Sunday,
April 23
Book Signing
With
author Harley Mazuk signing
his novel,
White with Fish, Red with
Murder,
at the Mystery Writers of America table, between
noon and 3 p.m.
White with Fish, Red with
Murder will
be for sale at the festival, or bring your
copy for an autograph.
 |
Kensington Day of the
Book Festival
|
Monday, April 17, 2017
Book signing
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
The Boy Who Cried Virginia Woolf
I signed up for a Stanford Continuing Studies online
writing course, “The Gripping Read.” I’m trying to work on a new piece for the
workshop. It flowed along fairly well for a few days, then Saturday, I had a
very difficult time moving through a scene I was trying to write. Frank (the
P.I.), and Vera, ( his ex-and-present lover and assistant), are trying to
question a suspect in St. Francis Wood, a posh area of large homes. They go to
one built against a hillside, a bit of a Spanish style that rises up, and they
walk under a carriage house into a courtyard. There they see the suspect on the
patio, one flight up. After a little banter she agrees to talk to them and
walks across the patio and enters at the French doors. I had inordinate trouble
with this. It must have taken me an hour and a half to put down 150 or so
words. I struggled getting Frank and Vera invited up, and getting my suspect off
her patio, and through the French doors to receive them. Even now, I’m
considering chucking what I’ve written. It just wasn’t flowing.
But I saved that work and turned to the class reading
which was from Frank Conroy’s Writers’
Workshop. I hadn’t seen this before but I very much liked it. Conroy breaks
writing down to its most . . . elemental
. . . elements, and he caught my fancy. Then he told a story of Virginia Woolf,
who I believe played bass guitar for the Bloomsbury Group. Asked how her three
hours of writing had gone one afternoon, she said, “Very well. I got them
through the French doors and out onto the patio.”
My characters were going the other direction, but it
was my Virginia Woolf moment.
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