Hello Members, Participants and Contributors,

Two of our members have found publishing success. Joyce Melton with creative partner, Daniel,  have a cartoon appearing twice a week, Monday and Thursday at http://quillianonline.com.  Read their story below.

Sandy McPheron has won the Tiny Lights Annual Essay Contest. You can read her story below.

I hope both of these writers inspire you to keep writing and sending your work out into the world.

The May calendar is posted.

Thanks,
Diane

Joyce Melton and Cartooning:

We conceived it in the bookstore; after discussing each of our own creations, we created something new that belonged to both of us.

We talked the story out together, Daniel designed the characters, I wrote a script.

Daniel does the pencils and inks and edits the script, I do the lettering on the computer and take care of the technical webstuff and pay expenses. We are then 50/50 owners of the property, except that Daniel owns his original art and I own the website.

Sandy McPheron and contest success:

I was put onto the Tiny Lightsessay contest by my instructor from my memoir class in Idyllwild last summer. The contest asked for an entry that featured “a distinctive voice, discernible conflict and eventual shift in the narrator’s perspective.” Nice to have a very specific theme to write to. Standard category was no more than 2,000 words, okay, doable I figured.
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> Because the theme fit like a puzzle piece to the subject of my dealing with the struggles of mental illness, I figured what the heck. Also, entering a writing contest just wasn’t as intimidating as putting my memoir work out there into the big bad publishing world. Not winning a contest just didn’t seem as bad as having my larger work rejected by an agent/publisher.
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> Obviously working on a 2000 word piece was not as intense as working on a memoir, but I did polish and re-polish and the Writer’s Gallery critique group helped enormously. I felt proud of the final piece I submitted.
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> On the day the winner was to be announced I have to admit I checked the web site as soon as I woke up, silly I know, but I suddenly realized I was more anxious for the validation then I had realized. I continued to check throughout the day and finally, finally at 4:45 there it was, my name and First Place. What a feeling, it felt so good that my work spoke to someone other then someone emotionally connected to me like family or friends, here were judges reading lots of essays and they had chosen mine.
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> When something like this happens it gives a writer new energy to climb back on the keyboard and keep at it.
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> Keep writing-Sandy