End of World Age celebration 12/21

  
 NOTE: Wired Coffee is at 3860 SOUTH Lindbergh Blvd.

From a Crime Writer’s Library—Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons

“All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.” –Paracelsus

There are many books on poisons, and many are on my bookshelf, but one has complied accurate information in an easy to understand guide on poisons. Years ago the Writers Digest Books published Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons, by Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner. This book breaks down poisons by where they are found and how lethal they can be. They further describe the methods of the administration of those poisons and give case history examples of how that poison had been used in real life. Sadly this book is now out of print, but you should be able to find it in used book stores or at certain local libraries.

One case study in this book still remains in my memory today of how to kill with nicotine. We all have been shown the commercials of how smoking is bad for your health and can lead to cancer and death. Well, the commercials never address how a woman could get rid of her ailing non-smoking bed ridden husband with nicotine. Deadly Doses does. The example that was given was the case of a woman who strained her husband’s drinking water through used cigarette filters. The man couldn’t get out of bed, go for help or anything. The only water he had access to was this filtered water which slowly poisoned him to death.

The ease of this book’s formatting is what drew me to it when it came out. It breaks down the poisons first into chapters dealing with the kind of poison and then gives the details. Here is how it works:

• There is a chapter on:
• The Classic Poisons (Arsenic, Cyanide and Strychnine)
• Household Poisons
• Poisonous Plants
• Fragile Fungi
• Snakes, Spiders, and Other Living Things
• Medical Poisons
• Pesticides
• Industrial Poisons
• Street Drugs
• How to create your own
• Each poison in each chapter has:
• Names
• Toxicity levels
• Forms (how they are found)
• Effects and Symptoms
• Reaction Time
• Antidotes and Treatments
• Case Histories
• Notes
• The Appendices have:
• Poisons by Methods of Administration
• Poisons by Form
• Poisons by Symptoms They Cause
• Poisons by the Time in Which They React
• Poisons by Toxicity Rating

If you are planning to write a murder or anything to do with poisons, you will want this book handy for reference.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com and www.thewriterslens.com. You can also follow me on twitter @Owlkenpowriter and the Writer’s Lens @TheWritersLens. Fiction is the world where the philosopher is the most free in our society to explore the human condition as he chooses.

Meet Ann Hazelwood 12/15 at 6 North

Meet Ann M. Hazelwood, author of THE BASEMENT QUILT, from 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Dec. 15, at:

6 North Café
14438 Clayton Road
Ballwin, MO 63011

  (directions)

Ann is a civil leader, quilter, appraiser, speaker, teacher, writer and author. She has written over twelve books and has been published in a variety of magazines and newspapers. Her newest book, The Basement Quilt, is the first in the The Colebridge Community Fiction Series.

 "Quilts are my Love.
Writing is my passion."
"...when I am not writing,
I am conspiring!"

 
In The Basement Quilt you'll get to know the family and friends of Anne Brown. Anne decides to learn to quilt to help her aunt, and in the process learns family secrets. Anne learns about love, too, in various forms. She and the members of the Colebridge community go through some big life changes.
 
The Basement Quilt is not just the title of this first novel in a series the basement quilt itself is a character. You'll want to meet other quilt characters throughout the series.


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This is T.W. Fendley. Thanks for reading and commenting on The Writers' Lens.You can find out more about me at www.twfendley.com.

Ellen Gray Massey: Never Give Up

Usually The Writers' Lens focuses on fiction, but after meeting Ellen, I wanted to share her story with you -- Teresa

Ellen Gray Massey has published numerous articles, short stories, essays, and books. In 1995 she was inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame of America and her writing has received numerous other awards. From 1973 to 1983 she directed high school students who published Bittersweet, the Ozark Quarterly. 
Her recent books are Our Robin Is Read, Footprints in the Ozarks: A Memoir, The Bittersweet Ozarks at a Glance, and novels, The Burnt District, Her Brothers, Blue and Gray, Her Enemies Blue and Gray, Morning in Nicodemus, Skeleton in the Cistern, and Pioneer Partners.

  

Tell us how Bittersweet--the Ozark quarterly magazine you produced and edited for 10 years--came about. My brother, Ralph Gray on the staff of the National Geographic, suggested I do for the Ozarks what Foxfire in northern Georgia was doing for the Appalachians--recording the local heritage. My school superintendent and principal were willing, my students eager, so we travelled over the Ozarks to interview people for the 40 magazines we published  from 1973 to 1983.

What do you feel is the key to your success? Never giving up.

When and why did you begin writing? I’ve written all my life and majored in English in college, but I seriously began writing myself after I retired from teaching in 1986. I have 29 books to date.

How do you deal with rejection and/or negative reviews? I’ve had hundreds of rejections. I just try sending my manuscripts somewhere else. Or if I think it important enough, I publish it myself. such as I did with A Candle Within Her Soul, a biography of Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, after being rejected 50 times during 11 years. And I’ve sold more copies of it and received more attention than any of my other books.

Do you use critique partners or beta readers? Why or why not? Yes. I exchange ideas and manuscripts with a few fellow writers because I need unprejudiced opinions and help.

Do you have any advice for other writers? Never give up. You can write as long as you have a mind.

What inspired your latest book? After my siblings and I had written our round robin letters for over 25 years, I arranged them into topics and sent  a copy to each as a Christmas present. The reaction I received encouraged me to seek a publisher.

What do you think readers will like about your book? It is full of honest respect for one another with comments both serious and humorous of a middle class, mid-American family during the mid-twentieth century. 

 

What makes your book unique?  I don’t know of another book like it. It has eight authors reacting to national and personal events they are sharing with one another.

What are your top three reasons for writing? It is a way to teach what I think is important, it helps preserve permanently what I think is important, and it’s fun. 

