Professional Writers of Prescott

PWP MEET YOURSELF
Bios are written by the featured PWP members.

November 2008 Featured Writers:
Nancy Owen Nelson & Robert Carlile

Nancy Owen Nelson

Nancy Owen Nelson earned her BA (with honors) in English and French at Birmingham‑Southern College, Birmingham Alabama, her MA in English literature, and her PhD in English literature at Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama. She has pursued the study of Western American literature, with publications on Frederick Manfred and Wallace Stegner. She was co-editor, with Arthur Huseboe, of The Selected Letters of Frederick Manfred: 1932-1954 and editor of Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life (1995, University of North Texas Press) and The Lizard Speaks: Essays on the Writings of Frederick Manfred (Center for Western Studies, 1998).

Nancy's poetry has been published in the South Dakota Review, Graffiti Rag, and What Wildness is This, an anthology of women writing about the Southwest. She is currently seeking publication for her memoir, Divine Aphasia: a Woman’s Search for the Father and writing a novel, Four Women. She has several writings accepted for pending

publication in upcoming anthologies and journals.

In May 2004, Nancy moved to Prescott, Arizona, where she served as Assistant Director of the Hassayampa Institute for Creative Writing (2005-2007) until its cancellation in 2007. She is currently teaching at Prescott College, writing, and helping to produce a local access TV program, “I Believe,” which interviews progressive activists.

Robert Carlile
For 33 years Dr. Robert Carlile was a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Writing and publishing technical articles was a hallmark of a professor’s research productivity, and, during his career, Robert published over 100 technical articles. But these articles were rife with specialized jargon, mathematical equations, and wiggly lined graphs with incomprehensible labels. The audience at which they were aimed and could understand them was equally specialized. His wife, Marybeth, no mathematician, had no idea what they were about. Robert regretted that.

Robert always admired the great novelists that could catch your interest and bring you into their world. He always wanted to try his hand at writing fiction, but with the press of professorial duties, never had the time. In 1996, when he left the UA forever, he got an idea for a kids' story. He warmed up the word processor, and had the whole thing on paper in a couple of days. Now here at last was something Marybeth could understand! She thought it was “pretty good”, and suggested he try it out on their grandkids, 8 -12, who were coming for Christmas. He got through a couple of pages, they got antsy and started throwing pillows at each other. He never finished telling the story.

But a remarkable thing happened—he enjoyed the experience of writing. He liked it so much it was easy to sit down again and continue on—to find new ideas, start a new story, get an idea down on paper, revise. The bug had bitten, and as any writer knows, once it bites, you’re hooked—addicted to pen on paper (or to the word processor). You can’t let it go.

Over the 12 years since he retired, Robert has written 15 short stories, 3 Young Adult novels, and one very adult novel. Publishing success has been erratic—one story published, placed in two contests, several honorable mentions. Money from writing? Forget it. Too little to mention.

There has been community support and helping hands along the way, such as a great course in creative writing at Pima College in Tucson which emphasized the important tenets of good fiction writing. For the last several years, Robert has had his work critiqued in Willma Gore’s workshop, which has been a good developmental experience. “Willma is remarkable for the time she devotes to helping many writers of all stripes and levels of maturation,” Robert says.

Every day Robert arrives at the Desert Flour Bakery in The Village of Oak Creek at the 7:00 a.m. opening (although never on Sunday) and over a cup of coffee, he spends a couple of hours doing that wonderful thing—writing. Yes, there are distractions, and there are regulars there who banter. He doesn’t know why it works to write in the midst of such confusion—but it does. Being with your characters while they tell you their story is a great way to start the day. Sometimes there are two cups of coffee, but never a doughnut.

Julie Woodman

It was back in 19-aught-46 that the professor of English literature told Julie Woodman that she should forget about a career as a writer. Presumably, he meant writer of cap-L Literature, for she enjoyed over 30 years as a weekly newspaper and business magazine editor before moving from Chicago to Prescott. No, she never did produce cap-L Literature, but did win a Jesse Neal Award for her business writing.

Journalism was a natural outlet for a person endowed with a lively and far-reaching curiosity. She was paid editor of the campus newspaper for one year at Antioch College. Graduating into Chicago's tough job market, especially for women in journalism, she finally landed jobs as editor/writer/general factotum on two different neighborhood weeklies.

A short hiatus as a temp office worker resulted in a clerical position at Institutions Magazine, a trade magazine for the restaurant/foodservice industry. Soon thereafter she was hired onto the
permanent editorial staff.

