The Southern Indiana Writers were out in force at the Arts Council of Southern Indiana‘s The Animals In Us exhibit.

The Usual Suspects

Reading from left to right, we are:

Dirk Griffin, Ardis Moonlight, Ginny Fleming, Joanna Foreman, Samantha Lopez, Joy Kirchgessner, Marian Allen and T. Lee Harris. There are more of us, but these are the only ones they could cuff who were able to attend.

We had BEASTLY TALES on display and for sale. Excerpts were projected onto a screen, and Dirk, a professional actor, read selected stories and poems aloud.

Joy Kirchgessner also had a piece of three-dimensional art on display, a fabulous mask:

We told them all about ourselves, but they still invited us to come back. So we will.

Those are paw prints, not bullet holes.

MA

They’re letting us into an art gallery! Get up off the floor and stop laughing. Our anthology BEASTLY TALES is part of the Arts Council of Southern Indiana‘s current exhibit, The Animals In Us.

Here’s the poster:

We’ll be at the opening reception AND at the invitational. If you’re in the area, pop in and introduce yourself.

SIW

Well… ♥  The weather’s here. Wish you were beautiful.  ♥

Silly me. *YOU’RE* as beautiful as the sun I *know* to be on the other side of the curtains.  But I dilly, dally & digress (a southern law firm). It was laundry-morning, here. The sun must wait a few more minutes until the farmin’-chores’re done with. I’m told after we milk the chickens, and check for eggs under the cows, then we’re gonna see if the Atlantic’s still there where we left it yesterday, then mebby on to the Lighthouse? It’s a plan.

When we “come back cottage way”, MA & T Lee will tie me down and force me to pound this keyboard again. I’m fixin’ to take this Devil’s Plaything surfin’, myself. Keyboard’s VERY twitchy down here. Wicked muscle spasm between the “E” and the “L” keys. Makes me sound simple. You didn’t notice? How very nice of you to say.

Fins Up! —> Ginny Fleming

Well… if you & I are lucky, there will be a purty pitcher in this post:

Here are three of us, hard at work. We’re … doing research. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Seriously, the Southern Indiana Writers were among the writers granted a free week in one of the Mermaid Cottages on Tybee Island, Georgia. In return, we’re each to submit a story featuring the island and, if possible, the cottage where we’re staying.

We’ve been walking on the beach, meeting people, like the lovely lady who made these messages and her friend. She said she comes to the beach just about every day and makes messages in the sand.

That’s all for now. We need to get back to eating drinking socializing working.

SIW

SPEC THE HALLS, an electronic anthology of winter holiday stories, is out for a limited time from Alliteration Ink Publishing. Two of the stories are by members of Southern Indiana Writers: T. Lee Harris and Marian Allen.

All proceeds from the anthology, including authors’ payments, go to Heifer International, which improves people’s lives by providing them with livestock (from water buffalo to bees).

Please support this cause, whether by buying the anthology or by direct donation.

Holiday Inn Express in Muncie, after a rocky start that wasn’t actually their fault, completely made up for it with superior service and a steep discount on the room to make up for the inconvenience and aggravation. When it’s time to reserve rooms for Magna in 2011, Holiday Inn Express will be the first place we call.

Magna was magnificent as always. Looking forward to next year already.

Breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express in Muncie, Indiana was a total win. Eggs, yogurt, Canadian bacon (or similar) made breakfast edible for the gluten-intolerant and an automated pancake machine made breakfast fabulous for the easily amused.

T and Marian had a panel on e-publishing that was fully attended and very well received. Books were sold.

The authors’ roundtable veered from raw meat to electronic rights to firearms to bar jokes.

Dr. Bob Brier (Mr. Mummy) spoke on The Murder of Tutankhamen. Most interesting.

And so back to the hotel to rest up for our final day tomorrow.

We’re staying at the Holiday Inn Express. Yes, names are being named. That’s Holiday Inn Express in Muncie, Indiana, USA, Northern Hemisphere, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe, Multiverse, Whatever.

We’re very happy to be in our room, since we’ve been trying to get into it half the day.

