The SLO NightWriters’ 500-Word Short Story and Poetry Contests ended with the announcement of finalists and the award of first-place trophies in Poetry and Short Story competition. (N.W. means NightWriter. Four winners were from out-of-state.)

Poetry

First Place: “Bit Chief” Eve Malo, N.W.

Second Place: “Cold Betrayal” Evelyn Cole, N.W.

1st H.M.: “Space Cowboy” Sherry Heber, N.W.

2^nd H.M.: “That Old Black Magic” Marian Shapiro, MA

3^rd H.M.: “Illumination” Joan Andrew, AZ

4^th H.M.: “Dead Love” Evelyn Cole, N.W.

5^th H.M.: “It Came Anyway” Debra Davis Hinkle, N.W.

Short Story

First Place: “Gift from an Aching Heart” Anna Unkovich, N.W.

Second Place: “Best Friends” Willy Bruijns, N.W.

1^st H.M.: “Aimee’s Eyes” Byron Gibbs, AZ

2^nd H.M.: “Four Months” Warren Lewis Allen, TN

3^rd H.M.: “When Eagles Cry” Kathleen Duggan, N.W.

4^th H.M.: “To My Most Constant Friend” John Lamb, N.W.

5^th H.M.: “Bye” Willy Bruijns, N.W.

6^th H.M.: “Figment” Susan Tuttle, N.W.

7^th H.M.: “Carlotta’s Necklace” Paul Fahey N.W.

The 2011 Contest will launch January 1, 2011. Details will be posted on the NightWriter website.

NightWriters own merry maids of masterful wordsmithing, Susan Tuttle and Debra Davis Hinkle conquered new territory on Friday evening, May 14. Hastily invited (at their own expense, mind you) to sprinkle a few lines here and there throughout a night of fun and frolic, they engendered a surprise respect.

The event was the Per Bacco Cellars Fundraiser for Miller’s Equestrian Center and Sanctuary. After purchasing a ticket, Debra had spoken to Michelle Miller about NightWriters. The Board had decided to send Susan to the event in order to scout new territory for NightWriters to expand our influences into and network with the community.

Our lively ladies worked out a pact with Michelle Miller to have a reading between each course of Per Bacco wine and hors d’oeuvres (donated by Big Sky cafe and Mama’s Meatball). They would lace a loquacious litany of seemingly impromptu images with references to each new wine. And then, just for good measure, allusions to horses and foods were casually intertwined to the growing delight of the attendees.

As each new wine and food pairing, explained by Craig Shannon, Per Bacco’s Winemaker, enticed the assembly, so each successive reading would further enrapture them. A poignant play of elements eluding definition drew the participants into a closer tapestry of meaningful conversation throughout.

The evening became a sumptuous sensorial symphony of delights, each part of the equation leading into the synergy of the whole. From the first reading, which needed to compete with the hubbub of ongoing conversation, to the last few, when naught could be heard but the sonorous sound of Susan’s or Debra’s voice, a satisfying evening had been forged by and for all.

The production even had a wonderful soundtrack provided by the exquisite guitar artistry of Jeff Peters.  Film directors would vie for the rustic and cozy ambience of Per Bacco as a unique set for a good play: giant casks filled with wines huddled around the people like mute guardians; the huge barn doors spread open to allow for the backdrop of a warm sunset suffusing the Spring raiment of the trees.

As the last few stragglers disappeared into the star filled, fragrant night, it was wordlessly agreed that a wonderful adventure had been shared by all.

(Editor’s Note: Per Bacco wines can be purchased directly at the Per Bacco Cellars, 1850 Calle Joaquin (its at the end of the road) in SLO. www.perbaccocellars.com) Their wine tasting room is open from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm are also available. For information: 787-0485. Don’t miss the Pinot Grigio, the Pinot Noir or the Zinfandel Passita. They’re a taste sensation you won’t ever forget!) Miller’s Equestrian Center and Sanctuary is a non=profit agency that rescues horses and provides riding lessons for those who can’t afford them. For more information, or to help out with donations, check their website:  www.millersecs.org)

Lisa was the winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press for her first book, Likely, which is available at:

http://www.amazon.com/Likely-Poems-Wick-Poetry-First/dp/0873385543

She gave the NightWriter group one poetry exercise.  She called it “three levels of focus.”  She gave us a group of nouns to choose from (wine, whine, sofa, blood, mountain, dirt or any general noun) and then told us to write a sentence using it.  Then start a second sentence using the first and expounding on it.  Then write a third sentence…and stop there.

