Karen Holmes new poetry collection by Terrapin Press, No Such Thing as Distance

My good friend, poet Karen Holmes has published a second book, No Such Thing as Distance, and it is another beautiful book with poems that make you cry and others that make you smile. If you liked her first book, Untying the Knot, you will enjoy this one. Karen always impresses me with her poetry that expresses her deepest thoughts and feelings, her honesty about her own life and, in this book, her family. The cover photo is by her sister.

I think this book will be as popular as the first, maybe even more.


https://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2018/02/now-available-second-book-by-karen-paul.html

Karen Paul Holmes

Who will be teaching at Writers Circle this year?

See who is coming to Writers Circle and where I will be teaching this coming year. I hope you can join us.

http://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/p/schedule.html#.WmgZErynHcs

Poet, Mike James

Saturday, April 14, 2018
Poetry workshop - 12:00 noon until 3:00 PM

Writers Circle Studio, Hayesville, NC

Blog Post by Bill Ramsey is good advice for writers

Today I refer you to a blog post by Bill Ramsey, author of several books
http://profilesandpedigrees.blogspot.com/2013/04/bill-ramsey-writes-his-thoughts-on.html


Bill makes some very good comments on the necessity of hiring a good editor before one publishes a book.  If you have published books, either by self-publishing or going through a publisher, what did you learn about the importance of editing?

Leave your comment, please.

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POETRY COMPETITION THROUGH MARCH 15

In an effort to  keep my readers updated on opportunities for writers and poets, I am sharing an email I received today. Check out the website to learn more.

"I found your email on the NC Writer's Network website and in an effort to expand our competition this year, wanted to let all interested groups know about the Lanier Library's 10th Annual Sidney Lanier Poetry Competition.  We are accepting submissions through March 15, 2018 with prizes awarded April 28, 2018 at the library in Tryon, NC.  

Adult and Student categories are available with prizes from $500 (Adult) and $100 (Student).

Please visit our website for more information: www.thelanierlibrary.org"

Thank you,

Amber Keeran, Director

The Lanier Library

72 Chestnut St., Tryon, NC 28782

828-859-9535

www.lanierlib.org

thelanierlibrary@gmail.com

Saying Goodbye to a friend I never met, but who inspired me

I am saddened over the  passing of a dear friend I  never met in person. Joan Cannon and I have been friends since 2007 when I became Program Coordinator for Netwest (NCWN-West) the first time. In the fall of that year, I attended the North Carolina Writers' Network Fall Conference. At that conference, I was fortunate to hear three bloggers tell about how they created free blogs through Blogger.com and how those blog sites changed their writing lives.

I came home and created www.netwestwriters.blogspot.com so that our mountain writers could connect to each other online and to the world beyond the mountains.

Joan  L. Cannon, author who inspired me

Joan Cannon, a writer who lived in Morganton, NC saw that blog and wrote to me. She wanted to  know if  she lived in the region of NCWN-West. I hated to tell her she did not.
She was a member of NCWN, but was looking for writers near her. She had written a book and, being older and living in a retirement area, she had difficulty finding and  meeting other writers. In other words, she was looking for connections.

I put Joan on my email list and she received most of the information I sent to our local members. She subscribed to our blog and read it regularly. She left comments and felt she knew our members from reading about them online.

I bought her novel, Settling, and shared it with my friends. We agreed Joan was a very good writer. I had found a website edited and written by writers of a  certain age. The site is www.SeniorWomen.com The women who founded this site deliberately set it up for older women writers and women readers. They publish thoughtful and insightful articles on many subjects and the writing is top-notch.

I suggested to Joan Cannon that she contact the editors and apply for a  job writing for them. They were delighted to have her intelligent well-written essays. Soon the woman who felt isolated in Morganton, NC was being read around the world. She never stopped thanking me for recommending she contact them.


I wrote to the editors of Senior Women:

Dear Editor,
I really enjoyed Joan Cannon's article, Relativity. I am pleased because I sent the Senior Women site to Joan and now she is here. Great. Your site is just the best and the writing you present is outstanding. The writers and the writing is more relevant to me than anything I read — print or online.