It was Julie's good fortune to arrive only a short time before a new breed of editor-in-chief, who shook up the old-style black-and-white conservatism of the magazine (and its competitors) by introducing lavish use of color photography and stylish layouts. The magazine, incidentally, was almost entirely staff-written, so, though her title was editor of one sort or another, she wrote features and columns on a regular basis.

Five years before relocating to Prescott in 1981, she was named editor-in-chief of a small worldwide magazine for hoteliers, from the same publishing house. This post included among its perks at least two trips abroad each year!

When Julie and her husband moved to Prescott, they continued a small directory publishing venture which paid for a lot of outback adventuring.

Currently, she publishes an on-line blog, Walking Prescott http://walkingprescott.blogspot.com a daily words-and-pictures vignette about our town, her garden, her travels or other small items of interest. And she says, "I love it! This is the first time I've been in a position to write about whatever interests me."

Carol May
Known to clients for 25 years as the Angel Lady, Carol May is an internationally known Personal Growth Counselor, Empath and Reiki Master/Teacher. Quick t

o share her amazing smile, earthy humor and healing voice, Carol has helped people receive guidance from their Soul and meet their Angels to aid in understanding and embracing their Divine Nature and Purpose. She has worked extensively with the Archangels and Metatron, developed a Spiritual School and recorded Angel, Dolphin and Self Esteem Meditation/Affirmation CDs you can order from her website Lotus Grid. The Angels recently dubbed her "Sacred Voice for the Light."

Carol’s gift of talking to Angels and Souls was always present but it became dynamically activated early in her life via a multitude of mystical experiences at home and in Europe. Her gift continues to make a difference in people’s lives through her private Soul Attunement Sessions as well as Angel Readings, business consults and a multitude of classes. She now concentrates on teaching the Nine Initiatory Rites of Munay Ki, Esoteric Reiki and promoting new planetary information from the Angels on Lotus Grid Openings and Advanced Destiny Activation.

Originally armed with degrees in Sociology and Journalism, Carol began her career as a social worker but quickly embarked on her “journey of consciousness.” This led to certifications as Hypnotherapist, Rebirther, NLP practitioner, Touch for Health practitioner, Pranic Healer, Reiki Master, Theta Healer and more.

Over time she developed Soul Attunement sessions, Earth Goddess Retreats, Magical Thinking classes and Resonance Affirmation booklets with Affirmations for Days of the Week. Her first priority was always looking at life from the larger picture, from the Soul or other-dimensional perspective. She taught ‘reframing’ of self-definition and past-life review and introduced expansive new ways of thinking about life.

Holding meditation retreats in power spots around the world such as Delphi, Greece, Cancun, Mexico and Sedona, Arizona became a secondary specialty for Carol, enhancing her relationship with the Angels and all of nature. Her friends all tease that they have been around the world - and through time and space - with Carol many times over.

Carol is excited by the idea of everyone getting to know “her” Angels through her sessions, classes, and now through her book, WORKING WITH ANGELS IN EVERYDAY LIFE.

She is currently working on her next intra-dimensional book IN MY DREAMS and has ten + books planned for the future.

Feel free to learn more on her web site or direct your questions to info@lotusgrid.com. Carol can be reached by phone at 928-227-3416.

Rich with anecdotes, meditations and cutting edge planetary information, WORKING WITH ANGELS IN EVERYDAY LIFE brings a fresh perspective to the Angelic/Human connection. Carol not only introduces the various angels but indicates their ‘jobs’, their appearance and how to attune with them. She takes us between the dimensions to feel the love and purpose.

“Angels and Humans are a team, working together to advance the consciousness of Humanity,” Carol May enthuses. “They make our everyday life smoother, help with choices and offer inspiration, protection, energy, blessings and more.”

Would you like to meet your 4 personal angels and understand how to contact them on an ongoing basis? Are you curious about planetary angels such as The Devas from the Jade Temple or The Blue Ones? Maybe you need the Angel’s help to handle a current crisis or jumpstart a new business project. Whatever you want to know about Angels, this is the book for you!

“This isn’t an Angel book based on liturgical history or any religious belief system. It is based on my energetic experience of universal love , the defining relationship between what we know and what we feel…The magic that exists inside each moment and the healing that happens when Angels and Humans work together consciously.”

So begins Carol May’s revealing book about how Angels and Humans work together in everyday life. Based on her extensive work as an empath with the Angels, Carol deftly introduces us to at least 20 Angels of importance including the Guardian Angels we all have, the many ancient healing Angels , the House deva, even the Project Angels.