Here are some of the results:

From the image of “Wine”

Wine

Wine stains

Wine stains on my favorite grey velvet vest

don’t let anyone tell you that white wine doesn’t stain your clothes

Someone had poured white wine into a Dixie cup and handed it to me at the beginning of the party

We were twenty-something and the future seemed limitless

until I had to explain to my father why I didn’t get home until two in the morning

I don’t remember what excuse I used,

or how the wine was spilled on my vest

By Judith Allen

The wine we drank at Christmas
The blackberry wine we drank at Christmas that loosened our tongues so we could laugh again
The blackberry wine we drank at Christmas that loosened our tongues so we could laugh again after months of silence.

By Betsy Cornelius

The dirt in my mother’s garden
The dirt in my mother’s garden where we planted, weeded and harvested and I grew dizzy in the heat
The dirt in my mother’s garden where we planted and weeded and harvested and I grew dizzy in the heat but relished in the first bit of a warm, red tomato.

By Betsy Cornelius

The blood matted in Corky’s fur
The blood matted in Corky’s fur from the gunshot wound inflicted by my father
The blood matted in Corky’s fur from the gunshot wound inflicted by my father, as tears ran down his face, after a car ran over our family dog of fifteen years.

By Betsy Cornelius

The mountain looked within my reach.
The mountain looked within my reach.  The top of the saddle, fifty feet away at most, seemed attainable even though it was getting late and we needed four hours to hike home.
The mountain looked within my reach.  The boulders thrown across the face of the saddle looked manageable from below but as we climbed closer, Jacob said, “Mom, I don’t think we can do this.”  We were so close to the top that I hated to turn back and goaded him on:  “Come on.  You can do it.  Don’t give up now.”  But Jacob sat down.  “Ok,” I said.  “I’ll go on without you just to see if it’s possible.”
The mountain looked within my reach.  Jacob sat, explaining that the altitude was getting to him, and I pressed upwards.  But this time he was right.  I, the adult, understood that my son was now an adult, too.  And he knew if we tried to climb over those boulders that at least one of us would die.

By Nancy Moore

Mountain

The mountain I saw
The mountain that reminds me of home
The mountain that looks like a giant ice cream cone
I love ice cream
Ice cream is my favorite desert
Ice cream comforts me

By Destry Ramey

Sofa

I’ve had my sofa for 35 years
My sofa held my son when he was small
My son loved my sofa
We would cuddle up on my sofa to talk, read or watch TV
As an adult my son loves to sleep on my sofa
My son will choose my sofa over the bed when he visits

By Destry Ramey

Cat Fantasy

The whine.
The whine that my cat sighed out.
The whine that my cat sighed out when I walked by her.
The whine that my cat sighed out when I walked by her and looked at
the softness of her fur and wanted my fingers buried in it,
wanted her warm vibrating body pressed to mine.
The whine that my cat sighed out when I walked by her and looked it
the softness of her fun and wanted my fingers buried in it,
wanted her warm vibrating body pressed to mine,
and did she whine with desire because she loves me, too,
or because she’s thinking, not again; don’t touch me.

By Susan Tuttle

The River

The river.

The river that ran dry.
The river that ran dry in the summer.
The river that ran dry in the summer after a spring when the rain failed.
The river that ran dry in the summer after a spring when the rain failed,
and he went down on one knee in the dry river bed.
The river that ran dry in the summer after a spring when the rain failed,
and he went down on one knee in the dry river bed
lined with cracked rocks and dead moss and fish bones
and asked me to reach for life. With him.

