Catching UP!

I Did IT!

   I have finished, Chapter 2 of Spirit of Rain that I started on St. Patricks Day due to the 10,000 Words Challenge at ChapterBuzz.com  Anyone who wants to read it, can follow this link.

    http://www.chapterbuzz.com/Arline/57/spirit-of-rain-by-arline-chase

10,552

Words

by Actual Count

   So I met the Challenge to start a new book and write 10,000 words within the month of March and I am going to continue and try to write at least one new scene per week.

 BUT

Don't Bother to Read It

This is the Raw First Draft

(the one nobody but a mother 

could love.)

    Hey Authors!

    This might be a good place to offer sample chapters or your own books as a form of promotion. You can link to your Amazon buy page, too and...

It's free!

Catching UP! at WWI...

Work continued on the following books this week:

EASTERN SHORE NOIR, a Collection of Work by Members of the Writers Bloc

   Okay, so here you are, reader, opening the page ... obviously you have discriminating tastes and a longing, nay, a desire, for a cracking good story pulsing with noir elements.

RED YEAR, by Jan Shapin

    Can a red-haired woman from Chicago single-handedly force Joseph Stalin to back down?         China, 1927. 

    Thirty-three year old Rayna Prohme, accompanying her left-wing journalist husband, becomes the political confidant and lover of Mikhail Borodin, the Russian commander sent to prop up a failing Chinese revolution. In a bid to continue their love affair, Rayna hatches a plan to accompany Mme. Sun, the widow of the Chinese revolution’s founder, to Moscow.

Marta's Place by C.M. Albrecht. 

   When Hal Morrison goes to work at Marta's Place he doesn't just have to deal with customers; he has to deal with love, lust, detectives, drugs, murder, mayhem…and Marta!

Chasing Nightmares by James R. Kincaid

             Chasing Nightmares, deliberately embracing terrors, isn’t what you and I are likely to do.  But you and I are not the four central characters in this novel, pretty typical college kids who sense that their lives are so predictable they hardly seem present in them.  They are determined not to succumb to the commonplace scripts set out for them, pathways that are so comfortable they might as well be padded, MUSAK softly playing.

      So, they set out from Los Angeles, trying hard to find the perilous.  They try hard to make themselves unprepared, open, desperate to vivify their minds and senses.  They make it only as far as Lake Tahoe and the nearby Donner Pass, where they do succeed in attracting horrors, certainly not the ones they had, despite themselves, anticipated. 

            But the nightmares they wrap round themselves also contain a good deal more than shivers, and the calls on their resolve demand more than simple courage (or foolhardy consistency).  Without knowing how it happened, they are drawn into a different strangeness, asking for and yet reluctant to receive something very much like love.

Jack's News!

  by your Official Bookstore Cat, 

and Gossip Columnist.

Hi Folks,

Heard from Barbara Garro, who is working on a Collected Jesus Volume. She never forgets to e-mail me, and here's what he said this time:

   I have a set deadline to complete the work on the book by the end of Lent. With my big lifetime honoring of a senior Saratoga poet in a public program on Saturday, April 8th, including a Mayoral Proclamation for her, it will be tight, although I worked on it much of today. Soon as I get the Introduction finished, then all I need to do is go through the 33 parable chapters, much of which is already written in the seven section. I am a deadline gal.

Namaste,

     Ann Foley, sent us the Writers' Bloc minutes and they included included something about one of Arline's pet peeves, what is often called the Oxford Comma.

    Pres. Tom opened the meeting with Shirley G, Rita, Aleta, George, and Ann also attending. Note this sentence used a serial comma (a fourth comma before Ann). In his opening remarks, Tom spoke of a similar comma worth over a million dollars in a lawsuit involving a contract lacking a serial comma. We probably were all taught the comma before "and" is unnecessary, but the Chicago Manual of Style maintains it generally helps more often than hurts.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, with its cover illustration of a gun-toting panda, earned literary editor Lynne Truss a pretty penny a while back by discussing the issue.(Tom once told me to get a life when I said I read ChicagoManualOfStyle.org for fun.)    

Dr. Jeurel Singleton 

A.K.A. Dr. J. Critter. 

Dr. Jeurel Singleton missed the deadline on Eastern Shore Noir, but e-mailed his poem

"Do Let the Bedbugs Bite"

 to Arline (who due to a round with her old pest DD) hadn't gotten around to setting the type yet, so Thanks to Dr. Critter, we can now we can get on with the book!

As for around here, Arline wrote until 3 a.m. one night, but she gave me treats before she started. To hell with any Chapter Buzz challenge--lets concentrated on the important stuff. 

First Things First, I always say

As for the rest of you, PLEASE don't forget to send me news of any personal appearances, signings and so on that you have planned... so I'll have some gossip to pass along next week. 

Just send an e-mail to arline@mail.com with 

 "News for Jack" 

 in the subject line, and

I'll make sure it shows up here for all the world to see!