Thank you so much for having this site for older women. Here we are not ever invisible.
Glenda in North Carolina

When my husband, Barry, died in 2009, I resigned my job as PC for NCWN-West, but continued administering the blog. I also continued my friendship with Joan.  We often said we wished we could meet one day, but we never did. Joan lost her husband after a long marriage and she grieved as I did. She wrote a touching and lovely book of poetry, My Mind  is Made of Crumbs, that I treasure.

We both became active on Facebook and instead of emails, we kept up with each other there. On April 10, 2008, Joan began her blog, Hilltop Notes. Overtime, some of  our Netwest writers and others left comments. Nancy Simpson and Shirley Uphouse visited Hilltop Notes. Maureen Ryan Griffin and Tipper Pressley also commented as Joan reached out with questions about publishing as she approached eighty years of age.

I don't think blogging was her favorite thing to do, but I found her posts interesting. She was honest and open and that is important for a blogger. She could not believe that anyone read her posts so she felt it was a futile effort, but I assured her that when she submitted her short stories or manuscripts, editors googled her name and found she had an online presence.

On her author page on Amazon.com we can go to Joan's blog post after five years of absence. She had her problems with technology and gave up blogging for a long time. However, she did not give up writing. We can also see her books on her author page and order them from Amazon. I was inspired by Joan and admired her determination to write and publish her work when most people her age would likely not have the energy to  persevere.

After a few years, Joan let us know that she would be moving away from North Carolina where she had lived for more than a decade. She moved to Connecticut to  be close to  her family. Although we never met person to person, Joan and I were friends who knew each other in ways some friends I see often don't know me.  Her granddaughter Taylor told me that Joan was diagnosed with cancer.

This is what Taylor wrote: My grandmother passed away peacefully on October 11, 2017. As you may already know, she had been suffering from cancer and enduring chemo for about a year, but when the treatments began making her ill and generally miserable, she opted to stop them. She stopped eating and drinking at the beginning of October and was moved into the hospice ward at Noble Horizons in Salisbury, CT. I came home to Connecticut to see her just days before she passed, and she seemed relatively comfortable and quite at peace with her situation. It was such a gift to be able to say goodbye to her.

I am not surprised to learn that Joan decided what she wanted for her end of life. She chose to stop chemo and she chose to die with dignity. Good for her.

The following is from the Senior Women website:

Joan L. Cannon liked to use her middle initial because so few of her maiden namesakes are left anywhere (Huguenot LaPrades). She was retired teacher, retail manager and author of three novels in paperback, Settling and Maiden Run, a collection of short stories called Peripheral Vision and her latest, a collection of poetry, My Mind Is Made of Crumbs, all available from Amazon and on order from independent booksellers.

Joan's most recent novel is Second Growth and can be purchased through Amazon. From childhood, there have been toss-ups for her avocations among reading, riding horses, painting, local flora and fauna and writing.
Editor's note: We were gifted by Joan's vibrant, inspired, writing for the website and plan to revisit her essays often.

Joe says it is easy to write a review. Learn how.

We  often read books  and tell our friends about it. That is great, but it would also be nice to write a review of the book and  let the author know what you liked about his book. We don't want to just be takers - read a free book, download a book for $1.99 and forget about it. The author is giving you something valuable, so please take the time to write a short review.

Maybe you think you don't know how to write a review. Joe Perrone, Jr. gives us tips on how easy  it is. From a professional writer, an author of several books, you can learn how to thank an author, support an author, and learn something new. Be a giver, not always a taker and treat our authors with respect. 

https://joetheauthor.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/writing-a-review-101/

Carol Crawford is teaching this winter at John C. Campbell Folk School.

This will be a great class with my friend, Carol Crawford, who heads up the Blue Ridge Writers' Conference each year in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Carol has always been one of my favorite teachers. She is a poet, an essayist, a fiction writer, and a creative nonfiction writer. Cost for the week is around 400 dollars. But local writers, Clay, Cherokee, Union and Towns counties can get their name on a waiting list for 1/2 price. Don't miss this opportunity. I am going to try to take this class myself. I need some motivation right now and there is nothing like a good writing class to get the old muse moving.

Maybe we can have Carol teach later this year at Writers Circle around the Table. Let me know if you would like me to invite her.

