DENTON WRITERS LEAGUE
FIRST EDITION
MAY 2003 VOL. 14 NUMBER 5

DWL Home Page: http://byjoni.com/dwl

If you would like a copy of the newsletter e-mailed to you instead of through the US post, please contact George Avera or Joni Latham.

WHERE WE MEET AND WHEN

The second Saturday of every month, at the

Rib Rangers Ranchhouse
2109 W. University Dr
Denton, TX 76201

General Meeting 10:30 a.m.

Lunch at Rib Rangers at Noon.

NEXT MEETING -SATURDAY, May 10

Guest Speakers

May-Rhondi Hillstrom Davis
June-Lila Guzman
July-Patty Pfeiffer
August-Jim Pence
September-Workshop-Jim Pence
October-Diane Fanning
November-Julie Rogers & June Ford
December-Open Meeting

Rondi Hillstrom Davis with a MFA and BFA in theatre design is an independent costume designer renowned for her work in regional theatre and film. Her exceptional creative talents include designs for celebrities Gene Hackman, Robert Mitchum, Jimmy Smitts, Lou Diamond Phillips, Steve Guttenberg, Mary Kay Ash, Patti La Belle, Burgess Meredith, and Troy Aikman among others.

Working freelance allows Rondi to trade time at home with her children in Dallas, Texas while her husband, a consultant geologist, travels out-of-town. Roles are reversed on occasions when assignments demand that Rondi travel on location.

As of the writing of this newsletter, Jeff Crilley will still be attending the meeting and staying afterwards to visit with us at lunch.

APRIL MEETING RECAP

We had a general meeting.  The presenter for our September 13th Workshop was decided.  The majority of the votes at the meeting along with the ones that came in through e-mail were for Jim Pence.  He will conduct a workshop on FINISH THAT NOVEL!, which will take you from the beginning of writing the novel to marketing it once it's on the shelf. 

Finish that Novel! (Novel Writing from Idea to Bookstore)
9:00-10:15 Getting Your Story Off the Ground (Ideas, Outlines, and Story Development)
10:30-11:45 Polishing and Perfecting (Drafts, Revisions, and Rewrites)
11:45- 1:00 Lunch
1:00- 2:15 Marketing Your Novel (Synopses, Publishers, and Agents)
2:30- 3:45 Once It Sells (Editors, Rewrites, and Promotion) Workshop

The price for the workshop will be $25 for DWL members and $35 for non-members and will be held from 9 to 4:30 at Rib Rangers.  I plan on making up flyers and trying to get something in the newspaper a month in advance.  Maybe we can drum up a good crowd for him.  He is also scheduled for the August meeting and would like to still come.  Below are the topics on which he does a 90-minute talk.  Do you see any that interest you?

Sorting Out the Choices: Epublishing, Print-on-Demand,
Conventional Publishing

Agents: Do I Need One? How Do I Find One?

Summarize Your Story or Novel in Two Sentences

How to Write a Novel Synopsis

Keep the Pages Turning: The Art of Creating Suspense

The Essentials of a Good Book Proposal

The Art of the Query Letter

We also had three guests attend the meeting.  One was an ex-member who rejoined the group.  Welcome Back, Hurshel!  The other two, Pat Coate and John Bailey, are working on a book on genealogy and the role of the African Americans in our history.  

North Texas Book Festival

The North Texas Book Festival is Saturday May 17 from 9am to 4pm at the Civic Center in Denton.  The DWL will be hosting a table.  DWL members: Frances Henk, C. J. Molman, and Joyce Prince will be our authors sitting at the table.  Stop by and see them.

Ten Fatalities in Writing the Crime Scene
by
Becci Clayton w/a Becci Davis

The night is empty of a moon.  A shot rings out.  A body falls.  There is a victim, a suspect and a weapon.  CSI arrives, the crime is solved, the bad guy goes to jail and everybody else goes home for a good night's sleep.  Well, not quite.

What's real and what's not when writing the crime scene?  Let's look at a few flaws.

