President’s Page
OUR PREVIOUS/MOST RECENT MEETING
Information about our most recent
meetings is available via a link on the “Welcome” page. (To the left.) It’s usually there sooner that it is in the
newsletter, whether sent via USPS, email, or posted here under “NEWSLETTERS.
Visit the “Programs” page (to the left)
to learn about our next meeting and other writer related events.
FROM THE PREZ
April,
month of pranks, garlic sprouting and mud.
It's also the month to finish Winter projects and prepare for Summer. As the air freshens, hopefully so do ideas. I have lost count of the summer projects I
have in my to-do list.
But I have a plan! I scratched
them all out, except for the first one. When that's done, I'll unscratch
the next one and so on.
April
is also the start of spring craft fairs, thunderstorms, mowing of lawns and the
changing of the studs (tire studs).
All
in all, a boring month. May will be
rosier...and posier...and daffodillier;
Looking
forward to all the spring literary projects that are taking root.
Your Prez.
Carl/Nathaniel
FROM OUR VICE-PRESIDENT
Frank Scalise will join us as our April speaker. He will share
his experience and expertise on audiobooks. Frank is a former police officer
and has written both fiction and
non-fiction books based
on his knowledge
of law enforcement procedures.
He now makes his home in central Oregon but is well known in the Spokane
writing community and a veteran speaker to our group over the years. Frank has
done many things to promote the authors in our area and has made time in his schedule to come and talk to us.
Our April guest speaker
meeting takes place on Friday the 11th at 2:00 p.m. in the clubhouse at Sans Souci
West, located at 3231 West Boone Avenue. Able-bodied and semi-able-bodied
members are encouraged to come early (around 1:30 or so) to help set up tables
and to help tear down after the meeting is over. Last month, we had such good
attendance that we had to set up more tables after the meeting was scheduled to
begin. (Note: it will be easier to put away extra tables after the meeting is
over than to set more up at the beginning. It’s good to see we are drawing in
more interest all the time.
Don’t be April fooled! See you on Friday the 11th or
Saturday the 19th, or both. The Saturday meeting will be held in the basement
of the social hall, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, 1104 W. Heroy Ave.
Enter via the double doors facing Heroy Ave and watch for the signs directing
you to the meeting room. If you have problems or the door is locked, please
call or text our treasurer, Dave
McChesney, and he will make sure you can get in. (Sometimes, the church members don’t know we
are there and lock the door when they leave.) The meeting begins at 2:00 p.m.,
and we must be out of there by 4:00 p.m. Among other things, we will have a
writing prompt
exercise.
Someone at the last meeting asked if we could post a schedule of
speakers for this year. Lining up quality speakers for our Friday meetings takes
a lot of juggling of both our schedule and that of the speaker. However,
I do have speakers lined up for most of the spring and summer.
Next month, Cindy Hval, who writes for the Spokesman-Review and has done many
things to help promote our group and writers in the Spokane area, will talk to
us
about writing memoirs and other non-fiction. In June, Tina
Hammond will talk about editing and how we can prepare our manuscripts for
submission to an editor. At this point, July is still open, but I have been
talking to several
people about sharing their expertise and experience with us. For
August, we will hear from one of the members of the Rotary Club South, who works
with children to encourage them to read. I don’t have anyone lined up beyond
August yet but stay tuned.
Sue
Eller
FROM YOUR EDITOR, WEB-MASTER,
TREASURER
Usually, I don’t write this portion of the
newsletter until it is time to send out.
But early in the publication process I’m already involved in a rewrite. Somethings
have come to mind that I believe should be included here.
You are all aware that our Saturday meeting for
March didn’t go as planned. To remedy
that, those of us who open up for our meetings will
remember to bring signs showing where we meet, along with a phone number to
call if you arrive and discover the door is locked. Aternately, my
number is on the inside front cover of the newsletter and on our roster. The “768” number is my cell phone.
Recently I checked mail at the post office,
enroute to deposit recent dues payments.
I had hoped there would be more that could be added to that day’s
deposit. Alas, the box was empty, so I
was only able to deposit dues paid at our meeting the previous Friday. I try to check mail once a week, so I hope the
next week is better.
