It's a New Year, will prohibition end?

Tomboy McCorkle has just taken over the reins of the McCorkle crime family in Kansas City, Missouri. It's 1928. Prohibition is in full swing, but the Pendergast family has a stronghold on the police, District of Attorney's office, and the entire Justice Department, so the speakeasies are lively and jazz rules. The McCorkles operate out of the back room of The Hottentots Club where white lightning is served alongside home brew. The girls are hot, the jazz is hot, and the booze flows like the Missouri River. Trouble brews between the McCorkles and the di Mayos because older brother Bobby "The Slapper" McCorkle wanted to get into rum-running from Canada (di Mayo's turf), and within the family because Tomboy is female, and a lesbian to boot. She's gonna have to show everybody who's boss. You might as well come and see it for yourself. There will be blood. There will be music too. Come on down to Portland Center Stage and see for yourself. January 23rd, 12:30pm. Lunches can be bought by the box and carried up to the mezzanine and munched while you watch. Tix can be purchased online: https://robot.boxofficetickets.com/800-494-TIXS/WebObjects/BOTx2005.woa/wa/inspectProgram?id=88145&passKey=2b42b57e5f

Godmother anxious about appearing in public

What with her brother being whacked just a short while ago, and things bein' so tense between the McCorkles and the Bolostreres and the di Mayos, Tomboy is naturally a little twitchy about this upcoming public appearance on January 23rd. That's why it's gonna be in a public place in the middle of the day. All out in the open like. Weapons checked at the door, everybody havin' to pay to get in. No riff raff. She'll say what's she got to say in front of everybody and that'll be that. We hope there won't be no one gets hurt, but we ain't makin' no promises. You get me? Bobby got whacked, and Paddy ain't no where to be found. Things could get ugly dependin' on what happens at this here public meetin'. Bring your own drinks and snacks. They'll be sellin' em right downstairs in the lobby. Get in cheaper if you buy one of them Festival buttons for three bucks, or free altogether if you buy a Festival pass that gets you in free to about everything for 10 days -- like a big shot. go to http://www.fertilegroundpdx.org/Passes_%26_Buttons.html and check it out. If you go to the calendar page, you can buy tix for this here event only. That's in case you're a mug who's only interest is the "family" related stuff like this one.

The Godmother is coming to town!

Okay, I've commited to a staged reading of my new play. The Godmother will have appear in public for the first time at Fertile Ground New Works Festival at Portland Center Stage as part of their Down and Dirty lunchtime series. I've snagged the choice spot at 12:30pm on Saturday January 23rd. We'll likely get only 45 minutes, so be prepared to be left wanting more ... that's only about half a play, but it's a good half. This is a play about the Kansas City mob in the 1920's during Prohibition. Tomboy is running the McCorkle family. She's a young butch lesbian in deep conflict inside and outside the family.

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.