Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Meeting (and Party!) 
Friday, December 18 at 9:00 at the Bay Front Club
Bring a treat to share. We will provide the drinks.

We will be reading our favorite passage from something we have read this year. 

Starter sentence complements of Skip: Today we discovered the secret of that old, black, hooded rain slicker hanging on Granny's back door for the last ten years.


Wednesday, November 4, 2015

November Starter Sentences

Choose at least one:

The alphabet game! Write a story about anything. It must be 26 sentences long. Each sentence starts with the next letter of the alphabet. If your story starts with a B: “Being that he was dead, Dracula didn’t require food.” the next sentence has to start with a C: “Considering that, he passed on the plate of bacon offered.” So on and so on with the last sentence starting with the letter that preceded the first one. In this example, that would be A.  

OR  

You are ten years sober and about to take a drink. What lead you to take the drink?


Thursday, October 22, 2015

October 16, 2015 Meeting Minutes

East Beach Writers’ Guild
October 16, 2015
Meeting Minutes
Submitted by Sally Parrott

In attendance: Michelle Davenport, Karen Harris, Skip McLamb, Sally Parrott
New Business:
·         Anthology
1.      Available for purchase at East Beach Sandwich Company, SandFiddler, Sun Kiss, Creative Wedge, Tidewater Collection  Please encourage people to go to these places to buy a copy.
2.      Appearances:
                                            i. Book launch write-up and pictures published in EBPL magazine
                                  

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Minutes August 2015 Meeting

Welcome Mary Gillespe (a junior in High School and already published) and Skip McLamb, retired school teacher/administrator and OV resident.
Nobody reported any significant writing accomplishments, as all were focused on the BOOK SIGNING and, well, SUMMER. 
Old Business: 
·         Anthology—
ü  What a fabulous book signing event!  Sold 248 copies!  Amazing. Congrats to all!
ü  As of Friday we had sold 29 print copies and 13 ebook copies through Amazon.  Amazon pays 60 days after month end, so we won’t see any of that money until October.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

August Starter Sentence Courtesy of Michelle Davenport

“You don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want to.”

I glanced up from fussing with my dress slightly shocked.  This was not what I expected to hear.  I expected last minute words of wisdom or more likely some sort of joke.

He repeated himself.  “You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to.  We can call it all off.  It’s not too late.  And no one will think any less of you.”

I smiled at him as he tugged at his collar.  The air conditioning would have to go out on the hottest day of the year.  
“Oh but I do Daddy!  I love him!”  I assured him.  I knew what he was thinking.  That I’m only eighteen and I seemed to be rushing into this.  He wanted to be sure I was doing what I wanted and not what was expected.

“All right then.”  He grinned at me as he offered my arm and the music started.  “Let’s get this show on the road.”

I grinned back at him and took his arm.  I could see his smile get even bigger as we walked down the aisle, but I was too busy making sure I didn’t step on the hem of the dress he’d helped me pick out only a month earlier.  The nerves had kicked in and I could feel everyone looking at me. 

“Breathe.  They’re supposed to be looking at you.”

I chuckled.  I knew that, but I wasn’t much for attention. 

“I love you George,” he whispered just before he handed me off to my husband to be.

“I love you to Fred,” I replied with a smile.  I was about to change my last name, but with that simple exchange my dad had reassured me that I’d always be his little girl.


Sunday, July 19, 2015

2015 Hampton Roads Writers Conference

September 17-19

Holiday Inn 
Virginia Beach-Norfolk Conference Center

http://hamptonroadswriters.org/2015conference.php
July Starter Sentence Courtesy of Will Hopkins
This month's sentence was actually a photo of the maiden statue that calls East Beach home.


