Next Noble Pen Meeting

Aug 29th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Prolific author Elmore Leonard died recently at age 87 after a long career – his publication dates run from 1951 to 2012.  He started with westerns and became known for crime fiction and suspense thrillers.  About 15 of his nearly 50 novels  and even some short stories were made into movies, some were used for TV series, and he also wrote screenplays.

Victories

Janice is happy that her classes have started.  After being away from school for 15 months, she missed it.  In that time, however, she read 28 books and wrote 180,000 words.

Tyree’s Breathless Stars is out from the printers.  He got a silver English crown coin, which is relevant to his current story, and it comes with a detailed history lesson.

Dylan got a test print of Sand & Blood to check the layout.  He is still waiting for the paid editor to finish so he can put out the real thing.

Jed wrote several pages of a new story.

Education

Should you use split infinitives?  We’ve been taught to avoid doing so, possibly as a hold-over from Latin.  This article and this one say it can sometimes be effective, as in “to boldly go where no man …”, or “The population is expected to more than double.” However, it should only be done when not doing so weakens the sentence, and never in a cover letter or query where it might turn off an editor.

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before–and thus was the Empire forged. ~Douglas Adams.

Upcoming Schedule

August 29th
Janice
Matt & Barbara
Jed

Sept 5th
Nick
Laura
Rachel

Sept 12th
Tyree
Dylan
Jed

Sept 19th
Nick
Tyree?
Janice?

Sept 26th
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill