Leland's responsibilities as a new member of the SCWW Board of Directors looming, Marcia Migacz has taken over as editor of Printed Matters. Please forward critiques, comments, ideas, and submissions to Marcia at marciamigacz@prtcnet.com. She will be happy to accept your input.

Speaking of Leland… In an amazing feat of dedication and perseverance, Leland finished the draft copy of his first novel, "Church Bizarre" within the one month limitation imposed by the National Novel Writing Month contest. In a momentous achievement, Leland cranked out over 1600 words a day (a total of 50,056 words) during the thirty days of November. Leland has shared the first two chapters of the book in the December meetings and it appears that all of his muses were fired up and fully inspired for the effort.

Two years ago, Pat Stewart submitted an article on Scrapbooking to "Reunions" magazine. They contacted her last month and asked her to resubmit the article, as they might want to use it soon. Good luck, Pat!

Anyone interested the Foothills Writer's Workshop being held on Feb. 18-19, 2005 should send an e-mail to wrightwriter@aol.com. They will forward the details about the workshop to you via snail-mail. So far, the information we do have is that the general fee is $125 for Friday night and Saturday, including several meals and a T-shirt. Early registration is $110. The Saturday session only is $100. Friday night only is $35.

The next meetings of the Greenville Chapter of SCWW are as follows:

• Thursday, January 6 - First Thursday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book
• Tuesday, January 18 - Third Tuesday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book (all genres welcome)

Howard Lewis closes out his short story of a marriage gone bad with husband Billy being blown away by a stranger in a bar. Actually, Billy's not totally dead yet, but I think we all know how this is going to turn out. The barroom scene reminded me a lot of the action in Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, except the fight, as such, ended a lot sooner and with more permanent results for Billy.

This was a fast moving story and showed how mental and emotional spousal abuse can be just as devastating as the physical kind. Howard did a good job of portraying Billy's slide from good guy to sadistic jerk. In the critique, much of discussion centered on some inconsistencies in wife June's leaps of logic and subsequent actions. Why did she so passively acquiesce to stripping for strangers? What thought process went on before she suddenly decided to enlist an amorous bar patron in shooting her husband?

Other comments included skipping from a dialogue-rich beginning to straight narrative at the end, and whether the police interview technique at the bar was appropriate for assault of such a highly aggravated nature.

This was an interesting and thought-provoking piece that some thought could be even better if it were fleshed out more in terms of the characters' dialogue and motivation for their actions.

Jim McFarlane read from a portion of his story Pieter Stuyvesant. Anna and Penelope were guests at a formal dinner in the Director-General's mansion. They were not comfortable with the lavish surroundings. They were dressed in the older style of Dutch clothing and were not familiar with a piece of silverware called a fork. The conversation got around to religion and Penelope was uncomfortable with the discussion about the differences among the religions.

Several listeners felt there was a shift in viewpoint from Penelope. Keep the discussion in her point of view. Changing a viewpoint is jarring to the reader.

Use the "show not tell" technique in the paragraph when she challenged Stuyvesant's Biblical quotations. Use mannerisms to show Pieter's irritation. I like Penelope's character contrast to the lavish surroundings and how she reacted to the host's opinions. I particularly liked her defense of her faith. She comes across as a strange character.

The master of short fiction, Leland Beaudrot ventured into untried waters with his first novel, entitled Church Bizarre. While this reviewer certainly gets the pun, Leland's novel, which he speed-wrote in like a month, deserves a better title, one conceived in patient reflection rather than haste.

Relying primarily on quirky dialogue, Leland paints a vivid picture of a coroner's inquest held in a church in small-town Alabama. The deceased in question, the church's preacher, died as a result of an accident that can only be described as hilarious dark comedy. The consensus reached at our meeting is that, despite the perils of writing in dialect, the distinctly Southern drawl with which the characters at the inquest speak enhances rather than detracts from the story. I, for one, agree. This Damnyankee had no trouble following the dialogue as written and would suggest leaving it as it is.

The only suggestion I would make as to how to improve the opening chapter would be weaving more physical description of the characters into such wonderful dialogue. For example, we have the court reporter "brush[ing] back a wisp of Clairol auburn hair" and "[a] half dozen men, [only] two less than a half century old." But that's it. Several people at our meeting had trouble keeping each speaker straight and suggested introducing even more quirky speech patterns individualized for each character. That would likely be overkill. On the other hand, if we can get a sense of what each character looks like, we can form a mental image of that character and use it as an identifier in our minds when he or she opens his or her mouth.

While we are accustomed to the science fiction writers among us whisking us to other worlds in far away places and times, in Trailer Trash, John Kingsbury takes us deep into a world just as foreign, though much closer to home. Marshal Pickens Hospital houses a rich blend of characters, each in their own world, often content in their isolation from harsh realities, sometimes struggling to find their orientation.

The story follows the experiences of Jake Marshall as one of the players on this eclectic stage while he undergoes therapy for alcohol addiction. He bides his "girl watching" in a session on co-dependency and hovering around a checker game between "The Apostle" and a beautiful but abused girl: "If these eyes were the windows to this girl's soul, the storm shutters of her soul were battened down tightly." In order to command her entertaining company, first The Apostle, then Jake take turns as her opponent, each letting her win.

We found much to like in this chapter of John's novel. It subtly reveals conflicts Jake himself is not yet aware of. A significant part of the story's resolution is foreshadowed here. John is astute in his use of action beats to pace his story. But so much revolves around checker games, we suggested he find new words to bring variety to its description. We're looking forward to Jakes's next moves.