"Wonder who she is?"
"Huh?"
"You and that damn Jumble puzzle, Vernon."
Vernon Yates looked up from the comics page.  He needed a T it looked like.  "Who?"
Ronnie skittered his lighter down the dash and jabbed with his cigarette.  "That gal over there.  Said I wonder who she is."
Vernon glanced through the open passenger window of the paint company van.  They were on lunch break.  "That cement girl?  She ain't nobody, man.  She's dead."
"Nah, dumbass.  I don't mean the statue there.  I mean who was she in real life?"
"Who cares.?  Hey, what word can you make out of D-T-O-G-H-O so that the T comes third?  I need me a T."
"I bet she was a mermaid."
"You need to run that fan higher, Ronnie Lee.  Them thinner fumes is messing with you."
"Yep.  The mermaid of Ocean View," Ronnie said, looking at the sad eyes.  "Use to meet her fisherman love down by the jetty each summer evening."
"Huh?"
"He'd bring her honeysuckle garlands and she'd sing him sweet songs about the sea all night long.  Then he flat quit coming, on account of all these houses gettin' built in here.  Broke her heart and turned her to stone."
Vernon tossed the paper into the back of the van.  "You're one goofy SOB, Ronnie Lee.  C'mon, let's get on back and finish priming.  Cutty Sark's got two-for-ones starting at four."
"The green Bay's my home, and there I roam, my love's gone, gone away."  Ronnie levered into drive, grinning at Vernon who just shook his head and muttered away.
As got rolling down the street, Ronnie couldn't help but look back in the mirror.


Thursday, May 21, 2015

May Starter Sentence Courtesy of Karen Harris

I hadn't heard that song in years.  Seal's & Crofts' "Summer Breeze," took me back to an autumn nearly thirty years before.  I turned up the volume on the oldies station, letting it float me out of the carpool lane.  Instantly, I was an insecure college freshman, arriving at my Biology professor's home.  All of his students were invited to celebrate the end of our yeast experiment, proffering our mostly horrible, homemade wheat bread loaves. My mother, who preferred fresh sourdough from the bakery to making her own, had,nonetheless, kibitzed from a stool as I carefully bloomed the yeast and created the dough.  Faithfully following the recipe, I kneaded the life out of that yeast, resulting in a dense, inedible brick.
   I pulled up to a sidewalk nearly covered in star jasmine from the professor's garden, as "Summer Breeze" wafted from the VW Rabbit's radio.  The evening was warm, a last gasp of summer in the fall, and the air was heady with the flowers' rich fragrance.   Once inside their home, my hosts graciously accepted my paltry offering and handed me the professor's contribution to the yeast experiment, his home-brewed beer.  My first college party, first time at any teacher's home, other than my parents' friends, and it was a beer fest!  Our state's drinking age was an unequivocal 21.  Everyone turned a blind eye within their own families, so that many of us had experienced our first hangovers and embarrassing stories amid those who loved to tease us most.  Drinking outside of the family was still a risky business though, as parental consequences were even stricter than the penal code.  Yet, here I was, on the cusp of adulthood, beer in hand, no familial faces in sight.  I took a sip of the rich amber ale.  And it was grand.


Monday, March 30, 2015

March Starter Sentence Courtesy of Mike Owens

Go ahead. I double dog dare you.” Willy flashed that confident grin. He knew he had me. The guys gathered around. They knew it too.
Let me explain. You got your regular dare, but that’s nothing to get excited about. A regular dare you can blow off without a problem, so long as you don’t make a habit of it.
Then there’s your double dare. This is a major escalation. You can’t walk away from a double dare, except for something big, a death in the family, something like that.
Then there’s your double dog dare. As dares go, this is the king. This is right below a duel at sunrise with real loaded pistols. If you blow off a double dog dare you’re shunned. Your friends will hang up on you. Your dog won’t come when you call him.
In other words, I had no choice. So I picked up the dead cockroach, bit it in half, chewed and swallowed. Then I ate the other half. I opened my mouth wide so they could all see it was gone.
The guys crowded in, patted me on the back. “Atta boy.”
But Willy, you could see the fear in his eyes. He knew along with everybody else that soon enough he would hear those fateful words himself: “Go ahead. I double dog dare you.”tesy of Mike Owens: "Go ahead I double dog dare you!"

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Don't forget our meeting next week- Friday, March 20 at 9:00.  Out starter sentence is "Go ahead, I double dog dare you."

