An update of the SCWW Member Directory is in progress. A new feature this year will be the addition of personal web site links (limit: 1 link per member). If you have any corrections or additions to your directory information, please e-mail Leland.

(Taken from The Quill, August, 2006.)

We're gearing up for the SCWW Conference to be held October 20 - 22 in Myrtle Beach. We will be returning to Ocean Creek Resort for a conference that promises to be great! For information and on-line registration, click: www.scwriters.com/2006%20Conf.html#fees

The SCWW Board of Directors will have two open slots this year. Nominations for new Board members must be submitted to the Board in writing by October 1. Anyone who is interested in running for the Board should get in touch soon with John Migacz or one of the Board members from Greenville (Bob, Susan, or Sarah.)

(Taken From The Quill, August 2006.)

In order for you to know whether your work will be included in this year's edition of Catfish Stew, the editors of the anthology have supplied a list of titles. If your title doesn't appear on this list, you are free to submit your work elsewhere. The competition was fierce this year, with so many excellent entries.

Jim McFarlane read chapter 41 of his novel The Widow Dunn. The conversation on page 2 about "dog-tail" cotton threw some listeners. The transition from the poor state of cotton to waiting for Phyllis to deliver her baby needs some revision.

Another question came up about hearing so much bad news. Would the reader stay with a story that gives us so many problems? Try scattering a few bits of good news in the story. Give the readers hope that Angus and Laura Ann will eventually save the farm.

I like the way Jim has his character Hampton give details on how cotton matures and how it goes bad in a drought. This makes the story more real and gives the reader a sense of how life was in that place and era.

We need moments of relief from bad news. Have cycles in the story that give the reader a sense that we will see the characters succeed.

One comment was using the word "furniture" five times on page 3. That's easy enough to fix. I won't say a bad word about repetition; I get slammed for that too.

In all, I look forward to hearing Jim's next chapters. I'm sure Angus and Laura Ann will be in high cotton before the end of the book.

Steve Heckman's novel about the legacy of Genghis Khan jumps into the contemporary world with a scary ride in a Mongolian aircraft. As usual, Steve paints a very colorful and detailed picture of the environment. Modern critics decry extensive use of adjectives and description, but there is a time and place for everything and this is the right time and place.

With the group's vast experience with Mongolian aircraft, we were able to accept, virtually speaking of course, the presence of a goat, goat shit, and unusual passengers. However, our credulity was strained by English seat numbers (3A), collective English language ("whoa"), and the willingness of the protagonist to allow his laptop computer—surely his most precious and hardest-to-replace possession—to be contaminated with goat shit or pawed by a large Chinese woman.

Since Chapter 6 is a major time shift, I would prefer a more obvious introduction to time and place in the first sentence, such as: Alex Kiski wondered at the age of the Russian four-prop aircraft sitting on the Beijing runway.

I can accept "I do not think I want to find out if that is true" as stiff English spoken by a foreigner, but "There is nothing to worry about" is too colloquial for me. After years of writing smooth dialogue, Steve's transition to stiff may require eternal vigilance. And watch out for those trite "deep sighs" and "wide-eyed" expressions.

If Elvis is an idol, Phil Arnold is his prophet. The long-time contributing editor to Elvis International now hosts his own popular on-line chronicle of the King, Elvis Blog www.elvisblog.net, "Nuggets Of News, History And Commentary, Posted Every Sunday." Like an oldies D.J. spinning dusty disks from the archives of Rock & Roll's birth, Phil reaches into his boundless store of Elvis lore to entertain and inform the fans.

Phil's commentary presented in our Thursday meeting offered his take on "Hard Rock Park," a coming attraction to be built at Myrtle Beach. Being a "showcase of some of the finest rock memorabilia" with "six themed areas," Phil proposes that one of these be pure Elvis, including the "All Shook Up" roller coaster and "Easy Come, Easy Go" swing ride. One of our commentators suggested "Return to Sender" as an alternative title, another suggested a "Viva Las Vegas" arcade.

Every year, with the (hound) dog days of August comes the inevitable "Elvis Movie Marathon," and who better to thumb up the winners than Phil. This year's August 16^th offering on TCM commemorates the 30^th... Oops! Make that 29^th anniversary (Good catch!) of The King's untimely demise. Phil maps out 24 hours of must see TV, interspersed with occasional breaks for yawners. Pop some corn, perk some coffee, perch in the recliner and rock the night (and day) away!

When Susan Boyer gets Lowcountry Boil published and it becomes a huge success, she hopes it will lead to a book series. Her heroine, Liz, will become a successful detective who solves murders with a little help from her ghost partner, Colleen. You know, that's a clever angle. It's certainly not pure Southern women's fiction, and Susan says it's not science fiction either, but it just might work.

