In Search of Writer's Group

I am in the midst of a LOVELY book right now. It's a collection of short stories by three women, called The Curiosities. And it is absolutely delightful. Below I have posted what the cover looks like.

Even more than the lovely vignettes provided by these three authors is their obvious time spent working together on their writing, reading each other's stories, offering advice, giving prompts, mentoring each other, encouraging each other's writing. The stories have little handwritten comments and drawings in the margins, capturing the sense of these works in process.

The book is well worth reading, but it makes me long for the writing groups I once had. The group I started in Independence, Kansas, which is still going strong thanks to the efforts of Cherilyn Fienen and other fantastic people. The playwrights' group north of Seattle, who were such an ideal group of intelligent writers, who were willing to ask hard questions, who managed to weed out the weaknesses in my writing in minutes, when all I could sense was that something was wrong.

Brilliant.

Only I don't have any of that now. The local writer's group is not really a critiquing group. I need some writers on a similar journey to mine. Writers who see the worth in my writing--who can grasp the kernels of truth in it--but who also see what isn't working, who can tell me where I falter, where the prose or dialogue doesn't work, who can help me be better.

Worse still, I need them in person. Online simply won't work for me. I need to see their faces, interact with them in real space, in real time. I haven't met anyone like that here yet. Painters, yes. But not writers.

So I'll keep looking. These people may be here, waiting for the opportunity to find someone just like me… and we will find each other. I know it. And we will help each other create our own collection of "curiosities."

From Book to Video

Wow, did I ever get some fantastic news! My little book has moved into video!

Some resourceful guys (plus a girl and a dog) have made actual videos of a few of the places I wrote about in my book Ghosts of Southeast Kansas. The main producer seems to be Alexm141, and in both of the videos I found, the intrepid investigators risk life and limb to venture into restricted and/or dangerous territory to find signs of what the stories in my book discuss. Here's one of the videos:

My photographer friend Cherilyn, who also took the fantastic photo for the book's front cover, found this video on YouTube and its counterpart. Thanks Cherilyn, and thanks to Alexm141, too, for the publicity. My book is shown at the beginning of each video, and I could not be more pleased! They even rescue a turtle off the highway in the video about Lover's Leap. So brave!

Who knew others besides myself would find the history and hauntings of such a rural area so compelling? I'm kind of sad I don't live in Kansas anymore, after seeing the two videos. I really adored researching that book, meeting all the eyewitnesses, investigating all over the countryside...

I'm so glad I found this! I hope Alexm141 produces some more videos just like it, too.