By Susan Tuttle

Blood

The blood.
The blood I didn’t see.
The blood I didn’t see shone in the darkness.
The blood I didn’t see shone in the darkness on the night we sat in the brilliance
of the waiting room.
The blood I didn’t see shone in the darkness on the night we sat in the brilliance
of the waiting room and the doctor came in, scrubs still pristine blue,
and told us he was dead, and my heart bled.

By Susan Tuttle

There were some “indent” problems with Susan Tuttle’s poems; I hope to fix the problems in the future.

I didn’t include mine, because I turned it into three stanzas and I’m going to submit it to the SLO NightWriters’ contest.

Contributed by:

by Sue McGinty

Terry Sanville breathes new life into the somewhat- dated  (according to Wikipedia) term  “rocks.” In five years he’s placed more than  100 short stories with 110 publishers.  By his estimate, he’s  submitted work, mostly electronically, 2700 times.  Despite putting himself on a self-described “energy budget” after retiring, the former urban planner writes four to six hours a day, and still finds time for music, his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skinny cat (the in-house critic).

Full disclosure: Much of this prose is lifted from Terry’s excellent handout. (Copies available by e-mailing tsanville@sbcglobal.net.)

At the February 2010 meeting of NightWriters, Terry conducted a combination presentation and hands-on workshop where he shared tricks for finding and meeting the needs of both online and traditional  publishers who accept electronic submissions, a growing trend in today’s literary market.

In the first part of the workshop, Terry used the handout to provide guidelines for formatting prose and poetry, whether submitted electronically or via the USPS.  Next came a basic cover letter and clever bio. One publisher rejected his submission, but loved the bio! He also provided a sample Word table for keeping track of submission activity, another very useful tool for busy writers and one this writer intends to copy.

In the second part of the workshop, Terry had attendees log onto www.duotrope.com a free writers’ resource listing over 2800 current Fiction and Poetry publications. The website also tracks submissions for members, and membership is free, but donations are encouraged. He guided us through a lengthy, but pretty intuitive set of parameters, to return a list of publishers seeking short mainstream fiction.  The parameters allow you to choose genre, expected pay, and other options. A word of caution from Terry: Never submit directly from duotrope. Go to the publisher’s website and follow the directions precisely, for example, what to put in the e-mail subject line, whether to attach the document or embed in the e-mail, etc.

Thanks to Terry some of my short fiction now languishing in a drawer will get a new life!

Photo by: Dennis Eamon Young

www.DennisEamonYoungPhoto.com;

I’m going to start it off with my review of Anne Schroeder’s book, Ordinary Aphrodite.  I can’t say enough positive things about this book.  It had me glue to the pages.  I stopped counting how many times I laughed out loud (LOL) and if I had been wearing mascara it would have been running down my face.

The book is a very personal piece.  It touched my heart and soul as a woman.  I felt sad when I finished it–like I was loosing an old friend.  Then I realized she has two other books that I can read and I know her.

My advice is build a fire and curl up with her book!

Ordinary Aphrodite; Branches on the Conejo; and Scent of Cedars are available on Amazon.com and Anne’s website.

Contributed by:

Anne Schroeder is the multi-award winning author of Ordinary Aphrodite and Branches on the Conejo: Leaving the Soil after Five Generations. She also has published many short stories and essays. You can learn more about her at:

http://www.readanneschroeder.com/AUTHOR.html

SLO NightWriters meeting Anne Schoeder spoke on “Point of View.” I was extremely impressed by her presentation and her presentation skills. She was very well prepared and a great speaker. Her thorough understanding of the subject made for a educational delight. Even her title was great:

HELP! I’M A PRISONER OF P.O.V.: Understanding P.O.V.

She included a three-page hand-out with her presentation, which I’m going to put into a computer file along with some notes I took; both will be great for future reference.

As a listener, I feel like Anne was able to plant a small P.O.V. seed. With time, her handout and my notes I think that seed will germinate and my writing will improve as I begin to grasp P.O.V. Who knows maybe that seed will grow and grow and point of view will become a oak tree instead of the seed pod of a dandelion plant.

THANK YOU ANNE!

Contributed by:

Photo by: Dennis Eamon Young

www.DennisEamonYoungPhoto.com;