WORKING WITH ANGELS IN EVERYDAY LIFE offers suggestions on Attuning to Angels, insight into their ‘Language’, sample meditations used to make contact with them and plenty of encouragement to learn more about enjoying a continuing mutually beneficial relationship with them. An entire chapter is dedicated to Angel affirmations and prayers.

You will learn about the 80-20 rule, how the Angels help in times of tragedy, how to recognize an Angel in human form and how to receive the name of your Body Deva. You’ll meet Metatron, a futuristic Being who hopes ‘destiny designation’ becomes a household word over the next 25 years. Experiencing The Center of Your Being is introduced and so much more.

In Chapter two, Carol assures us “You don’t have to be a preacher or priest or be ‘psychically developed’ to meet Angels or work with them in everyday life. “ This book will show you the ‘everyday way’.

Geri Marr Burdman

Geri Marr Burdman, Ph.D. is an author as well as a health counseling and gerontology specialist and international health consultant. Her fascinating global work and travel experiences span four decades. She is the founder and president of GeroWise International, an organization dedicated to the
promotion of global understanding across the generations.

Dr. Marr Burdman offers a unique interdisciplinary and transcultural perpective on promoting quality of life and dignity across the lifespan. She has presented her work in many parts of the world including Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the Caribbean, Central and South America as well as Canada and the USA.

Geri served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia from 1962-1964 and
following that worked with Peace Corps Training Staff in Puerto Rico. She
has a long-standing commitment to global health service. She has served on the faculties of the University of Oregon, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Washington.

Geri divides her time between Seattle and Prescott where she offers seminars

on Finding Meaning in the Midst of Change. She also presents informative, spirited, interactive workshops and seminars nationally and internationally. The Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy honored her with a lifetime membership "in appreciation of her significant contributions in promoting the work of Viktor Frankl throughout the world."

Her latest book, SEARCH FOR SIGNIFICANCE: Finding Meaning in Times of Change, Challenge, and Chaos (Bellevue Press, 2008), maps a proactive route to discover
meaning while in the midst of the multifaceted challenges of our
times - loss and grief, despair, caregiving, uncertainty about the future, global events and much, much more. It is available through her website www.gerowise.com and local bookstores. Geri can be reached at 928-778-9709 or gerimar@mindspring.com.

Evelyn Seranne

Though mentally challenging and rewarding, Evelyn Seranne's positions as Executive Secretary and Senior MRO Buyer during her years at Allis-Chalmers Corporation's suburban Chicago facilities left her artistic interests unexplored. To fill that void, she turned to writing, an activity she'd pursued since grammar school.

While she particularly enjoys the intellectual demands of mystery and suspense plotting, much of her work has been in nonfiction. In addition to short stories and novellas, her output has included how-to articles for writers, book reviews, author profiles, a newspaper column, travel reminisces, a play and poetry.

Having previously had little contact with other writers, she was delighted to find and join the Professional Writers of Prescott in July, 1987. Attendance at their second meeting was small, fitting around a single table. Since then, PWP membership has grown and the group's writing has flourished. The support and encouragement of the dedicated members of both PWP and its spinoff, Suspicious Characters, has been an important factor in keeping Evelyn at the keyboard.

Evelyn's first "official" published work was a piece written for English class that appeared in the school paper. Her most recent article submission is scheduled for inclusion in a future issue of the trade publication "Maine in Print."

August 2008 Featured Writers:
Geraldine Birch & Herb McCabe

Geraldine Birch
Geraldine Birch

has been writing since the age of ten, pecking away on an old Remington typewriter in the cozy kitchen nook of her grandmother’s house in Los Angeles. A glutton for punishment, she served as the editor-in-chief of her junior high, high school and college newspaper.

After graduation from Los Angeles Pierce College, she worked as a reporter and editor for various newspapers in the Los Angeles area: the Simi Valley Enterprise, The Tolucan, the Moorpark Mirror, and as a freelance writer for the Ventura County Bureau of the Los Angeles Times. All of those entities, including the Ventura County Bureau of the Los Angeles Times, sadly, are no longer in existence.

After receiving her B.A. degree in political science from

California Lutheran University in 1990, she moved to northern Arizona, where she worked as a reporter, editor, and political columnist for the Sedona Red Rock News. Birch’s column, Gerrymandering, was awarded first place nationally by the National Newspaper Association. After a stint as the public information officer for the City of Sedona, she became executive director for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Northern Arizona, retiring recently from that position.

Her first novel, City of Refugees, was self-published in 2001. She is currently working on her second novel, The Swastika Tattoo. Information about it can be accessed at The Swastika Tattoo website and blog.