1.    Not all Bad Guys are Dark and Mysterious.
Dark, beady-eyed, dirty hair, messy clothes, we all know the type.  It makes the criminal easy to pick out of a line-up, right?  Wrong.  The reality is bad guys (and gals) come in as many shapes, sizes, characters and profiles as there are human beings.  You can't tell a criminal just by looking at him or her.   

2.  Not all wounds bleed visibly and profusely. 
Just because someone is injured, it doesn't mean they'll bleed over all everything in sight.  It depends so much on the type of wound, the instrument that inflicted the wound, where the wound is located, gravity, temperature, medications,   humidity...it's a long list.  But unlike the movies, just because someone is stabbed, it doesn't mean the victim will develop a huge crimson stain and leave a trail of blood droplets behind them.  Some wounds may be extensive but cause little outward bleeding.  A closed head wound is one example.  What if the victim is in six feet of snow?  He or she may bleed less than someone with the very same wound but spread out on a beach in the middle of summer.   Think about the differences between an ice pick, serrated steak knife and a hollow point bullet.  Each will cause different kinds, sizes and types of wounds and different amounts of blood loss in different people.

3.  Suspects rarely confess at the scene of the crime or when confronted with evidence.
Example: A man shot his lover, several people witnessed the act, and the man fully admitted he shot her but swore all the way to medium security prison after his trial that he didn't kill her.  Both the coroner and the jury seemed to conclude the single gunshot wound to the victim's head was fatal.  The suspect never gave a "confession."

4.  Not all bodies are the victims.
Example: The husband roughs up his wife.  She grabs the first thing she sees, a bowling ball, and strikes at him in self-defense (no pun intended).  He falls, she panics and runs to police to report he is beating her.  She files abuse charges.   It's not until later she discovers she delivered the final strike of his tenth frame. (Okay, pun intended.)  Who's the victim?  Who's the suspect?  You've got the body.  You've got names, you're writing the report but on which report do you list the victim?  The suspect?

5.  Not all stabbing victims die on the spot.
Actually a large number of stabbing victims  stagger backwards in an attempt to escape their assailant.  If the victim is able to move at all, during or after the attack, they will try to escape the assailant and the area where they were injured.   They have usually touched or covered their wound with their hands, then as they stumble away they often leave handprints and smears along their escape route on walls, floors, doorknobs and more.

6.  Not all blood at crime scenes is always human.
What if a victim's family has pets or animals living in the house?  Let's say one day the dog and cat take after each other.  There's likely to be some kind of blood-letting event.  What does a dog do when it sees its master?  Wags it tail-against the wall, the floor, the couch...you name it.  But, there will be traces of blood, even minute, which can be detected.  The beauty of a CSI unit is that they can run a test that is human specific.  The test will only react to human blood, not ape, not dog, not Iguana-only human blood.  Arriving at a crime scene, blood may be present on the walls, floor, etc. but it doesn't always mean it belongs to the victim.

7.  Cause of death is determined by a pathologist or coroner, not CSI.
This is probably one of the most common mistakes I see in writing.  Crime Scene Teams are to collect, preserve and process crime scene evidence.  Even if the wounds are obviously mortal to the body or the body has obviously been deceased for some time, CSI cannot officially pronounce the body "dead."  Only a coroner or pathologist can make that call.  

8.  Gunshot victims rarely catapult backwards when shot.
If a victim is shot in the abdomen, he or she will tend to initially feel like the wind has been knocked out of them, then bend over as the pain signal reaches the brain.   If someone is shot point black in the chest with a shotgun, yes, it's possible they might catapult backwards to some degree.  But, I have yet to read a case where the victim was thrown 30 feet across a room from a gunshot. 

9.  Just because it fluoresces when sprayed with Luminol, it doesn't mean it's blood.
Yes, it looks great when Luminol is sprayed on a stain then exposed to an ALS (alternate light source such as black light) and it glows like Christmas.  Unfortunately, blood isn't the only thing with which Luminol reacts.  Luminol does react with the heme of blood but it can also react with copper salts, potato chips, dog urine and so much more, especially metal based.