2:30 – Arrived. Walked into the lobby. Desk clerk says, “Please tell me you don’t want to check in.” Me: “Okay. I just stopped in to say hello.” Turns out their server was down. Couldn’t have room because they … didn’t know what rooms were cleaned and empty? They sent one check-in to his room and it was still occupied by people who had booked for two nights?

He was now waiting for the shuttle. Yes, The Shuttle That Would Not Be. We scooped him up and went to the convention center to check into the convention, did a panel, had some coffee.

4:30 – Arrived again. Lobby was packed with teenage track teams. No air conditioning. Couldn’t check in. Servers still down.

Went back to the convention. A fine time was had by all.

8:30 – Arrived again. Checked in. “You’re just staying for the one night, right?” “Two nights.” “–Two nights, yes.” Clerk walked us to our room, knocked, called out, “Hotel services! Anybody there?”, knocked again. “Just to make sure.”

No internet access. Yes internet access. Oh, only internet access for one of us. Two of us? Two out of three, then? Oooookay.

Tomorrow we will see if there is enough on the breakfast bar for the three of us and the Jamaican Bobsled team. I mean the high school cross-country teams. Oh, wait, one of us is gluten-intolerant, and everything on the breakfast bar is made from wheat. That leaves more for the rest of us!

Motel WIN!

Two of our members are heading to Magna–
Magna cum Murder, a mystery con.
You going, too? Look ‘em up and say howdy.
Maybe sit in on some panels they’re on.
Mystery, mayhem, the hard-boiled, the cozy,
All kinds of crime, everywhere that you look!
Murder is fun, if it’s only in fiction,
Focused on bringing the bad guys to book.

To book. Get it? Mystery book? It’s a pun, see? Oh, you do see, you just don’t think it was worth reading bad poetry for. Okay, fair enough.

Well, we’ll see you in Muncie or else we’ll see you here when we get back.

T. Lee Harris
Marian Allen (“poetry” perpetrator)

As one united group of writers, eleven of us celebrated our individual and group success at recent publishing efforts at Habana Blues, a Tapas restaurant in New Albany, Indiana on Thursday evening, October 13, 2011. Cuban tapas are little bites, appetizer-size, and the table was full of all sorts of goodies that night. Tapas are served on salad-sized plates, so most of us ordered two or three, and there were plenty of goodies to go around. I’d never experienced smoked honey, but when the sweet-potato fries came loaded on a plate with the dipping sauce as an accompaniment, we all dug in and ooh’d and ah’d with satisfaction. Our server was probably the most splendid, patient lady we’ve ever seen. If you’ve not tried Habana Blues in New Albany, we’d encourage you to give them a try. The restaurant is located on the southwest corner of Market and Bank Streets and they’re open seven days a week, lunch during weekdays. You won’t be disappointed!

As a group, Southern Indiana Writers have been meeting for nearly twenty years. Our members with recent individual publishing credits are Ginny Fleming, T. Lee Harris, Marian Allen and Joanna Foreman. We posed famously for photographs with our new books, and all of the other members held up for display Southern Indiana Anthologies in which their stories were published.

Besides the four already mentioned, the other writers and members in attendance were Carl Page, Glenda Mills, Samantha Lopez, Jeannine Baumgartle, Dale Yocum, Dirk Griffin and Ardis Moonlight.

As a group we presented T. Lee Harris with A Concise Dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphic Symbols, one of her favorite subjects when it comes to historical fiction writing. T. Lee Harris is the Creative Artistic Director for our group, working long hours compiling our individual submissions into presentable books each year with extraordinary illustrations to match each story, along with attention-grabbing cover designs.

I had been out of town for nearly two months and hadn’t attended our weekly meetings locally. Carl Page asked me if I showed up only at SIW functions where food was involved. I chewed and swallowed a beef empanada, took a nice-sized draw from the straw in my 10-Cane Rum Mojito, and threw him a grin across the table. “I’ll try to do better,” I said in apology. I’m decadently thinking ahead to our Christmas Party!

~ Joanna Foreman