We are into a new membership year, so if you
haven’t yet paid for 2025, please do so as soon as possible. We don’t want to decrease and eventually
eliminate member benefits simply because you haven’t paid. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s easier to mark
someone as “Paid” for the year then it is to remove and later add them back in.
I try to list upcoming speakers as far ahead as I
can, depending upon the information I get from our vice-president. Upcoming speakers will be listed here in the
newsletter under “Upcoming Events,” and on the PROGRAMS page on our website.
Near the bottom of the inside front cover of our
newsletter there is a link to our You Tube channel. I figured out why it wasn’t working, made a
couple of small changes, and now it does.
We’ll try to post links to new presentation videos, but all are
available at that link.
As always, you can send dues to:
Spokane Authors
P. O. Box 18573
Spokane, WA 99228-0573
Or bring cash or check to a meeting. (If I remember to bring my “Square,” you can
charge your dues to a card.)
FROM THE PREZ (Previous)
The
year is marching on. Just around the corner we'll
be eating corned beef and cabbage, pinching people that don't wear green,
looking for mythical pots of gold, and getting sick eating lucky charms.
March
is also a month of madness, basketball, amorous hares, melting snow, and
mud. It's also the month planting our
garden starts. (Those marching Hares
need to eat well.) If you have a green
thumb, you're safe from all the pinching.
March
is also a great month to start or finish a book, short story, or downhill ski
lessons. It's time to tune up your
bicycle, motorcycle, go cart, minibike, or boat. It’s also time to buy a new pair of hiking
boots so they are broken in for a summer in the great outdoors.
March
is a great month any way you look at it.
MARCH ON
PEOPLE!
Your Prez.
Carl/Nathan
FROM OUR VICE-PRESIDENT (Previous)
Our March meeting
takes place on Friday the 14th at 2:00 p.m. in the clubhouse at Sans
Souci West, located at 3231 West Boone Avenue.
Our guest speaker this month is Ben Van Voorhis. Ben is a
writer, editor, and musician from Santa Clarita, California, now living in
Spokane. He holds an MFA in fiction from
Eastern Washington University and is the former managing editor of Willow
Springs. A
recipient of the PEN/Dau short story prize, his fiction and
other writing has appeared in Nimrod, Salamander, The Masters
Review, and Best Debut Short Stories 2024. He is the current editor of ArcUser, a
magazine for users of geospatial technology. He also runs community writing
programs for teens and adults at Spark Central and occasionally teaches English
at Gonzaga University.
Next month, Frank Scalise
will join us and share his experience and expertise on audiobooks. Frank is a former police officer and has
written both fiction and non-fiction books based on his knowledge of law
enforcement procedures under more than one author name. Frank will be the speaker at our April 11th meeting.
Last month at our Saturday meeting we did an exercise on
writing a book review. This month, March
15th, I will be at the one-day Central Valley HS Band Boosters
Spring Craft Fair. The Saturday meeting will still be going on at St. Francis
of Assisi Social Hall at 1107 West Heroy Avenue.
The video of Erik Schubach's
presentation at last month’s meeting is now live on our YouTube channel. The
link is:
https://youtu.be/l_5pGx-hW_Q?si=I2BGNlb1G6Tc20Hp
See you on Pie Day!
Sue
Eller
FROM YOUR EDITOR, WEB-MASTER,
TREASURER(Previous)
If you send your dues via USPS and don’t hear from
me in a reasonable amount of time, contact me.
On occasion, things get lost in the mail. Recently we received dues that had been
mailed nearly two months ago. I always
send an email (or mail a receipt) to acknowledge receipt of your dues.
I send the latest roster to current and recent
members with each issue of the newsletter.
Use it to see if you are paid up and if we have your contact information
listed correctly.
As always, you can send dues to:
Spokane Authors
P. O. Box 18573
Spokane, WA 99228-0573
Or bring cash or check to a meeting. (If I remember to bring my “Square,” you can
charge your dues to a card.)
Dave Mc
Page revised 04/05/2025
DAM
©2005 www.spokaneauthors.org