"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of,
but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
- Robert A. Heinlein

The SCWW Board of Directors had their first meeting of the year on Saturday, February 4. The agenda included election of board officers, the 2006 Conference, this year's Anthology, and planning the summer workshops. See the "Editor's Corner" at the end of this newsletter for details. Meeting minutes will be published in The Quill and on the SCWW website.

The 10th Anniversary SC Book Festival will be held on Saturday, Feb. 25 and Sunday, Feb. 26 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, 1101 Lincoln Street, Columbia (803) 545-0001. SCWW will have a table where we will pass out SCWW informational brochures, sell anthologies, and respond to general questions about SCWW. Information on the Festival may be found at www.schumanities.org/bookfestival.htm.

Guidelines for submissions to the SCWW 2006 Catfish Stew Anthology have been published. Copies were sent via snail mail to all members. They were also published in January's issue of The Quill and on the SCWW website. Submissions must be postmarked by April 30, 2006.

This year's SCWW Writers Conference is scheduled for October 20-22, 2006 at the Ocean Creek Resort, Myrtle Beach, SC. Preliminary details are available on the SCWW website at www.scwriters.com. Check in occasionally for updates.

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

• Thursday, March 2 - First Thursday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book
• Tuesday, March 21 - Third Tuesday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book

All genres welcome at both meetings. Suggested limit for reading selections is five double-spaced, typed pages, although longer selections may be possible if time permits.

The Open Book, 110 S Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC

This section of Jim McFarlane's The Widow Dunn might just as easily be titled The Long, Hot Summer. In the second paragraph, we get a summary of the long-suffering widow's trials and troubles that might make a lesser woman put a gun to her head. And it's not over yet - it's only August.

Laura Ann is pondering her few options, including going hat in hand to older brother William, when her would-be suitor, Angus McFarlane, shows up with cow and calf in tow. He's looking for a place to pasture the animals and is willing to negotiate favorable terms. Hampton, Laura Ann's "drinking" brother, likes the sound of the deal, especially the prospect of "a dram of true whiskey on Saturday."

The group could find little fault with the work, and had to content itself with punctuation pointers and a "wee" problem in the narration. Several reiterated their affection for the affable Scotsman, Angus, and wanted Jim to bring in a part of the story only hinted at in Laura Ann's earlier litany of woes - the "near (marriage) proposal."

Overall, this saga rocks along slow but steady with some nice action and conflict mixed in with more languid episodes. Panama would like to see the pace quicken a bit, but at 90,000 words, isn't sure that's going to happen.

"The Saga of Snorri the Priest", a new alternative history saga from Kevin Coyle, follows a man called Thorolf Mostur-Beard from Norway to Iceland. He details the family history of Thorolf's family through several generations.

They built a temple to the god Thor and dedicated sons to this god. Son Thorstein became a priest in this temple. His son Thorgrim became a priest too. More children are born, fight for territory and die. Snorri shows up as the child of Thordis and Thorgrim. Her brother Gisli killed Thorgrim while they "were lying together in their bedcloset." Snorri was named Thorgrim, and later called Snorri which means "turbulent."

This story is half saga and half myth. I didn't realize that a saga is defined as "a medieval Icelandic or Norse prose narrative." Set in 963 it fits the genre. I have to confess to feeling I was hearing a Norse version of a soap opera. I found it difficult to keep the Cod-Biter, Thorbjorn Sur, Bork the Stout, and all the Thorbrandssons straight. For fans of sagas this will be right down your line. It has enough action, bloodshed and intrigue to keep you sorting out all the characters.

I look foward to the next chapter where we'll meet Thorvald Asvaldsson, Thjodhild Jorundardottir, and Thord Bellower. It is obvious Kevin has done his research well. I quote the names because they were so fascinating. I have trouble finding names for my fictional characters. I do better with family names!

Sarah Cureton shared an expanded version of the Bible story of Jacob and Laban, hoping to interest high school students in the stories of Genesis. "Jacob and Laban...Desperation meets Greed" follows Jacob as he works in Laban's fields for seven years in return for Laban's daughter Rachel's hand in marriage. Happiness eludes him as Rachel and his first wife, Rachel's sister, become bitter rivals for Jacob's affection and God's favor, and he realizes that by working in Laban's fields instead of his own he will not be able to provide for his sons' futures.

Folks were impressed by this piece, and felt that it will indeed be appropriate for teenagers. Comments included the opinion that the dialogue between Jacob and his brother-in-law may be too relaxed - the use of "Jake" and "Joey" seemed out of place. On the other hand, the stilted dialogue in the first section, together with the lack of contractions, was an effective way to show the stress between Jacob and his father-in-law.

