Fellowship of the Writers

Over the past several years I have made the acquaintance of many talented writers and am blessed and thankful for their guidance and friendship. I’ve written for more than 3 decades, but would never have had the courage to share my thoughts with others and I would never have been able to publish even one of my books. The initial chapter and the introduction of the character at the center of my first novella came about with a challenge at a gathering of writers. The challenge was to write a detective story. I had no plans to try the call for the story, but several times as I attempted to sleep, I kept awakening with plot thoughts. By morning I had the basics of the story written and my character of Tommy Two Shoes; a retired homicide detective for the Pittsburgh Police was conceived. Tommy played key roles in my next four books. I chose to have each chapter an actual mystery, solved at the end of each chapter.

I had a falling out with my editor for my first three books when she overrode my choice for the title and placed a gaudy front cover on it, disregarding the mismatched pair of oxfords that was the trademark for Tommy. I have one dear friend who helped me enormously by designing a cover for my fourth book and helping me to self-publish it. She’s also been a godsend designing the covers for and helping to edit the remaining three. There are several mistakes, because she wasn’t the taskmaster that my first editor was, but the books are mine; including each mistake. The plots are great if you overlook some punctuation errors. Lately I’ve been lax in writing any new books. I have several plots swimming in my head, but each involves several simultaneous interweaving plots that I’m having difficulty sorting into a semblance of a complete story. Right now, my time is consumed with canning harvested garden foodstuffs with some friends, spending time writing the newsletter for the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society, and writing my blog that I share every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thinking of memories or new ideas to share is becoming more and more difficult. I started writing a blog every day, but that became burdensome. My first blogs appeared in 2013 and have shared more than 1500 tales. I would like to thank every writer that has guided me along the way and for each person who reads what I write.