The section we heard at the last meeting had a nice twist. Filthy Slimy Snake Troy thinks Merry is unconscious and rolls her up in a rug. While he unloads junk out of the back of his SUV to make room for the "body, " Merry escapes and grabs a fireplace poker with which to clobber him when he comes back in for her. However, his lover/cohort Kristen come in first, and Merry knocks her out. Merry rolls Kristen into the rug to replace herself and escapes. Troy returns with a gun and fires into the rug. So, the plot certainly thickens.

Perhaps because Lowcountry Boil is read in short segments over a long period of time, this reader is a no longer clear on how Colleen the ghost was introduced into the story and explained to the point where we willingly suspend our disbelief. Because she makes it possible for Liz to see and hear so many things, the final solving of mysteries might seem just too easy. In this one passage, Liz and Colleen move back and forth between the house and two cars and back to the house again. No one can see them. Susan might want to consider setting some limits to what Colleen's powers can do, just to give Liz a few more obstacles to solving the crime.

One thing I like about writing essays is that there is no worry about changing viewpoints. Someone pointed out we are in four people's heads in this passage, and it sounds like that is something Susan will need to keep under control. I am often the easily confused reader, and this business of it being a dream and not really being a dream has me baffled. Maybe I missed the meeting where this was explained.

Regardless, I like Lowcountry Boil and will buy a copy from Susan when it is published. It will be fun to read it completely instead of in little segments.

Newcomer Steve Stewart avoids a lot of newcomer's mistakes with his Prologue to . . . well, there's one -- no title. But Steve's working on that, and in the meantime, he sounds like a veteran, with thorough research, evocative description, and tight prose. Steve takes the reader back to upstate South Carolina in 1832, and starts right in with a duel in a "no-man's jurisdiction on an island in the Tugaloo River." Here, neither Georgia nor South Carolina strictures against dueling are enforceable. Two newspaper editors, Turner Bynum and Benjamin Perry, have pledged their honor, not over a woman, but the "deep festering of state's sovereignty as opposed to Unionism, Jeffersonianism versus Hamilton's Federalism, and ultimately the dark foreshadowing of northern states against southern states." This is no murder mystery, but Steve has a dead body in the first three pages, and he has his readers hooked.

One of the most literary voices in our group, Sarah Cureton showed her flair for high drama with the latest installment of her work-in-progress, Breathe. Sarah's rich prose garnered high marks as always. With images such as, "Even the light spilling in from the hall huddled in the corner, " she made us witnesses to an unspeakable act of violence. Her artist's brush, ever so light, makes us see and feel and smell the obscene without resorting to vulgarity or cliché. Well done, Sarah.

As usual, it was difficult to find fault, but, always striving to help, the court of nits and picks scraped together a few objections. The majority of my honored colleagues felt that the foreshadowing at the top of page two ruined the suspense. I waffled on this point, tended to disagree, then caved. In retrospect, I like it — I'll file the dissenting brief. One point I did agree with the majority opinion on, however, was the transition, later on the same page between Raquel's recollection of receiving her first roses from Mark, and her savoring the appreciative stares her carefully groomed body elicited from other boys along the way to meet Mark. This needs a smoother segue or many readers will have to read it twice.

Another area that snagged a few of us was the portrayal of the college dorm room and the surrounding campus as Raquel regains consciousness and looks out the window as "mottled grays" and black. Most of our memories of campus included brightly lit parking lots and walkways that lent dorm rooms ambient light. Later, during the walk to the health center, Raquel reports, "colors brighter than I remembered, " in spite of the darkness. My colleagues and I concur that the lighting in this scene should be adjusted.

For my dollar, the first-person version of Breathe is more vividly portrayed than its third-person predecessor, and I wish Sarah would hurry up and finish it so I can read it from start to finish — in a signed first-edition, of course.

Pat Stewart's essays are always entertaining and her "Why I Write" is no exception. Pat took us back to her first failed attempts to learn the Palmer Cursive Method at age six — "no printing like the public schools for us Catholics! " Fatz remembers his inability to learn cursive as well, but blames the nun's sharp-edged rulers for that. Fatz can still hear them demanding to know why his penmanship was so poor and his plaintive reply that they've broken both of his hands...

The table found little reason to use their critique ruler on Pat. They like her imagery and style and had only a few suggestions: move a sentence; tie the ending back to the beginning; don't be repetitive.

This nice little essay gave us a brief glimpse into 65 years of Pat's writing and there were smiles all around when she finished. Fatz doesn't care why Pat writes — he's just glad that she does.