Readers had the feeling that they were missing some key pieces of information, such as why Jacob is there in the first place (his brother wants to kill him,) how did he end up with two wives (we didn't know he was already married when he asked for Rachel's hand,) and what did he have to do to earn the hand of the first wife (see the first seven years of his adult life. What a glutton for punishment!)

All in all, Polly found this to be an effective and interesting treatment of a story that previously had never made much of an impression on her.

Newcomer Jeff Oxborrow stopped in to add to a night more suited to Halloween than Valentine's Day. Jeff read the sixth chapter from his Stephen King-like novel. We have a seemingly psychic kid, a frightened father, a moldy mugger, an entity in cowboy boots and blazing red eyeballs.

Jeff has pulled the elements of a good tale together, but the writing needs some tightening. The lack of speech attributes, tense changes and POV head hopping, leaves the reader a little confused. Some felt the scene in the ambulance went on too long and detracted from the main story. Less scene description and shorter sentences would also ratchet up tension.

Fatz welcomes Jeff and is glad to see another fantasy writer in the group.

Bernard Dewley's short story, "Bathhouse Blues", brought a completely different side to the group. This piece was well written and even though I've not read any other gay erotica, this piece definitely was very erotic in nature. Bernard's reading was stated as being "lyrical" and "flowing very well", quite like his poetry that has been shared.

This reviewer has written a few erotica pieces and self-published five short stories in a book. Although I've only written one piece that could be considered "gay erotica" more or less since it is a lesbian fantasy, I do not feel that I have a knack for erotica. Bathhouse Blues has the feeling of coming from an actual experience or combination of several experiences. A couple of minor grammar items were pointed out but the feeling was that everyone seemed to be in awe of this story. One comment that was made was about the title, but this reviewer felt the title was appropriate based on the content.

I've had the privilege of reading several other stories and poetry pieces on Bernard's website and feel this is truly a talented writer, bringing intense issues to light.

Keep up the good work and keep sharing with us.

Pat Stewart entertained us with "Null and Void Outdated Rules," another story of her "un-ruly" family, this time, true confessions on surviving a childhood in France. Andy copied his way through first grade. Near-sighted Diane traded colored pencils for poorly spelled spelling words. Susan learned to fake bus tickets. I wonder how the other four children misbehaved.

Amid our laughter, we found some suggestions for improvements. The story didn't fit the frame which advertised a continuation of the family rules. But the rules never dealt with cheating. Also, the title is rather clunky and doesn't fit the story.

Pat quotes her children's reminisces, which are fairly good despite a grammatical faux pas or two. At the meeting, several people advised Pat to rewrite them in her usual style. On longer consideration, I like the first person point of view and give Pat artistic license to tweak the children's memories and grammar to improve the drama.

I remember high school dictées, too, and how everything sounded alike. Here's a technical note, Pat: To insert the accent e in a Word document, click on Insert and then Symbol, as I just did to copy it into my email program. Maximum flavor comes from authentic details. Foreign words should be in italics not quotes. I hope my italics and accent survive the email trips.

Last month, Susan Boyer said it was hard to review Phil Arnold. Now I'm having some trouble reviewing her. Let me say up front, I am a big fan of Susan's work. I love the southern fiction genre she does with all that great dialog.

Her latest story, "Fifty-Cent Soul," ventures into science fiction, and she's got a nifty idea. In the first few pages she introduces us to Gabe, an angel whose job is to intervene and save people's souls and sometimes their lives. His antagonist is Lucien, one of the minions of evil against whom humans need intervention. How perfect is a villain who takes a seventeen-year-old girl's life just because he was bored, and she was handy?

If these two strong characters weren't enough, Susan introduces a great twist -- Marilyn Monroe as an angel's assistant getting job training from Gabe and having some problems with her first assignment. It will be interesting to see where all this goes.

My only problem was in understanding a few things. If Gabe didn't want Marilyn to materialize in front of the victim, why didn't he tell her up front? Why would Marilyn choose to wear that famous dress (the one over the Manhattan subway grate) on her first assignment? And what does it mean when Marilyn thinks how a date would have been her thirty-ninth wedding anniversary, for the second time, to Joe Dimaggio, if things had worked out differently? This reader got stuck on that line at the very beginning of the story and had trouble getting past it. I would prefer to see Susan rework the first two lines later in the story and begin with a slight variation of her third line, "Marilyn Monroe was on her first day of on-the job-training as an angel's assistant, and she didn't have a lot of time for reflection." That's a pretty good hook to pull readers into her work -- a slight accommodation to the easily-confused readers like me.