Writers' Retreat  At John C. Campbell Folk School

Make progress on that New Year’s resolution to spend more time writing this year. Focus on your fiction or nonfiction in a creative and supportive atmosphere. Bring a work in progress, or start something new. Encouragement, writing prompts, and individual and group feedback are provided. Return home with new pages and new enthusiasm to finish your project. All levels welcome. 

Date: Wednesday, Jan 3 -Saturday, Jan 6, 2018   (Four days)

Subject: Writing

Instructor: Carol Crawford 

https://classes.folkschool.org/class_details.aspx?pk=20150

Creative Nonfiction

Date: Sunday, Feb 11 - Friday, Feb 16, 2018 Subject: Writing
Instructor: Carol Crawford


Sometimes described as "life without the boring parts," creative nonfiction writers produce true stories told with fictional techniques like dialogue, setting, and pacing. Write a personal essay or start a memoir in this writing-intensive class, and get feedback from the instructor and the group. Self-editing and paths to publication are also discussed. Experienced and newbie writers welcome!

https://classes.folkschool.org/class_details.aspx?pk=20151
Tuition: $564.00 Deposit: A deposit of $150.00 will be due upon checkout to hold your seat in this class.

Happy Birthday to my mother, December 23

As we approach Christmas, this special holiday for most of us in this country, we think of family and friends who are "near to us, dear to us," and especially those who are no longer with us.

Lois Robison as a young girl

Today, December 23, is the birthday of my mother, Lois Robison Council, who was born in 1904 in Decatur County, Georgia. 

My memories of Christmas are filled with thoughts and love for my mother. We always had a Christmas tree although some of them were worse than a Charlie Brown tree, a small long leaf pine cut from the woods on our farm. We had no lights on the first tree I remember because we had no electricity on our farm. In 1947, The Rural Electric Administration brought electricity to homes in rural areas and made a huge difference in our lives.

In some ways it was similar to the Internet today. Many people in our mountains in Appalachia still can't get Internet service. They feel left out of what is happening in the rest of the world, I imagine.

But our Christmas tree with no lights was colorful because my sister and I made colored rings with paper and strung them together on our little tree. On Christmas morning two pretty little baby dolls lay in boxes open under that tree. I still remember that feeling of surprise and wonder.

On the radio we listened to Christmas Carols -- Silent Night, Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem, and we learned the story of Jesus from Mother who had been brought up in the Methodist Church and from our Sunday School teacher, Mary.

Once we had electricity in our home, we had red and green lights on our trees that made those baby dolls shine under the tinsel. 

Christmas was always a time for family to gather and have a big meal at Mother's table. She cooked and cooked and when the nine of us sat down we had a delicious meal, no matter whether we had little money in the early days or were financially stable in later years. Mother created a marvelous meal. 

In the forties when times were hard, she cooked a hen from her flock and made cornbread dressing and gravy. With her superb biscuits and vegetables from the summer garden that she had canned, we had a meal fit for a king.

As time went on, our holiday meals became a bit different except for the cornbread dressing and gravy and biscuits. I don't remember the year that Mother was encouraged to make oyster dressing to go with our large turkey that was big enough to feed the seven of her kids and now their spouses. Around the big table stories were told and laughter filled every corner of that house. The sisters-in-law brought their own dishes to add to the table. The four brothers and my sister, June, now had children and another table was set up for the kids. 

One of the traditions in our family was the celebration of Mother's birthday on the 23rd of December. Her sister, Mildred, two years younger, had the same birth date, so they exchanged gifts at our house. As the years passed the birthday celebration was often held on Christmas Eve and many of Mother's family came to our house. Today a Christmas Party is held in December by members of my family and descendants of Mother's sister and brothers come. I have moved away and seldom attend the party now. But I think of my mother and her sweet sister this time of year and remember how much they loved each other and how much family meant to them.

My mother, Lois, and her sister, Mildred, December birthday girls in late 1970s. Mother passed away in 1980. 

My beautiful mother before she married Coy Lee Council. I often thought how fortunate he was to have her and how fortunate I am to have had them as my parents.


To you, my readers, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and I wish for you a blessed and healthy new year.