These days women who don’t go to a quilting circle, plastic party, jewelry, make-up or lingerie sales in somebody’s living room, they take their pages, ideas and first drafts to a writers’ workshop.
It seems everybody who can fire up a computer is writing, but the question is, “Are they writing well?”
The answer, from my reading, is a loud affirmative. As somebody who has been in the reading, writing, and teaching game, longer than it seems possible, it’s both a blessing and a curse.
If everybody who is writing reads, then it’s a blessing. If everybody who is writing only reads their own work and that of their writing group, then we’re in trouble.
Who’s going to publish what we write? And if we decide to publish as a group, and wave our work in the face of New York Know-it-Alls, then let’s buy, read and applaud local and home grown. More power to the printed word. More for those of us who love a good story and good writing wherever we can find them.
So when six women who are members of the mystery workshop in Greensboro get together and serve us some great mystery stories, we can only ask for more.
When can we look for “Deadly Plots II?” You only whetted our appetite, ladies.
And what ladies these are. They can wield a wicked pen while keeping those saintly smiles intact. They know a lot of secrets with fresh plots readers can only read and guess from clues dropped as carefully as lace handkerchiefs.
From Helen Goodman whose first novel, “Murder at the Blue Goose,” was a finalist in Malice Domestic, we meet a philandering wife who knows a way to double her dead husband’s insurance money. A perfect plot until the weeping widow returns home from the funeral. Terrific writing. Not a wasted word.
Nancy Cotter Gates, who has published 26 short stories and won numerous awards while doing so, combines a Florida circus background with a lost dog and a twist of a plot that keeps you hanging on every word.
Who in their right mind would try to steal a sailboat? And why? Ask Wendy Greene who makes it all seem plausible and possible. Until the culprits find the purloined boat comes complete with a dead body.
And I’ll bet anything Dorothy P. O’Neill has been to Lake Lure, stayed at the inn. Her story, “The Rock and the Rhododendrons” is a spine chilling murder set in a lush mountain resort. Marvelous descriptions that build and build into a short story that could have easily been a novel.
In fact, O’Neill as the senior member of the group at 87, didn’t publish her first novel until she was 86. Now there’s a second one due out later this year.
If you love a good short story, like the spice and tingle of a good mystery, throw in some North Carolina places and faces, “Deadly Plots” was written for you.
Profits from the sale of “Deadly Plots” goes to the Triad Writers Group.
The book may be purchased by mail. Contact the group at P.O. Box 9731, Greensboro, NC 27429
Ruth Moose teaches creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill and is a longtime reviewer.
