“Chums” is an old-fashioned word I don’t hear much any more. I’ve heard my mom talk about her school chums. Anyway, it means “friends” and Wednesday at 1:00, six of us chums were sitting around the dining table amid much laughter and talking. This is a neat group, serious about offering helpful suggestions but always ready to see the humor in a situation too.
My contribution was to read “Romantic Interlude”, that is, the first page and a half. That’s all I have written. When I ended it, Julie (protagonist) was sitting on a damp park bench overlooking a Civil War battlefield and cemetery in the valley below her. Julie is trying to come to grips with her husband’s recent death. Fog swirls around the headstones and Julie’s thoughts are gloomy. Someone stops beside her and speaks to her. Julie looks up to see a tall, handsome man wearing the gray uniform a Confederate officer might have worn 160 years ago.
I put down my paper and asked, “OK, where do I go from here?” And I got these excellent suggestions:
“He will ask questions to draw her out and then he will explain situations from his own time about soldiers’ deaths and how the wives dealt with their grief. This gives her the freedom to go on with life.”
“Go back in time to the Civil War era and have a relationship with him there but periodically come back to the present.”
I had written Julie’s husband was killed when a grenade blew up his truck in Iraq. Peg reminded me that would not have been a grenade but an IED.
“He gives her a clue to investigate a grave stone of a family from the Civil War era and his family.”
“Go back to learn about love during the Civil War.”
“He could be a relative of her husband and he shares the power of legacy.”
These chums are a well-read group. Peg is reading a historical mystery that takes place in the 1800s by Ann Purser. Nancy is on the launch team for an upcoming release, The Wall Around Your Heart by Mary DeMuth. Helen shared with us one of the inspirational articles she has written about some of her adventures since her husband’s retirement. Linda is reading about Norwegian settlers in the 1860s in a book centered in North Dakota. Jane is reading, One of the Lucky Ones, a book about World War II by Nicole Holland, a resident of Northwest Arkansas. And I am reading Blood Lessons by M. Louisa Locke.
Nancy also told us of the upcoming “Heart of America Christian Writers’ Conference in Kansas City in November.
And I, along with many other Northwest Arkansas writers, will have a table at the Northwest Arkansas Author Book Fair, Saturday, October 5, from 2 to 4 at the Springdale City Library. It would be really nice to meet a lot of you! I’ll have a table with copies of Grave Shift.
By 3:00, we were all six pretty well wired on coffee. That must have been the explanation for all the hilarity. Anyway, we had a good time discussing, suggesting, sharing, reading, catching up on all things literary. (Well, maybe not all things and perhaps, not everything had to do with literature.) Anyway, we had fun and I am already looking forward to our next Cozy Critique!
I look forward to our meetings too.