Bob Strother resumed the reading of his novel Burning Time. Laurence and See-Boy find Will passed out in an overstuffed chair, still clutching the straight razor with which he had threatened his wife and children (Fannie, Louise, and Henry.) Laurence and See-Boy carry Will into the parlor. Fannie tells Laurence that she called him because she thought Will's father, Mr. William, might have killed Will if she had called him instead. Later, we join Will (from his point of view) at Rosie's Bar where he knows he has friends and can sometimes find female companionship. He asks out the new girl, Stella, and after work Rosie tells Stella that she doesn't care, just "don't upset that applecart. I need his business. "

In Kevin Coyle's novel, The Saga of Snorri the Priest, Snorri's four ships land on the southern end of a tear-shaped island. Upon disembarking, Snorri berates Steinraud the Strong for not removing the dragon's head from the prow of his ship and thereby offending the nature spirits - "An ill omen, that's for sure." Snorri ends up naming the land Steinraudsey, meaning "red stone." Next, we meet Illugi the Black's thingman, Hoskuld, son of a man gifted with second sight. Before he left Iceland, Hoskuld's father told him, "You should follow Illugi as far to the west as he is fated to go. You should never take another eastward step. " His father also told Illugi, "You should bring your entire household with you... You'll be gone longer than you expect." Now, on the island, Illugi chooses Hoskuld Njalsson, Thorodd Thorbandsson, and two of his slaves to join him in a scouting party to explore the heights of the island.

John Migacz returned to his book, A Second Chance, the story of Jon Steele, nicknamed Jolly, who is given a chance to live his life a second time. Jolly has spent the last 16 years in Japan and Europe, and now (at age 26 again) arrives in his prototype convertible BMW sports coupe at Palmer College in Pennsylvania. He meets a pretty blonde coed named Becky Davidson and talks with her as she stands in line for class registration. After a while, the Dean of Admissions comes over to greet Jolly and invites him to his office. Becky wants to know why he was standing in line if he had come to see the Dean. "I wasn't standing in line, " says Jolly. "I was talking to you. " Becky tells him, "You're a dangerous man, Jon Steele. "

Jim McFarlane read more of his novel The Widow Dunn. Laura Ann, Angus, and their family have been away from the farm for about seven months. They are living in a brand-new, rented, five-room house in Meridian, Mississippi. Angus works in a wagon factory and Willie plays baseball a lot because there are so few chores to do in a city house. Three years later, they are still living in the same house, but the family has grown to include Laura Ann and Angus' second son, Duncan. One morning, Angus takes a revolver out and places it in his lunch pail, explaining that there have been rumors that Lura Ann's tormentor, O'Malley, is in town after getting out of prison. Adding this fear to the fact that racial tensions in Meridian are coming to a boil causes Laura Ann to forbid the children to leave the house after Angus goes to work.

In Sarah Cureton's novel, Breathe, Raquel has just checked herself into the campus infirmary. She is feeling the hallucinatory effects of whatever drugs her attacker(s) administered, and she has to endure the unsympathetic treatment of the staff as they examine her and put her to bed. In the morning, the doctor tells her that she should stay away from drugs since she is pregnant (news to her.) She calls her friend Chris to come and pick her up. When Chris asks her, "Where's Mark? " she replies, "Don't know. Don't care, " and dissolves into tears.

Sarah also shared the first draft of her book jacket.

Phil (Of All Things Elvis) Arnold closed the meeting with two blog entries. "The 14^th Most Outrageous Moment in Rock & Roll" discusses VH1's treatment of Elvis in their various lists, especially their most recent list: The Most Outrageous Rock & Roll Moments. Number 14 on the list is "Elvis Presley shakes his hips on national TV (1956.)" Phil is OK with this being lower on the list than the violent deaths that take up five of the first six slots, but thinks it should rank higher than things like Madonna's racy book "Sex" (1992) or Milli Vanilli getting exposed for lip-synching (1990.)

"The Strange Story of Barney and Mabel" is the story of a rare 1909 teddy bear named Mabel that was once owned by Elvis. A rich English aristocrat bought the bear for $75,000, and then loaned it to a rare teddy bear exhibit (containing 900,000 dollars' worth of teddy bears.) The insurance company insisted on 24-hour uniformed security, and so it was that hightly-tranined guard dog Barney first saw Mable laying on a table at the exhibit. When Barney's handler walked by and stroked the bear, Barney freaked out and attacked Mabel, ripping its head off. He then attacked several other bears worth $25,000. Phil says, "The insurance company can't be too happy about paying that claim."

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

• Thursday, September 7 - First Thursday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book
• Tuesday, September 19 - 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

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

Thanks to our contributing writers and news reporters:
Pat Stewart, Jim McFarlane, Leland Beaudrot, Phil Arnold, Steve Heckman, Susan Boyer, and John Migacz

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

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