Although there are people in the club who say this has been done before, what hasn't? And what a story John Migacz has woven with his idea. The club spent some time discussing point of view and trying to decide if statements such as "nodded his thanks," or "Distress filled Martha's eyes," actually constitute a change of point of view. The question is: could the protagonists see thanks in the nod or distress in eyes. I believe I have seen thanks in eyes or distress in nods and pretty much stayed in my point of view.

Toward the end of the reading, there was a section where the characters actually summarize what had happened. This recap could be deleted. The club spent some time talking about beats or the pauses. These can be added as the natural pauses in conversation or they can be used for dramatic timing. John used hand action for beats in several cases, but there were several suggestions for different methods of adding beats such as: drift into thought, use cooking, or use setting the table.

John does a good job of using body reaction to show emotion. This allows the readers to feel the scenes as well as seeing them. An example is the second time we hear about Jolly's love. "A tingling feeling rushed over his body causing his system to go numb and dumb for a moment." This kind of description and the question of how a thirty something year old man in a young person's body would think and react always leaves me wanting more. I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Bob Strother tackled a triply difficult task: writing family history in dialect via letters.

To Bob's credit, the voices, attitudes, and language sound authentic. Obviously, he listened to what his family was saying before he started writing. We enjoyed the phrase "burning time in Hell."

However, it is a complicated genealogy and I never did figure out everyone's relationship but that is more of the realism of a good southern family story with distant cousins that you had heard about but never met. Part of Bob's job is to make that easier on the reader.

Letters are known to be a difficult format to handle well. Part of the problem is that the reader has to look ahead to know who the author is. Another is that relating the several parts of letter B to the relevant parts of Letter A is tricky for the reader because letter writers seldom organize their thoughts well and tend to ignore parts of the previous letter. The advice for dialog is to keep (most of the time) the replies relevant to the preceding dialog. But that advice is impossible to follow in correspondence.

Perhaps, Bob could update the story so that the cousins could use short emails which would be closer to dialog and reduce his structural problems as well as giving plenty of opportunities for humor with old ladies learning how to use email.

I can't deny that Steve Heckman's "Denial" had Fatz's attention. Steve tells the story nicely, with good settings and a protagonist that draws your interest. Fatz liked the deliberate, uneasy development before Steve revealed the protagonist's real problem. It allowed the readers' minds to follow many false paths before Steve dropped the hammer with the note and the blood.

The group felt that the 911 call should be eliminated as it comes too soon. The reference to the previous visit to the sports bar should also be dropped as it portrays the protagonist in a state of boredom, not shock. The group liked the effective use of the song 'Sixty Minute Man' and Steve's sudden, grab-you-by-the-throat ending.

Fatz is glad Steve has returned to the group. His writing and insightful critiques add another level to our meetings - and that I can't deny.

Pat Stewart, "Scapbooking at the Webster-Hafner Family Reunion"

This is a piece about how Pat made a scrapbook for a family reunion. Pat submitted it to "Reunions" magazine more than two years ago. They recently contacted her and said they might use it, so Pat presented it for our review. It was well received, with only a few suggestions to focus on the span of five generations as the opening hook, and to submit some more expensive how-to options as well as the money-savers. Pat left us thoughtful with the final admonition, "Don't handle the Afgans."

Michael Gibb, Untitled Book

Michael shared a rewrite of the prologue from his untitled book about a Celtic grove god who needs a new body. The group found it downright scary and much more effective than the previous version. The seasoned veterans in the crowd felt that Roman soldiers coming upon the burnt bodies of the bad guys would have done a bit more to make sure the demons were dead - if I had been in their position, I probably would have too! This book promises to be a real winner, and we are sad to see Michael leave the group as he moves to the frozen north to begin his new life as a dog-sled racer (or something equally as compelling.) We'll miss you, Mike!

We had a small, but lively meeting on Tuesday, the 21st.

Bob Strother read another installment of his book, Love Among the Greeks. These pages started with the main character, a sophomore in college, going on a date with his new girlfriend, Randy. Next we saw the emotional impact on the characters of John F. Kennedy's assassination, and how that eventually led to Randy and the protagonist making love.

Jim McFarlane presented the next chapter in his book, Penelope as Good as Dead. Jim described how Penelope tamed an unruly six-year old boy by showing him around their sailing ship, teaching him how to salute and to respect both the ship's captain and the boy's own mother.

Leland Beaudrot's novel, Church Bizarre, continued with a graduating seminary student named Matt interviewing with the church committee to become the replacement for their deceased preacher.

Kevin Coyle shared a short story called "Canadian Ballet", which deals with three ignorant American college students and their visit to a Canadian strip club.

John Migacz brought us the beginning chapter of the third book in his tetralogy The Dieya Chronicles. This book takes place on Earth. John described two apparently ancient tribes staging for battle. The battle is interrupted by the arrival of a flying craft containing what appears to be a man with supernatural powers.

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter, SCWW, which meets on the first Thursday and third Tuesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book, 110 S Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC.

Thanks to our contributing writers and news reporters:
Bob Strother, Howard Lewis, Jim McFarlane, John Migacz, Kevin Coyle, Leland Beaudrot, Marcia Migacz, and Pat Stewart

Copyright 2004 by Marcia Migacz, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.