Herb McCabe
Born in Wendell, Idaho in January 1936 at the then

Catholic hospital, I returned there more than forty years later as a Lutheran clergyman, and on the first Sunday I held a service at the former hospital, now a nursing home, I told the congregation of mostly elderly residents, “I was born here and once they realized the hospital had produced its greatest work it turned into a nursing home and awaited my return.” They laughed exuberantly.

I attended St. Edward Catholic school in Twin Falls, Idaho through the eighth grade. Then I attended Twin Falls Junior High through the ninth grade, taking Latin every day after school from the local parish priests as preparation, demanded by the Bishop, to attend a seminary. Did just that in Oakland, California with the Redemptorist Fathers at Holy Redeemer College for five years. Then I did one year of novitiate in DeSoto, Missouri, followed by six years at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.

After ordination, I did public relations, fund raising and seminarian recruitment for about three years, went back to school as a graduate student in Communication Arts at Loyola (now Loyola Marymount) in Los Angeles and received some writing awards and scholarship help to pay my bills. Worked after that with the Catholic Monitor newspaper in San Francisco for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Then when Pope John XXIII “opened the windows for fresh air” - I applied for and received a two year leave-of-absence to explore my future choices and for two years taught, produced and directed radio, TV, film at the University of Arizona in Tucson. My first Christmas while on a ski trip at Purgatory Ski Area outside of Durango, Colorado, I met Sandy. At the end of my two year leave-of-absence, I applied for and received a dispensation from the priesthood with the right to marry.

Soon thereafter, Sandy and I put together our correspondence, based on what we wrote while she lived in Denver and I lived in Tucson. We called the collection Love Letters of Herb and Sandy McCabe, published by Concordia Publishing in St. Louis, MO and co-published as Love Letters of A Priest with Pyramid Press, New York (both in 1973)

After another year I was ordained in the Lutheran Church after attending Concordia Sem in St. Louis, where Sandy supported us as a Dental Hygienist. We then served in Parishes for ten years. Encouraged to return to communications by church officials, I worked for fifteen years at Bethesda Lutheran Homes and Services in Watertown, Wisconsin in public relations, electronic media including writing publications, producing, directing and performing radio, TV and film, and developing satellite and land-based uses of videoconferencing for training staff who cared for people with mental retardation at more than twenty facilities in ten states. We reached worldwide with our communications systems to help staff members in in many countries.

After raising three sons – a Ph.D. professor in English lit and creative writing, a lawyer, and a professional sports manager and fly fishing guide with many TV credits – Sandy retired from her dental hygiene career and we came to Prescott, where I've been writing stuff I never dared before. YOU AT RISK - Depopulating A Planet is my first publication in this time zone, though I have others finished and ready to strike. I consider Sandy's writing talent superior to mine, though she confines hers to wonderfully prolific correspondence.

Susan McElheran

I didn’t mean to be a poet. That poetry class more than a dozen years ago was intended to help me refine my fiction—and it has, but I found that writing poetry is rewarding too. After I moved to Prescott from Oregon, I became a charter member of The MAD Women Poets, with whom I learned to read aloud to audiences. I also published Spin, a poetry chapbook. When someone tells me that one of my poems touches them, I know I’ve done my job as a writer, since I feel that writing is a means to connect with other people, to open their hearts, and to lead them to discoveries about themselves and the universe.

Speaking of the universe, science fiction is another wonderful venue for exploring the human condition. Last year, one of my short stories was included in a fantasy anthology called Touched by Wonder (I hadn’t realized that my story is fantasy!),

and another story was published in a journal and later chosen for an audio podcast. My first novel, Doubt Not the Stars, is forthcoming in 2009.

As if writing books is not enough, I recently opened The Old Sage Bookshop in downtown Prescott, featuring fascinating used books. You’ll find me there much of the time reading a book or writing my next short story or novel.

Susan's writing has also been published in Snowy Egret, The Pointed Circle, Illumen, and other journals.

Jon Fulghum
After graduating from the University of Tennessee and serving as a Captain in the Air Force, Jon held a number of successful marketing management positions with two of the largest insurance companies in the United States. He also served on the advisory boards of several other insurance organizations.

Jon has been a member of the board of directors of a number of associations and has served in an elected capacity on a governmental land use advisory group.

He is a co-founder and former CEO of Summit Benefits, an employee benefit brokerage and consulting firm, which works with employers to improve benefits and communication links with their employees.

Throughout his career he has maintained a keen interest in exploring the management and personal behavioral changes that people have made in order to achieve success. His observations in these areas have been the foundation for most of the material that he has written.