Bob Strother shared another of his increasingly literary short stories with us during the first Thursday meeting in February. "Sunday Morning Conclusion" was laced with fresh expressions, such as "The coffee maker rattles, wheezes and invites me over," and "the comforting cuff and hum of small appliances." As usual, Bob's story-telling style grabbed and held our interest.

We discussed our various opinions as to whether or not the main character's leap to assume that her lover, Joe, had abandoned her was realistic, and whether or not the relationship was over even though he had in fact only gone out for "bagels and smokes." Bob remained quiet during the latter debate, not cluing us in as to whose assumptions were correct-if anybody's were. I believe that the best stories allow the reader to provide part of their own storyline, becoming the author's partner in the fiction experience. The beauty of this story is that it can have one spin to me and another to Kevin and yet another to Marcia - no two readers may ever get the exact same story.

Several in the group said that the clause "I wonder at the time" in the first sentence caused them to stumble a bit. Also, the consensus seemed to be that Bob should keep us in suspense a little linger by moving (or removing) the part near the top of the last page where the main character sees Joe's car pull up. Overall, however, we were hard pressed to come up with criticism. Bob has another strong piece of short fiction in "Sunday Morning Conclusion."

In "A Coffeehouse Confrontation," John Migacz tells the story of a warlock who challenges a coven of witches - not your typical good-verses-evil showdown, since it all takes place under the noses of a collection of colorful coffeehouse patrons. This particular coven gets off on doing their hocus pocus in public, arguably making it easier for the witch-hunting warlock, who is immune to their camouflaging spells.

As the author, John obviously takes great pleasure in describing the series of obnoxious and/or clueless customers who come in to fetch a cup of joe, reminiscent of a "creative non-fiction" piece he shared with the group last year. However, I have to wonder if the warlock, who serves as the point-of-view character, would be as gleeful in recounting their antics, given that he is about to have a Mexican standoff with nine bad-ass Wiccans. I suppose if he is so confident that he will prevail over his adversaries, he might take the time for a few Seinfeld-esque "Who are these people?" observations.

Phil Arnold shared two more of his recent Elvis Presley blog entries. In "Another Big Elvis Collector In The News," he shares the story of Jim Curtin, an Elvis memorabilia collector whose collection recently sold for approximately $2 million. The blog was generally well-received by the group, which is typical of Phil's solid writing skills. There was consensus within the group that the opening paragraph needs to be re-worked slightly to avoid reference to other collectors who do not appear elsewhere in the article.

In "Them Kitty Hawk Gals Is Stealin' Our Men," Phil provides a concise and fond re-cap of "Kissin' Cousins", one of Elvis' more experimental films. Again, the group gave positive feedback on this blog. The primary criticism regarded a lack of clarity in explaining that Elvis played a dual role in this film. Nitpicking yes, but as one member of the group said, "the devil is in the details."

As I have little knowledge of Elvis Presley and his huge following, it is always an interesting and educational read when Phil shares his work. The only other general suggestion I would make is that perhaps Phil could share his work prior to posting it. By doing so, Phil would have the opportunity to hear the group's suggestions prior to releasing his blogs to his growing readership.

In Bob Strother's novel, Burning Time, we follow six-year-old Louise on the morning after the birth of her baby brother. She gets help reading the newspaper from Jesse's husband Laurence, learning that "Roosevelt pushes for two new battleships" and that the date on the newspaper is October 13, 1906. When Louise carries a hot water bottle into her mother's room, she discovers her grandmother sitting in the corner with the new baby. Louise greets her brother for the first time and then climbs up into Granny's lap and "nestles there, next to the baby."

Jim McFarlane read another selection from his book The Widow Dunn. Laura Ann and Angus sit on her front porch talking about food, Scotland, and Angus' new job, which pays twice his usual wage. They agree on terms for him to board a cow and calf in her barn, and when they shake on it, "he held her hand longer than a business deal required, then turned her bare hand, bent low, kissed it gently, and released it." Although both are embarrassed, Laura Ann wonders if it's immoral "to falsely raise his matrimonial hopes at the same time she wants to borrow his money."

The saga continues with Kevin Coyle's "The Saga of Snorri the Priest." Eirik the Red arrives in Iceland with his father. Eirik is hot-tempered and gets into disputes with his neighbors. Styr the Killer approaches Snorri the Priest and asks him to side with Eirik. Snorri agrees that his sword will play no part in a planned attack on Eirik. Next he is approached by Thorgest the Old to go against Eirik, and Snorri sells Thorgest information about Eirik's whereabouts. After the courts outlaw Eirik the Red, Thorgest the Old and his supporters find Eirik and his family where they are hiding and Thorgest prepares to attack.

For her first time reading to the group, Pam Gurule brought the beginning of her 20,000 word novel, Your Tiara is Waiting. Shelby O'Shields is driving with her mother in a fire engine red 1955 Thunderbird, headed for the Miss Georgia Georgia Beauty Pageant. After they arrive, Shelby panics because she can't find her "Jesus Shoes" in any of her seven bags, and she and her mother argue over the appropriateness of calling them "Jesus Shoes." Finally, another beauty queen wannabe brings out her practice rifle and inadvertently terrorizes a maid and many of the other contestants before she is subdued.

Phil Arnold's Elvisblogs for this meeting were called "Benjamin Keough & Michael Lockwood" and "Elvis the Writer, Elvis the Actor." The first blog centered around the "Referrer Summary" on the blogsite "which shows the search entries on Google, etc., that lead folks to your site." It appears that searches on the keywords "Keough" and "Lockwood" have sparked a surprising number of hits on Elvisblog. The second blog gives some excerpts of two of Elvis' love letters to his old girl friend Anita Wood, written while he was stationed in Germany, and currently displayed at ELVIS-A-RAMA in Las Vegas, Nevada. There was also a page from a screenplay for "Jailhouse Rock."

Sarah Cureton shared a first-person rewrite from her novel Breathe. In this section, the protagonist has just received a horribly low grade in her kinetics exam. To relieve the tension she and her roommate Chris amble to the "Tiger Town Tavern" to meet some friends.

Faye Tollison read from her novel Nothing But the Truth. In Chapter One, Anna Kayce enters the courtroom amid photographers' flashes and reporters' questions. A Senator is dead and a hard-nosed prosecutor is asking Anna hard-nosed questions.

Susan Boyer read the re-worked first chapter of her novel Lowcounty Boil. During a phone conversation, Grandmother Emma Rae Talbot is arguing against having a live-in companion or "spy." The self-sufficient native of the fictional Stella Maris Island then investigates a noise out in the darkened dunes and is bludgeoned to death.

John Migacz read an unnamed work about artificial intelligence recounted from two alternating perspectives - one from the creator and one from the machine. In a change of pace, John read the creator's sections and Marcia Migacz read the machine's sections.

The first SCWW board meeting of 2006 was held on Saturday, February 4th at the Cayce-West Columbia library. Bob, Sarah and Susan were there, along with John and Marcia, who went to observe and offer their help. Following are the officers and committee chairs for this year:

Elected Executive Officers:

SCWW Positions:

Please note for future reference that with the exception of Chapter Liaison, the above SCWW positions do not necessarily have to be filled by board members. Volunteers are encouraged!!

We discussed the annual SCWW conference, which will be held at Ocean Creek Resort, October 20-22, 2006. The following faculty members have signed contracts to attend: Mystery writer Tess Gerritsen; Poet Dr. Kwame Dawes; Editor/publisher/novelist Marcia Preston; Self-publishing representative Jim Conover; Local author Cathy Pickens; Humor Essayist Ann Ipock; Screen/script writer Kathie Fong Yoneda; Talent agent Stuart M. Miller. The conference co-chairs are continuing to work on signing additional faculty members-this list is very preliminary. We also decided that during the Saturday night banquet (at which we plan to have a dinner theater this year) we will ask faculty members to sit with the conference attendees-one per table if possible.

The other big topic that will be of interest to everyone is the 2006 edition of Catfish Stew. Everyone should have received a call for entries in the mail with guidelines. Entry deadline is April 30, 2006. Entries will be scored by three judges in each category. The scores will be averaged, and the top scoring entries will be published in the anthology, with no more than three published items per author. The board will evaluate the word limits, taking into consideration costs and other factors for the 2007 anthology.

This year, summer workshops will be held in Greenville, Charleston and Columbia. Dates, locations and topics to be announced.

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter of South Carolina Writers Workshop.

Please forward critiques, comments, ideas, and submissions to Printed Matters Editor Marcia Migacz at marciamigacz@prtcnet.com.

Thanks to our contributing writers and news reporters:
Bob Strother, Pat Stewart, Marcia Migacz, John Migacz, Elysabeth Eldering, Jim McFarlane, Phil Arnold, Susan Boyer, Kevin Coyle, and Bernard Dewley

Copyright 2006 by Marcia Migacz, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.

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