Friday, February 20, 2015

February Starter Sentence courtesy of Pat Clark

The young couple sat quietly, barely breathing and hidden in the darkness, as the three swimmers emerged from the bay.   The mid-summer moon was obscured by clouds and an evening fog brought a chill in the air as it progressed off of the bay toward the small California town of Sausalito, barely a mile from where Karen Kaplan and her boyfriend, Army Specialist Mike Wolters hid.
               Alarmed, Karen whispered “Mike.  Who are those men?”
               “Sshhh.  I don’t know,” he replied equally alarmed and quietly.
Waves washed over the rocky surface then receded, mingling with the rumbling of an occasional vehicle on the bridge above to create competing rhythms and across the bay, past the well-lit federal penitentiary on Alcatraz, the midnight lights of San Francisco twinkled in the distance.
               The men appeared to be exhausted as they crawled over the rocks at the water’s edge and after the last one made it out of the water, pulled out by the others, he turned, kneeled down and pulled a knife from his pocket and repeatedly stabbed a small brown raft to deflate it then tossed it back in the bay.
               Karen started to crawl out from under the blanket they shared until Mike put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.  “Where are you going?” he quietly asked as he turned toward her.
               “I’m going to get our clothes.  We need to get dressed.”
               “No.  They’ll see you.  We need to stay here under the blanket….quietly.”
               The three men all wore baggy grey slacks and shirts with black shoes and although they were cold and wet, they moved with strength and agility as they hastened over the slippery rocks and into the brush along the hillside.  About thirty yards from where Karen and Mike were hid under their blanket, the men settled behind a large boulder and removed their wet clothes.  Karen and Mike heard the men talking as they beat their wet clothes against the rocks but could not make out all that was said.  While not full sentences, they did manage to overhear a few terms like ‘hold up,’ ‘Need a car,’ and ‘Alaska.’
               “Shit! Karen, those men are convicts.  They must have escaped from Alcatraz,” whispered Mike as he looked over his shoulder, wide eyed at Karen.
               “Oh my god.  That’s impossible,” Karen slipped further under the blanket.
               They remained quietly under the blanket….watching.  Mike felt Karen shiver, whether from the cold of being naked or from fear he didn’t know, but he pulled her closer to him to share the warmth of their body heat.
               “Mike.  I want to get dressed….and I’m scared.”
               “I know.  I’m scared too but we can’t move or they will see us.  If they are convicts, I don’t want to have to face them.”
               The men remained for about thirty minutes.  They tore the identifying marks  off their shirts and trousers before they put their prison uniforms back on and scurried up the hill toward California State Route 1.  When the men were out of sight the couple hustled back to the secluded sandy beach area about twenty yards from where they had hid to where they had carelessly removed and tossed their clothes earlier. 
               As they nervously dressed Mike cautioned Karen, “You can’t tell anybody what we saw tonight.”
               “Huh?  Why?  If they’re escaped convicts we have to tell the police.”
               “Karen.  Think about this.  People will want to know what we were doing here.  You’re only seventeen and I’m nineteen.  I will get in trouble with the Army.  And, I’m supposed to ship out next week.  If we tell anybody that will all get changed.  Our whole plan for when I return in a year will be wrecked.  We need to keep this a secret, at least until you’re old enough.”
               Karen pulled on her blue mod shorts and while standing on one foot, slipped on one loafer then shifted to the other foot and thoughtfully replied, “Yea.  I guess you’re right.  We would both get in trouble wouldn’t we?”
               “Yes…we would,” replied Mike as he pulled on his Bermuda shorts.  “It’s better if we just stay out of it.  Agreed?  They’ll probably be caught in a day or two anyway.”
               Mike watched Karen as her face lit up with a mischievous smile and happy eyes.  He smiled back and asked, “What are you thinking?”
               She rose up on her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips.  “This will be another of our little secrets.”
                Mike took Karen’s hand and helped her up the hill toward his parked Suzuki motorcycle.  Within a few minutes, they were scooting across the Golden Gate Bridge toward the Presidio where Mike was stationed and Karen lived with her Brigadier General father.



Sunday, January 18, 2015

EBWG Continues to Grow

We have a new member!
Welcome Michelle Davenport.
We are excited to have her in our group!

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Main Character Starter Sentence

Mike Owens shared this starter sentence idea from Jane Burroway. It is a great idea to get a feel for your main character.

____is a ___ year old ____ who wants ____ and fears_____.

Oh my, my current main character is a dog.