Meeting Minutes June 27, 2010

We had a big crowd for this meeting, 17 including Ashley, our newest member. Ron brought her to check the group out and we hope she felt right at home. She's apparently seen most of us at the Tim Horton's where she works. She is the co-editor of the latest Westside Secondary School anthology due for release in Sept 2010 and is working on novels of her own. She will keep us informed of the book launch for Westside.

REMINDER...At the July 11th meeting, Richard will be taking headshots of all the authors submitting stories and poetry for the group's anthology. He took several at this meeting since some people will not be at the next meeting. Make sure you all look pretty!

Richard gave us a brief update on his meeting with Alan from the Orangeville Citizen. Alan is meeting with possible investors and Richard will look around for more. He will tell prospective sponsors that it will be an advertising expense and their logo will appear in the book. He asked Gloria to calculate how many copies we can get if we get a $1500.00 sponsorship. We need to arrange for a book launch at BookLore in October or November.

Authors can get copies of the anthology to sell and submit the money to Clare to set aside in our bank account so we can make our donation to the Headwaters Health Care Centre's Children's Library. Clare will keep a separate deposit book to keep track of the anthology sales.

Richard had a brainstorm while driving the other day. He proposed that we do a photo shoot in a canola field near Orangeville of the contributing authors walking in a canola field. He suggested the book's title be A Walk in Fields of Gold. It was decided the shoot would take place on Wednesday June 30 at 5pm in a field just north of Sideroad 10 and County Road 11. Author's will be sent directions.
After the shoot, Richard will photo shop cover ideas with a couple of different titles. If he can't figure out how to email them to the whole group, he will email them to me and I will try to get them out to everyone asap.

Gloria showed us samples of the bios she would like to use in our book. Rather than put them in order at the end of the book, she proposed to put them at the start of each author's section in the book. She plans to put everyone in alphabetical order. Richard will take black and white headshots and make them into squares that will go above the bios. Jayne laughed and said she expected glossy colour photos, not black and white.

So far we have 13 authors who have submitted items. The deadline for submissions was June 19, but there is still time. FINAL REVISIONS are due at the end of July.

Richard also told us that he has a new agent. He sent a simple query with a tag line that caught the attention of Joyce Holland at 4DEO Literary Agency. She asked him to update The Camera Guy. We wish him all the best. It is a great book and we look forward to seeing it on bookshelves everywhere.

That got us into a discussion about taglines and how simple they really are. Richard's tagline, for example: "This story was a result of my chief of police coming into my office and finding me in conversation with a skeleton . . . I am now a retired police officer."
We also talked about Jayne's tagline: "Sometimes congregational life can be murder."
Gloria and Ruth both came up with taglines for their own books.

In other news, I announced that I have finished a rough draft for my YA novel The Mural. Yeah, me.

Clare read his story about Billy Wilson that he read at the retreat at Eramosa Eden. He got the story from Billy's son-in-law, but his daughter has reservations about whether or not it should be published. Either way, Clare has a great character to fictionalize and use in other stories.

Caitlin read part of her novel and Jayne commented on her active and passive verb usage. She reminded us that we need to make them appropriate to the text they appear in. For a calm, quiet scene, the verbs should be passive. For action and more passionate scenes, use more active verbs.

The prompts for this week were:
1) The shoe lay in the mud beside the road.
2) Water rippled away from the rock.
3) Black clouds rolled toward the house.
4) The smell of wet earth heralded the rain.
5) Light poured through the window as the sun climbed over the mountains.
6) He wondered why a lime green brassiere lay in the busiest intersection in town.

Richard struggled to read Laura's prompt. It's always interesting trying to read someone else's handwriting. She talked about ideas creeping up when you stop paying attention. Richard told her she is a good editor, but her penmanship sucks. Laura replied that she felt like she was reading with her five-year-old. We all had a good laugh.

I apologize if I missed anything. It is difficult to both lead the meeting and take all the minutes! I kind of got lost in the Vortex of Voices. (Yes, I capitalized that for effect.) Nancy has kindly volunteered to take notes the next time I have to lead in September.

Our next meeting is July 11th. Judy will be leading.
Richard will be doing headshots of the anthology authors so come looking your best - at least from the neck up!
Keep your eyes peeled for emails from Pat regarding the photo shoot on Wednesday and keep writing.