I'm baaaack

Summer is ending and writing time is picking up. I'm at work on a new full-length play, using the methods described in "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder (he died recently and suddenly from a pulmonary embolism -- the same thing I had in May, but I survived). "Save the Cat" is a book for screenwriters, but I'm convinced one can use those excellent methods for any piece of writing -- stage play, screenplay, memoir, novel or short story. Maybe for poetry although I'm no poet so can't say.
I've rejoined Writer Island, an online group of writers who commit to turning in 15 pages per week or get kicked off the Island (for a week). I stayed with the group for months while I "finished" my memoir. Now that I've spent 18 weeks reading it aloud on the radio, I can see it isn't finished at all, but instead needs tightening, rewriting -- a tune-up! So in addition to working on the new play, I'm also working to ACTUALLY finish the memoir.
What did you do on YOUR summer vacation?

Changing the subject

I had a giant health scare two weeks ago, when I developed a pulmonary embolism after a long plane ride. Am still recovering, so have put the whole radio business on hiatus. Meanwhile, I'm invited for another even longer plane ride, in order to present my play "Copperheads and Common Women" in Mumbai, India at the Women Playwrights International conference in November. Anyone else going?

New Book Reading: The Hounding

Finished off the memoir last Tuesday night. Tomorrow night I will begin reading my mystery novel The Hounding. Please join me at www.PIVTR.com at 7 to 7:30pm Pacific Time every Tuesday, and come back here to give feedback, comment, or just say hi.

Rounding the bend

Dear Peeps, after next week's final episode of Poor Little Thing: A Memoir of Growing Up Too Fast in Rural Missouri, we will begin the adventure of my mystery novel: The Hounding.
As always, I'd love to hear your feedback, comments, criticism on the memoir, and it's not too late. I'm revising as we speak.
Here is a synopsis of the mystery novel The Hounding by Sandra de Helen. (Available in Kindle form at amazon.com)

Tall, thin, androgynous Shirley Combs considers herself the world’s greatest living detective because she uses the methods and casebook of Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes of the gentry of the American city most closely resembling London, England -- in terms of the weather, at least. Sidekick/narrator Dr. Mary Watson both delights in and is frustrated by her partner’s behavioral resemblance to Sherlock. Combs is unemotional, analytical, and given to pacing through the night in the streets of the almost perfectly livable city of Portland, Oregon. Her ability to observe details and understand their relationship to a case is unmatched; her demands on Watson’s time are too.
Shirley Combs bills herself as the world’s greatest living detective, and why not? Taunted and teased as a child because her name sounded so much like Sherlock Holmes's, she developed an early obsession with the adventures and methods of Sherlock himself. She considered her fate sealed when she met up with Dr. Mary Watson. Shirley adds the technology of today to Holmes’s 100-year-old casebook and solves the mysteries of her much-beloved hometown. Mary Watson assists, and - of course - chronicles their exciting exploits. The planned series of novels incorporates and explores current events, types of people, social/economic situations that occur in Portland and the Pacific Northwest.
In their first documented adventure, Shirley is hired by 19-year-old Goldenhawk Vandeleur to investigate her wealthy mother’s untimely death. Timber heiress Priscilla Vandeleur Leoni, direct descendant of Sir Charles Baskerville, decides to spend the family fortune saving the old-growth forests of Oregon. She is a product of the 1960’s ¬¬- former hippie and free-love advocate who gave birth out-of-wedlock, experimented with lesbian separatism, and married late. When faced with midlife, she tries to outrun her fears and give away her huge fortune.

Two more to go!

Well kiddos, we're nearing the end of the book! Two more Tuesday nights and the end of the memoir will be here. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am enjoying reading it to you, and that you'll come back to hear me read my mystery novel, The Hounding.
Also, coming up the first week of June, Lillian and I will be conducting a workshop in writing for radio theatre. I've done some of this myself and will be leading the workshop. The number of participants will be limited to ten however, in order for everyone to receive individual feedback on her or his writing. We'll be doing this over the internet, conference room style, webcam, in 90 minute sessions for 6 weeks. So if this is something you've wanted to try, this is the place to come because you'll be workshopping in an actual (well virtual) radio station.
All best to all of you. Hope to see you on the webcam soon! sdh

A few more weeks ... A new name?

I've now become dead certain that agents and publishers don't like the name "Poor Little Thing", that they hear it and think: victim. Mind you, no one has told me that, I've just imagined it. Still, I also imagine that something sassier, sexier, cuter, hipper would catch everyone's eye better. Catch the imagination. I want to create a visual that makes readers smile, not go "oh, poor dear." Or feel a tinge of guilt the way I did the first time I heard "Bastard out of Carolina." I couldn't wait to ask for it at my bookstore, my library, anywhere I might make people go "what?"
So, come on! What do you think? "Little Bitch, Just Like Your Mother" or "Four's A Whore" or "Barefoot and Pregnant at Fifteen" or "Growing up on the Wrong Side of the Tracks" or "Hillbilly Kids Don't Amount to Nothing" ... No victims there, right? ha. If you're reading this, you are not too close. Just make a comment and tell me what you think.

March 31st, Chapter 10 may end

Spring is here, people. It may be hailing, or raining, or windy, or muddy, or freezing, but the equinox has come and gone. Trees are budding, birds are singing, and things are punching their way up out of the ground. I've given up moping around and I'm writing again. I'm also looking for a new snappy title for this memoir I'm reading to you every Tuesday night, so if you have a great, good, or mediocre idea -- I'm open to it! Something sexy. But not dirty. Remember Tobacco Road? Good, no one remembers that, it was 1,000 years ago. But Erskine Caldwell wrote things that made people pretty sure that some steamy happenings were taking place among the young people populating his backwoods areas. Places like Newburg, Missouri. People that were a lot like the folks back home. Help me think of a title that conjures up young teens drinking orange vodka out of coffee mugs and dancing to rock and roll in a basement. Anything?