Jon and his book, Everything You Need to Know about Garage & Yard Sales, were featured in the May 2007 edition of YAVAPAI Magazine. He continues to have many book marketing successes: Home Design News - Design 2 Share, a worldwide internet home and garden magazine will soon publish selected pages from the book on their Web site. An interview with Jon appears in the July 2008 issue of Parents Magazine, and he will be interviewed locally on KPPV radio on July 8th and on Channel 3 on July 14th.

Jon currently lives in Prescott, writing and enjoying the company of his wife and pets.

Carl Hitchens

Carl Hitchens is a rainbow of creative mists, flushed into being in the natal sky of Washington, D.C.; retouched in the high-desert pigments of Albuquerque, NM, and the lands of Prescott, Arizona, where he now resides.

"Hitch" is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist who has read on Lady Mathers' Poets Corner program (Public Access TV, Channel 13), and featured in Lady's Poets Corner column in Prescott's Monsoon Magazine (June 2007 issue) with the poem, The Old Ones Have Told Us.

He won first prize for poetry in the Tenth Annual Whipple Voices Writing Festival for the poem, Thirty-Four Years. Additionally, his poems, Morning Light, Desert Whispers, and Medicine Bird, were included in the anthologies, Eternal Songs, Beneath the Harvest Moon, and Where Dawn Lingers, respectively. His short story, Sign on the River, graced the Arizona Mandala Newspaper Magazine.

Presently, Carl is finishing up a novel manuscript - part history, part memoir, part ancestral channeling. Visit him at his website, Drum Talk.

Author P.K. Parker was born and raised in Germany and came to the USA in 1986 at the age of 19. She started her writing career at the tender age of 12 when she created the characters for her FBI Badge of Honor Series. She didn't publish the first novel, LOOK INTO THE EYES OF EVIL, until 2004, and again in 2006. Because her first experience with a POD publisher wasn't what she considered professional and ethical, she now publishes her own books.

Although a devastating car accident in 1999 left Petra disabled, she went ahead and founded her own company, Author 2 U Books, in 2007, where she features brand new and established authors from around the globe. The site was an instant hit, and has opened the door for the general public to interact with the various featured authors. The authors are able to showcase their work and list their sales information for readers, therefore eliminating the middle man.

Petra moved to Prescott in 2007 and felt at home immediately, thrilled for the opportunity to meet local writers and artists. She is currently working on the second book in her FBI Series, and hopes to publish TOUCHING EVIL by the end of the year. "Mystery is my passion and so I continue to do what I love, full steam ahead," she writes.

Read a review of Look into the Eyes of Evil at Revish.

May 2008 Featured Writers:
Gary Griffith & Phil Ellsworth

Gary Griffith
Gary

Griffith hails from Northern Michigan but has lived the past thirty years in Arizona. He and his wife currently live in Prescott Valley, where Gary chairs the English Department at Bradshaw Mountain High School. He is a graduate of The Bread Loaf School of English, one of 10 summer programs offered by Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, where he was mentored by Vermont novelist David Huddle and prose writing theorist and educator, Ken MaCrorie. He continued his studies at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

Gary has won numerous awards for his writing, including the Wright Morris Scholarship, which allowed him to study with Robert Olen Butler at the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference in 2004. In 2005, his short story Hammer-thing was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His fiction has appeared in Storyglossia and Zinkzine. He recently completed a collection of linked short stories, which he hopes to send out soon. Currently, he is working on a few writing projects, including the resuscitation of a completed novel that nearly hit pay dirt a few years ago. Gary writes for the sheer pleasure of it, but would not be disappointed or disillusioned if success came his way.

Phil Ellsworth
I am 73, married, two children, and six grandchildren. I have owned horses and worked with the cattle industry most of my life. Today I am retired, still own a horse, and trail ride and do day work with cattle for friends in the area.

I grew up in Denver; however, I started riding when I was about seven while vacationing in Northern Colorado. When I was 14, we purchased some property on a ranch in Middle Park, Colorado, and my brother and I got our first horses. Over the next six years, we irrigated, gathered hay bales, worked with the ranch’s cattle herd and guided trail rides. I learned to shoe horses and start colts as well as straighten out some of the “kinks” of horses in the dude string.

In September of 1954, I was accepted by the School of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University (called Colorado A & M at the time). I graduated in 1958 and became a Veterinary Officer for the United States Army. In January of 1959, we were stationed at Dugway, Utah. Besides my Army duties, I had an animal clinic and treated horses in the riding club as needed.

