Member News Update

Left, Carolyn Wilker, Center, Linda Hall, right, WWW member Jane Kirkpatrick in Guelph, outside of Toronto, during the Write! Canada Conference this past week. Carolyn is a writer and reviewer of many of Jane's books; Linda Hall is an award-winning mystery writer from New Brunswick. She's a favorite writer of WWW member Jane Kirkpatrick, who finally got to meet her face to face. Jane taught a five hour class on writing the Historical Novel and a one hour class called "Putting Duct Tape on the Harpies", about changing the stories we tell ourselves that keep us from writing. Writers make the best conference companions! Come meet some of your favorite writers at the WWW conference in Colorado Springs this fall.

Jane Kirkpatrick
http://janekirkpatrick.blogspot.com/

Award-winning author of 13 novels and two non-fiction books. A Tendering in the Storm, Book Two in the Change and Cherish Series (WaterBrook Press/Random House) is available now!

Join our reading group

We've created a reading group that you can join here, and we'll be discussing a WWW author's novel each month. This month we're reading Ann Parker's first novel in the Silver Rush mystery series entitled Silver Lies. Here's a comment from Ann in our ongoing conversation:

"Inez Stannert is my paternal grandmother's maiden name. She came to Leadville as a young child (her father was a blacksmith) until she was about 18, at which time she and her mother (!I cannot find a trace of her father, anywhere, after this time) moved to Denver. Granny never spoke to me about Leadville ... so it was a complete shock to me to find out (long after her death) that she had spent her formative years there. It was this bit of family history that started me on the path to researching Leadville and the creation of the Silver Rush series. The real Inez never set foot in a saloon, bar, or any other such place. But I wanted to name my protagonist after Granny, as a tribute of sorts. I checked with my relatives and they all agreed she would have been quite tickled by it ...A librarian once described the character Inez as "Miss Kitty [from the old TV series 'Gunsmoke'] unchained!" I rather liked that! There were women who ran/managed saloons in Leadville, but not many. Out of 300 or so saloon owners listed in the 1880 census, 3 were women." You can read the prologue to Silver Lies at the author's website. Buy the book at amazon.com or your local bookstore and join us for a fascinating summer read.

Thanks, Women Writing the West!

Hi everyone. I am very proud to announce that my second book, Arctic Lace has won two awards this month! I'm so thrilled, because this book was very important to me.

Last week I learnd that Arctic Lace had advanced in the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) competition from semifinalist to finalist to bronze award winner in the How-to (Crafts/Hobby) category (#46).

Arctic Lace has also won the Foreword Book of the Year Silver Award in the Crafts & Hobbies category and it's the only knitting book that received an award this year!

I want to thank Women Writing the West for supporting me on my journey in researching and writing this book. When I first joined WWW about 5 years ago, Arctic Lace was just a dream in the back of my mind. At every step of they way working on this book I've received support and inspiration from other WWW members, and at each October conference I've been energized to keep moving on with my writing goals. My success with this book is a tribute to Women Writing the West and everyone in the organization who has been so generous sharing their experience with me. Thank you!

I also want to say thank you to Sigrun Robertson and all of the Oomingmak Co-op knitters I met in Alaska, especially Fran, Joyce, and Eliza, who took so much time to talk to me during my research trip. I dedicated the book to all of the co-op's knitters and I am so glad that they so many people appreciate their work and are learning about their unique contribution to the knitting universe as well as the ways they are using knitting to maintain their subsistence lifestyle.