Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Harry, Ian, Jenny, Michele, Pip.
Apologies: Adele, Gill, Jan, Jill, John, Jonathan, Laura, Magda, Suzanne.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
NB: Names and phrases formatted like this stand-in for web-links. See the section: Links at bottom of this page for the actual links. If you are cautious about following inline web-links (and perhaps we should all be…!) then you can either accept this site’s assurance that the link is exactly as shown – and click it; or else type the text of the link yourself into the address bar of a fresh page in the good-old-fashioned way.
Matters Arising
Ian reported the death of Alasdair Lawrence, proprietor of the new music shop in John Street, as announced in the latest Whitby Advertiser.
Members’ Readings
Michele — continued reading from her faction novel in-progress: Beneath The Surgeon’s Coat, concerning the career of a military surgeon in 19-cent Cape Town who was actually a woman in disguise. Dr Fryer has joined a government trek into the Cape Town hinterland to visit/pacify the local tribes. The exigencies of driving ox-carts over a mountain pass is graphically described.
Harry — distributed copies of a chapter of his seagoing memoir in-progress: A Last Swing of the Lamp, which he read aloud.
The SS Marwarri has reached Aden, the Arabia Felix of the Romans. He describes some of the history and geography of the port and the countryside, and his shipmates fall to reminiscing about Willie Wadell and the Rangers v Celtic football matches of Liverpool.
Pip — has finished writing her memoir: Caicos Moon, about coming-of-age on a Caribbean island. She has now begun a sequel, The Golden Sunrise, concerning her career as a seafarer on board British ocean liners. After leaving South Caicos, she boards the SS Canberra at Southampton, and revisits to her old haunts by sea and air while visiting her boyfriend Gus. There is a problem landing at the Bahamas.
Jenny — wanted to discuss how to proceed with her period novel based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields.
She wondered if some of the antics of Mary’s demon lover – and now husband – Capt Andrew Stoney, were too lurid to write down. Ian urged her to write it anyway. There was simply nothing Stoney would not do: he was an elder-day Jeffrey Epstein. There was so much to write about, and it would all be new and horridly fascinating to most people. As with any good movie, a lot of footage would end up on the cutting room floor. It was more work, but the potential for the finished book was huge.
Ian — read from his recently completed novel: Anitra’s Petition. Anitra has arrived on Mars, and is now sequestered in Fort Rainbow, pending the hearing of her petition for human rights in the Court of the Goubernator of Olympia. We now turn to the love of her life, Hermes Krov’ – the Goubernator’s son – who sounds out his father on how the hearing is likely to go. Challenged to say why this matters to him, he reveals his love for Anitra.
The meeting closed at 1:15 PM.
Links (in accession order)…
Contact https://whitbywriters.com/contact/
La Rosa Hotel www.whitbywriters.com/venue
Michele www.whitbywriters.com/michele-randle
Harry www.whitbywriters.com/harry-nicholson
Pip https://whitbywriters.com/pipyn-boult/
Caicos Moon https://whitbywriters.com/cacos-moon/
Jenny https://whitbywriters.com/jenny-burns/
Mary Eleanor Bowes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bowes,_Countess_of_Strathmore_and_Kinghorne
Whitby Writers Group 