Upon my discharge from the Army, I practiced in Safford, Arizona for the next three and a half years in what was predominately a large animal practice—horses, beef cattle, and some dairy were the mainstays of the practice. In July of 1964, I purchased Mile Hi Animal Hospital in Prescott, AZ and over the next five years added a number of ranch, horse and farm clients to the practice.

I wrote and published a book of “Cowboy/Vetinary” poetry in 2006. It is largely a “politically incorrect” view of cowboy and veterinary life. In February of 2007, I co-authored and published a book titled “A History of Veterinary Medicine in Arizona, 1887-1962.”

I joined Prescott Writers about 2001 after receiving research for a veterinary history book from the widow of a veterinarian friend that had gathered material and interviews for a number of years. What I learned about self-publishing in PWP was invaluable in doing the work on the veterinary history book. PWP member Agnes Franz was a big help.

Dorothy Cora Moore

Author and screenwriter Dorothy Cora Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to Prescott, Arizona in 1995 after spending 20 years in southern California and 5 years in Hot Springs, Arkansas. While working in a California law office, she also attended Screenwriting and Motion Picture Arts and Sciences classes for pleasure at UCLA. Her epic novel, The Atlanteans, began as an original screenplay and together with its sequel, became a novelization. She researched the story background for more than 30 years, starting with the work of Edgar Cayce, and ending with some very abstract metaphysical works on Atlantis.

Dottie's inspiration came early in life. When she was a young child, before even attending grammar school, her older sister, Kathy, told her that she would go on and on about Atlantis, which she mistakenly called "At-tah-lis." She said no one really knew in the beginning what she was talking about.

In the second grade, Dottie read her first Edgar Cayce book and learned that people called the lost continent "Atlantis." Her sister related that Dottie insisted she would write a story about Atlantis one day, which made everyone laugh because she was so little.

Dottie also had some very abstract theories at a very early age that she was finally comforted in finding "in print" in her late 20s: Alice Bailey's Ageless Wisdom Teachings, 18 metaphysical volumes of work that teach through the voice of a Tibetan lama. Dottie remembered having studied this before.

Rather than writing another book about Atlantis, as so many have done before her, she took all of her research and attempted to put it in what she hoped would be an entertaining story -- a story centered around an ancient legend, imparting a well-intended warning, and laced with prophecy. Dottie emphasizes what has been said before . . . that if you want to impart something important "tell a story," and if you want to tell the truth "write fiction."

The Atlanteans is the story of two best friends from

Harvard, a lawyer and a doctor, who go on the adventure of a lifetime. The novel begins when Teddy Townsend and Ryan Stuart enter Teddy's 52-foot racing yacht in the Miami-Nassau Regatta, and then turns into a story of mystery and suspense when a storm overtakes them. Polaris, one of the ancient Atlantean magicians appears, gives them a prophetic warning, and takes Teddy and Ryan back in time to show them who they were and the truth of what happened the last few weeks of Atlantis’ existence. The plot includes a group of international bankers who want to destroy America and bring her to her knees-- for if America becomes weak, it will be that much easier for the cabal to control the rest of the world. Much of the novel is set in Chicago and affluent Lake Forest, Illinois.

The Atlantean flashback illustrates that what happened to the Atlanteans thousands of years ago also relates to what America is experiencing today -- including our planet's recent changes due to two necessary polar corrections erroneously blamed on global warming.

One cannot write a book like this without asking . . . Do you remember advanced Atlantis, an island-continent ruled by magicians and destroyed by nature some 25,000 years ago? Could you be one of the Atlanteans?

Kristen Kauffman
Even as a child, I scribbled away at words that sounded dramatic and I stapled together sheets of lined paper in the hopes that it might somehow resemble bound works of great literature. I think the stick-figure drawings on the front somehow managed to detract from that idea a bit, however.

I didn’t always believe that literature and I were destined for each other. Starting as far back as elementary school, I was in the “slow kids reading class” (because I didn’t test well, not because I didn’t read well) and consequently missed out on reading some great works. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school when I was falsely accused of plagiarism that I thought I really had talent. My teacher’s exact words were, “This is plagiarism. No high school sophomore writes like this.”

In college I dedicated all of my attention to writing. My first Creative Writing teacher at Mesa Community College opened the first day of class with pages of negative advice and statistics about writers who do not succeed. Finally when he discovered that my goal was to be a novelist, he said, “You need to think of what else you’re going to do.”

During the next year I started the first drafts of Just Pretend. Scribbling in

Geology and during my jobs serving tables and as part-time nanny, I composed pieces of the story during the busiest time of my life. True inspiration does not care how busy you are.

