Minutes of Scribblers meeting held on Tuesday 3rd March 2015
Present: Dave, Dick, Beryl, Liliane, Jane, Richard, Suzy, Tom, Cathy
Apologies: Gerry, Les, Carolyn, Mairéad,,Derek Les, Tony and Caz.
Les: he had another fall and has broken his thigh bone. He had a successful operation to pin the bone on Tuesday. Should you wish to send a card or visit him, Les is on Needham Ward at Ipswich Hospital, Heath Road, Ipswich IP4 5PD. Visiting times are between 2pm and 7pm.
Carolyn: she feels it's best to take a little step back for the coming months. She has some intense family travel planned to Australia and U.S. in the next few months, including her son's wedding in the U.S. later this year. Meanwhile she’s plugging away on her Paris memoir, but promises to join whenever she can, and hopes to see us at the forthcoming book festival.
Derek: he was hoping to attend last night’s meeting but unfortunately was unable to make it. He emailed Dave, saying ‘Looking at my diary it will not be until sometime in May that I can next attend, so perhaps with regret I should 'resign' my membership. I very much enjoyed the few meetings I attended and if it was not for the fact of meeting a lady who lives in Yorkshire you would find me boring you with my stories at every meeting. Please give my regards to everybody and thank them for welcoming me to the Group.’
I don’t think any of us were ever bored by his stories – quite the reverse! I know we’d all welcome him back if he ever feels he has opportunity to visit us.
Mairéad: is so sorry she couldn’t attend. Unfortunately she is still having some health problems but hasn’t given up on our group and hopes we won’t give up on her. She really misses us all. She has been writing in preparation for some meetings, but then couldn’t attend on those nights. Her stories are mostly unfinished because of her poor health, but she is hoping to finalise them at some point. She looks forward to the day when she can make it to a meeting again. Mairéad sends her warm regards to Les and all the group and her apologies for non-attendance, saying ‘There is nothing I would love more than to be there.’
I’m sure we all send her our best wishes, and look forward to her joining us again when she is able – we miss her too!
Ruth: she informs us that her publishers have just sent the launch invite out for her new book, ‘Humber Boy B’. She has forwarded it to the Scribblers and is hoping her Scribbler friends will join her at 7pm on April 11th at Felixstowe Library. Plans are afoot to organise a Scribblers evening with Ruth around the Book Festival, ideally on 7th July.
Promotion of Scribblers with a view to gaining new members: Jane has spoken to Ruth, who is happy to promote the group in any of the local press/radio pre-launch publicity that she will be involved in.
Felixstowe Book Festival: we need to know who is prepared to take part in the festival, give readings, chat to public etc. The basic plan is that we have a display area, a presence there on both days, (volunteers required, i.e. ‘you, you and you’ in Dave’s words!!), plus regular hourly readings of our short stories. Dave has a meeting in the next week or so with the organiser of the Flash Fiction element of the festival, and he’ll get back to us with more information on that very soon.
Homework readings:
What an enjoyable meeting! Dave’s choice of homework topic, ‘In the moonlight’ certainly got the creative juices flowing, and we were treated to subjects as diverse as grave robbers, mermaids, werewolves – even a poem about the moon and its power over the universe.
There was time for members to give feedback on everyone’s work too, which was an added bonus, and led to some lively discussion.
Synopses:
Jane: A grave situation – no synopsis available
Dave: In the moonlight
The country farm is about to be raided by the police to catch a drugs gang. PC Johnny Chambers, hiding in the bushes, hears someone dragging a body along the ground. As the farmhouse raid begins Johnny confronts the mystery man who opens fire at him... Does Johnny survive?
Tom: Moonlight behind you
Clyde wakes up with injuries and blood .During the early morning there is an incident outside across the common. A young couple have been brutally murdered. He remembered in Carpathian mountains years ago three kids were brutally murdered by a beast. He discovers that he was bitten and is now the Beast.
Beryl: In the moonlight
One moonlit night Nick sees a mermaid. He joins her on the beach. They dance together, she in the sea, he on the sand. She gives him a conch shell. Next morning Nick thinks it must have been a dream – until he finds the shell under his pillow.
Suzy: Cristo or Dio
A short poem in blank verse admonishing a child not to look at the moon in the night-time, but to look for it in the daytime.
(A moon curved like a C for Cristo is dying, or waning. When the moon is curved like a D it is expanding, or waxing.)
Liliane: Beneath the moon
Gerardo, as she calls him, goes to meet his cousin Aline in a graveyard - her idea. To his dismay she wants them to have sex on a tombstone. He does not really want to go in for this and when he tries to do what she has in mind, he becomes as it were, possessed by the man buried under the stone.
Dick: The moonlight visitor – no synopsis available
Richard: In the moonlight – no synopsis available
Next meeting: Tuesday 17 March, 7.30, Room at the Top, when we’ll be taking part in the four word exercise.