10.  CSI doesn't solve the crime.
CSI collects, preserves and processes evidence from the crime scene.  Although crime scene evidence is crucial to building a case, it is usually the detectives, deputies, or criminal investigators who do the actual interviewing of suspects and witnesses.   It's their job to investigate the crime.  Crime scene evidence is only one part of big picture of a crime.   The evidence itself is just one component.

Is it real?  Is it fiction?  The beauty of fiction is that we can write a story with any details we want.  But sometimes it helps to know what's fact and what's just television drama.  I hope explaining the ten fatal flaws listed above help explain the difference.

Becci Clayton (w/a Becci Davis) has ten years experience in law enforcement and is married to a "real" CSI agent.  She is the romance fiction guide at About.com and the new publisher of Bridges Magazine (www.bridgesmag.com),  a print magazine focused on the needs of today's readers and writers of romantic and women's fiction.

Texas Conferences and Events

May 3, Somerville Community Library Book Fair, (Somerville). $25-$40 table fee. Contact: Elizabeth Reid buenobooks@yahoo.com .
May 17, 3rd Annual North Texas Book Festival, (Denton). Denton Civic Center, 9-4. $25/booth plus 10% of proceeds. Benefits literacy programs.
May 28-June 1, 2003 Book Expo, (Los Angeles). http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/
June (Dates TBD), 2003 Amarillo, TX Frontiers in Writing, Panhandle Professional Writers http://users.arn.net/~ppw/
August 2, Salado Book Fair, (Salado). Contact: James V. Lee, saladopress@airmail.net
August 30, Georgetown Blue Grass Festival and Book Fair, (Georgetown). $25/booth. Benefits G'town Public Library's children's programs. Contact: Gerald Carson, jcarson@igg-tx.net .
Sept. 26-27, 3rd Annual West Texas Book & Author Festival (Abilene) Civic Center. Contact: Glenn Dromgoole, glenndromgoole@cox.net
October 4, 2nd Annual Book & Art Festival (Brenham). Contact: Charlene Keller phb@alpha1.net .
October 17-18, The Red Dirt Book Festival, (Shawnee, OK). Contact: Jan Anthony, Tecumseh Library, janthony@pls.lib.ok.us.
October 18, 3rd Annual Texas Writers Roundup (Wimberley). Contact: Linda Bingham Linda@texasauthors.org
October 18 and 19, Second Annual Latino Book and Family Festival (Houston). George R. Brown Convention Center, 10 am - 6 pm. Contact: Tony Diaz AztecMuse@aol.com .
November 8-9, Texas Book Festival (Austin). Watch for updates on website http://www.texasbookfestival.org . TCoA will begin organizing co-op booths in June.

From the Texas Author’s Coalition, Inc website. URL in listing below.

On-Line Writers resources

Author's Network-for writers about writing based in Europe, but interesting-http://www.author-network.com/
Copyright Forms- http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms/
Dallas Sceen Writers- http://www.dallasscreenwriters.com/
New Writer's Market http://hge.members.atlantic.net/
Preditors and Editors-a resources to check out agents and publishers http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/
Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators http://www.scbwi.org/
Texas Coalition of Authors, Inc. http://www.texasauthors.org/
The Novelist's Workshop-essays and advice on how to publish your book-http://www.monash.com/writers.html
Writer's Exchange http://www.writers-exchange.com/epublishing/
Writer's Market http://www.writersmarket.com/index_ns.asp
Writers Net-source for information for writers, editors, agents, and publishers-http://www.writers.net
The Zuzu's Petals Literary Resource Homepage-for both writers and poets-http://www.zuzu.com/

There are multitudes of writing resources available on the Internet. Go to any search engine and ask for writer's resources, writer's markets, writer's contests, writer's conferences, etc

DWL OFFICERS:

President - Joni Latham (joni@verizon.net) - 940/243-5200
VP - June Powell - 940/565-1013
Treasurer – Joseph Marino
Secretary - Rae Nell Causseaux - 940/321-2739
Newsletter - George Avera (gavera@chatter.com) - 940/382-4130