In 2006, I graduated with two associates degrees, moved to Prescott, and began working at Barnes & Noble and singing in the choirs at Yavapai Community College. Just before Just Pretend was published (PublishAmerica, February 2008) and my twenty-third birthday in March, I began an adult enrichment course at Yavapai entitled “Unleash the Writer Within”, and now have the encouragement to continue my career. Currently I'm working on three new novels, very happy to live in the town I've dreamed of living in since my childhood, when I first picked up the pen.

Visit Kirsten and read more about Just Pretend at My Space.

Elaine Greensmith Jordan

I grew up at a time when Southern California was beautiful, and I have the stamp of that setting and time—the Fifties—on my soul. I read Nancy Drew, absorbed every movie my parents would allow me to see, and attended school amid the orange trees of San Gabriel, a mission town.

At a small college, Pomona, I earned a B.A. and later a M.A. in literature. I married my college sweetheart and taught English in our high school. I’d planned my life like many in the Fifties: to teach for a few years and then stay at home and have babies and raise them to be exceptional people. Then life intervened. I divorced, got a degree in religion, adopted two children, moved to Prescott, and turned into an essayist.

I've published in journals, magazines, and won some prizes for writing. My

memoir is currently "under survelliance" at TCU Press. One of my recent publishing successes is an essay, Great Art and the Gods, featured in the Spring 2007 UUWorld Magazine for Unitarians. I won Third Place for the 2007 Meyers Memoir Prize from the American PEN Women of San Francisco for Swimming with Joan Baez, a piece about my life as a mommy. I've published a piece in a Cup of Comfort anthology, and have another coming up there next fall, two essays in Georgetown Review and one in the South Loop Review. Most of my published work is about my five years as a Congregational minister in Dewey, or about my life as a frustrated, ignorant, hysterical mom in San Diego. It seems suffering has a readership.

Jay P. Hingst

Born in the early 1940’s in Waukegan Illinois. Raised in the family businesses including a grocery store, hardware store, machine shop and a root beer stand. All of which I worked in starting from when I could walk.

In the 1960’s, the family moved to Florida where I worked with my father and uncle building and maintaining houses and rental properties. At the same time, I attended schools and in 1971 I received a bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of South Florida. I was married after leaving college. While working as a department manager in a manufacturing company in Florida, my brother found me a job in California running a Orange Juice bottling plant at twice my pay.

Over the next several years I changed jobs a couple of times until finding a job in data processing. At this job, my background in Industrial Engineering gave me the ability to develop many programs that the people I worked for either said were impossible or could not be done in the time available. I worked at this job for 25 years. During this time, my wife and I had 3 wonderful children.

After the company decided to downsize my department and move to

a different corporate system, I was given a package to leave. With this package and my retirement funds, I decided to retire and move to Prescott Valley.

While in retirement, several younger people would ask me if I thought things were easier when I was growing up and what I thought made life more complicated today. From these discussions, I decided to start writing down my ideas. As these stories grew, I decided to publish them and try to share them with others. This is where the book “Common Sense or Why, Not to Look at the World though Colored Glasses, Two Toilet Paper Rolls, and Some Scotch Tape” came from.

Arlene Eisenbise
Taking on a new position is not unlike stepping to the edge of a pool, eyeing the depth of the water, and plunging in with the hope that you can dog-paddle long enough to reach a place where your feet touch bottom. Those were Arlene’s thoughts when she volunteered as Vice President (Programs) with PWP. But challenge is not new to her. She dove into several positions with the federal government without the background that would have made the position less difficult. The Social Security Administration moved her about Wisconsin a number of times during her twenty-five-year career. Now she is more than content to stay put in Prescott Valley and pursue a never-too-late career in fiction writing.

At age twenty-eight, Arlene asked for a challenge. She signed up for her first writing class at a Vocational School in northern Wisconsin and has felt challenged since. Her feature articles covering theatre, musicians and travel were published in Wisconsin’s leading newspapers. In 1965 she helped get the Rhinelander School of the Arts off the ground. It is still going strong. As a student at the RSA, Arlene studied with such notables as Teri Rios, author of the book on which the Flying Nun TV series was based, and two of Wisconsin’s most prolific authors, August Derleth and Norbert Blei, among others. While there she was exposed to the stories of Studs Terkel, Chicago’s man-on-the-street, and Marc Connelly, a member of the Dorothy Parker Algonquin Circle. In 1970 she placed first in the Wisconsin Regional Writers Jade Ring Contest. Her poetry appeared in Wisconsin History in Poetry and in several UW-SP literary publications. She quit her federal job for a year and attended the UW, taking all creative writing and literature courses—a gift to herself after raising five children. She participated in script-writing workshops with Linda Seger, Hollywood’s “script doctor.” Arlene wrote and directed children’s drama and has been an active member of Society of Children's Book Writer's and Illustrators (SCBWI) since 1994. She also co-facilitated a workshop in Anaheim, in Minneapolis and in Toronto titled, “Let Your Characters Do the Walking.” But Arlene dreams of seeing her fiction published. Since relocating to Prescott Valley in 1997, she’s completed a series of chapter books for early readers, a young adult historical novel and has nearly completed book two in a trilogy for YA/adults.