What's the highest compliment someone could make about your writing? I couldn’t put your book down. 

Website:

http://www.ellengraymassey.com/news
 
Amazon for softcover book:
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Robin-Is-Read-Wayside/dp/193058444X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1354208174&sr=1-1
 
Amazon for Kindle

Barnes and Noble for Nook:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/our-robin-is-read-ellen-gray-massey/1113525045?ean=2940015506631&itm=1&usri=our+robin+is+read+voices+from+the+wayside

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This is T.W. Fendley. Thanks for reading and commenting on The Writers' Lens.You can find out more about me at www.twfendley.com.

Holiday Book Fair & Open Mic 12/11

The St. Louis Writers Guild will offer a night of seasonal poetry and prose, and a great selection of signed books ready for gift-giving at the second annual Holiday Open Mic and Book Fair starting at 7 p.m. this Tuesday. 

The public is welcome to this free event at the Kirkwood Train Station, 110 W. Argonne Dr., Kirkwood, Mo. 

Members are invited to bring any books they have for sale, and something yummy to eat. The St. Louis Writers Guild will provide beverages.

Ledgin shares historical research techniques

Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother is Norm Ledgin’s latest historical fiction—“the 38-year love story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.” Temple Grandin helped him write the nonfiction Diagnosing Jefferson (2000), followed by Asperger’s and Self-Esteem (2002), the latter republished in France and referenced widely in literature and film. His historical fiction includes The Jayhawker (2006), a Kansas “best books” selection. His mystery, Sour Notes (2009), has prompted a sequel-in-progress, Disharmony.

Website: normledgin.com

Tell us a little about your research techniques. What's important is to read deeply about whatever true character you're weaving into your story. I would estimate everything I've written and lectured about Jefferson required advance reading of forty or fifty volumes before I penned my first line about the man. The effort paid: The University of Kansas has so far hired me five or six times (adjunct) to teach courses about him. Not a bad late-in-life career.

What are some of the online sources for your historical research?

• http://www.about.com
• http://www.ancestry.com
• http://www.artic.edu
• http://www.earlyamerica.com
• http://www.e-familytree.net
• http://www.en.wikipedia.org
• http://www.firstladies.org
• http://www.franceshunter.wordpress.com
• http://www.fullbooks.com
• http://www.monticello.org
• http://www.questia.com
• http://www.thefreelibrary.com
• http://www.virginia.edu 

How do you verify the accuracy of your information? To assure any who question the reliability of some online references, the author uses multiple sources always to double-check and often to triple-check factual material, a good journalistic habit.

The Writers’ Lens is about Bringing fiction into focus–what brings your writing into focus, the characters, the stories, the love of words? The characters.

What inspired your latest book? Historians' misunderstanding the character of Sally Hemings, who gave up freedom in France to return to bondage in Virginia voluntarily with her lover, Thomas Jefferson.

How much fact is in your fiction? The work is thoroughly researched. Every action can be accounted for by place and date in Jefferson's records. Every person named in the book actually lived and was where I said he or she was at the time.

What's the highest compliment someone could make about your writing? "I couldn't put it down."

SALLY OF MONTICELLO: Teenaged Sally Hemings, mixed-race slave and sister-in-law to widower Thomas Jefferson, captured his heart while serving his daughters in Paris where he was U.S. Minister. It was there a 38-year relationship began. 

The historical novel, Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother, by Jefferson lecturer N.M. Ledgin, portrays a bright, assertive woman. She resolved his “inner conflict,” according to historian Winthrop D. Jordan, by ridding him of “high tension concerning women and Negroes.” Ledgin based the novel’s timeline on Jefferson’s precise recordkeeping and collection of letters. 

Controversy over the affair and over recent DNA findings continues to fuel books and articles. Sally decided voluntarily to return with Jefferson from slavery-free France to Virginia. They had several children who went free, and they left a mixed-race legacy now woven into the fabric of the nation. This novel is an illuminating take on history. It is filled with emotion and adventure in the voice of a self-educated, sacrificing woman, whose passionate love and devotion helped guide one of our founding fathers.

"What an extraordinary accomplishment. I was held captive all through it, sometimes reading late into the night because I couldn't put it down."

                                                              Elizabeth Black, author of Buffalo Spirits

 You can buy Sally of Monticello at:

• Amazon Kindle 
• Amazon Paperback

 

______________________ 

 

This is T.W. Fendley. Thanks for reading and commenting on The Writers' Lens.You can find out more about me at www.twfendley.com.

Meet Jill Farmer Dec. 8 at 6 North Cafe

Meet Jill Farmer, author of THERE'S NOT ENOUGH TIME, from 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Dec. 8, at:

6 North Café
14438 Clayton Road
Ballwin, MO 63011

  (directions)

In addition to being a certified life coach, Jill Farmer is a wife and the mother of a teen and a pre-teen. For more than a decade, she was an Emmy Award winning consumer reporter and television anchor. 

Jill loves reading, drinking tea, hiking, eating great food, snow and waterskiing, and spiritual stuff. She loves people. But, after 40+ years, Jill has learned how to love being alone and quiet and is getting sort of good at sitting still.

 This book is for anyone who feels like there’s never enough time. It will help you accomplish the things that have meaning and impact in your life, as opposed to just frantically bouncing from one thing to the next with nothing to show for it. You’ll discover how changing one little thought can help you recapture countless hours. These tools have helped everyone from surgeons to stay-at-home moms regain more time to do what they want. It’s a new way of thinking to connect you to the things that matter to you most.

To find out more about Jill's Keynote Speaking for your group or organization, or for more information on coaching go to jillfarmercoaching.com

Autographed books will be available for purchase on Dec. 8.