9/1/14  A ROUND-UP OF OUR FIRST YEAR’S  1ST-OF-THE-MONTH GUEST BLOGGERS

To read their full posts, click on “guest bloggers,” above. A biographical sketch appears at the bottom of each blogger’s full post.

Carolyn Sienkiewicz, October 1, “I have a particular attraction to mysteries translated from another language. When I see an author’s name that is clearly not English in origin, I’m inevitably enticed to pick up the book. The draw for me is that I know that there, between those inviting covers, will be a story that comes from another culture.”

Ron Cooper, November 1, “If you prefer stories about laid-off sheet metal workers driven to sell weed to pay rent on their roach-infested shotgun shacks, bankrupt farmers trying to figure out how to commit suicide yet have their families still collect double indemnity life insurance, and out-of-work grocery store clerks living out of their cars and who convince themselves they’re really not whores as they blow another stranger for the price of a shot of cheap liquor, rather than another NYT best seller about Hartford suburbanites swapping neuroses, you now have choices.”

John Beckman, December 1, “This text reaches out, in this shady knoll, and lays a friendly hand on your leg, several inches above the knee. While this gesture may seem rather too familiar, it is predicated upon a basic kinship, this text itself being an Internet text. What it sees when it admires your parted mouth (moisture forming around your lips) and steals a look in your furtive eyes (quickly turning to look toward the grass) is a promiscuity every bit as liberal as the history of textuality itself.”

Martha Johnson, February 1, “When I open my laptop to write fiction, I have the odd sensation that the screen is something of a mirror — a magical, looking glass through which I step into another world. First, I can see a shadowy version of myself on the screen. A few seconds later a stronger light begins to shine, my shadow disappears, and the magic takes over.”

Barbara Westwood Diehl, March 1, “After a few rounds of fiction, from keggers of long fiction to shots of flash fiction, I start to feel  hammered, sloshed,  wrecked, tipsy, trashed, disorderly, snockered, giddy, and sometimes—if I’m lucky—euphoric.”

Peggy Payne, April 1, “I like novels that are unshrinking about sex, anger, and life’s messy situations, that take place on earth, and that also present a plausible world of spirit…”

Sherry Audette Morrow, May 1 “I find I am more and more often taking issue with the distinctions drawn between character driven vs. plot driven — i.e. “literary” vs. “genre” or “commercial” — fiction. I find that whether plot supports character or character emerges from plot, what is more at stake, what determines whether a story resonates, is whether authors reach for the elements of both character and plot that reveal their unique perspectives, even while drawing on that which is familiar and at least somewhat universal.”

Barb Goffman, June 1, “But teenagers, especially teenage girls, can realistically bring some other wonderful qualities to the table, namely attitude, fearlessness, and insufficient life experience to be able to foresee potential consequences of their actions.”

Garry Craig Powell, July 1, “My writing has been an attempt to explore issues that fascinate me: in the case of Stoning the Devil, why do men so often choose to treat women as inferiors, repressing their freedom and abusing them?”