Arlene is equally involved with her church—Eckankar, the Religion of the Light and Sound of God—as a cleric, local treasurer and materials coordinator. She trained under Dr. Eric Pearl (Levels 1-3) as a Reconnective Healing practitioner in Arizona and California.

Much can be learned from the experienced speakers presented to PWP members about both writing and marketing. That is what attracted Arlene to the VP position. While envisioning a positive response to one of her queries, she plans to continue writing—and publishing.

Sue Knaup

Sue Knaup is the Executive Director and founder of One Street, an international nonprofit that serves leaders of organizations working to increase bicycling. Sue has led organizations since 1977 in the fields of animal rights, environment, special populations and bicycle advocacy. She served as Executive Director for Prescott Alternative
Transportation (PAT) for five years and currently serves as PAT's President.

She owned and operated Ironclad Bicycles for 13 years, a Prescott bike shop which she gleefully sold to her husband Jim several years ago. In her job at One Street, Sue taps her international experience from extensive world travels and her cherished experiences working with bicycle advocacy leaders
in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia and Europe.

Writing may be Sue's most important tool in her efforts to make positive change. She has co-authored three non-fiction guides for bicycle advocacy organizations. She has also completed a novel about bike messengers in San Francisco in their heyday of the early 1980's before email and fax machines stole their sustenance. Sue joined PWP in December 2007 to learn new writing skills for articles and short stories to offer to leaders around the world.

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January 2008 Featured Writers:
Karen Despain & Donald A. Dahlin

Karen Despain
Karen Despain, an Arizona native and graduate of the University of Arizona (many eons ago), retired in 2005 from a long career in journalism, most recently as managing editor of the Prescott Daily Courier. After her retirement, she wrote many articles for Yavapai Magazine, which ceased publication in September 2007, and she is now fishing for freelancing opportunities as are many PWP members.

As a reporter for the Prescott Daily Courier, Karen covered county government for a number of years, writing about the seeds of the issues that confront Yavapai County today - growth, water, roads and other environmental concerns. Her favorite articles, when writing about Yavapai County were those of the people she encountered on her beat and the stories they had to tell. After retiring from the Courier, Karen wrote for Yavapai Magazine and her favorite kind of writing kept her laptop humming - features about magnificent homes and gardens of county residents and most of all, its colorful history and intriguing people of yesterday and today.

Karen is the PWP Networking Chair for 2008. She's also on the Prescott Area Habitat for Humanity Board of Directors and the Arizona's Children Association regional board. She is editor of PAHH's quarterly newsletter and helps Arizona's Children with publicity to promote its cause for helping children and families. Karen has a daughter and a granddaughter, who is the joy of her life, especially when she drives her mother nuts - a payback she especially enjoys.

Donald A. Dahlin
Don Dahlin retired to Arizona with his wife Patricia in 1995. He was born of a Norwegian mother and a Swedish father into a family of three brothers, raised in the Baptist faith and resided in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the National College of Chiropractic, and practiced in Chicago for 32 years, acquiring unique experience with life energy phenomena while using a new science of examination and treatment. He worked part-time as an orderly in the Chicago Cook County Psychopathic Hospital, augmenting his college course in psychiatry. Dahlin received training and experience with hypnosis, and suffered as a result: introversion, amnesia, inner tension, stress, eyestrain, headaches, backaches and depression. He made a full recovery of these symptoms after being trained and assisted in a new form of psychotherapy. He decided that people may be greatly helped by the knowledge he had acquired of natural healing and the use of life energy; from training and experience in psychotherapy and a system by Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff that helped him resolve past hypnosis, and through insights he had gained from his psychic experiences as well as his challenge of the Christian faith.

Dahlin is the author of two books about his experiences and methods, both published with AuthorHouse: A Practical Handbook For Unlimited Spiritual Ability (Optimum Self-Government), and his 2008 release, The Conspiracy, Fraud, Quackery and Death of Psychiatry.

Photo by Susan Lanning, © 2008

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Published and unpublished writers welcome!