COVID-19 forced the Town Square Writers Group to go virtual. But the authors have kept busy, producing books during the pandemic and working on new ones.
Now six of the writers will emerge into the sunshine from 9 a.m. to around 11 a.m. Friday at Pure Grain Bakery, 600 Eubanks Court in Vacaville, to showcase their books and sign those they sell that day.
The group, which launched in 2011 and originally met in Vacaville’s Town Square Library, has published more than 40 books since its inception.
The following authors will be on hand at the bakery:
- Betty Lucke (Vacaville) has just published “Angels of Justice,” set in Santa Fe, N.M. It is her fourth book in her Circle Sleuth Mystery Series.
- Lauren Filarsky (Winters) has had two books come out during the pandemic. One is a memoir, “Breaking Expectations,” about the influence of Roy Irwin, who was bullied throughout his young life because of learning disabilities and a speech impediment but overcame those obstacles to touch many lives. The other is “The First Seahorse,” a children’s picture book, the second in her Starhorse series.
- Margaret Lucke (Hercules) has come out with “House of Desire: A Claire Scanlan Haunted House Mystery.” She also has short stories in two new anthologies: “Fault Lines: Stories by Northern California Crime Writers” and “Ellen Hart Presents Malice Domestic 15: Mystery Most Theatrical.”
- Alice Wilson-Fried (Vacaville) has published “One Drop,” the second of a mystery trilogy set in New Orleans as Katrina bore down on the city.
- Dotty Schenk (Fairfield) writes and illustrates books that bring historical events to life through the eyes of a cat. Her first was set in ancient Egypt, the next during the San Francisco 1906 earthquake. Her most recent is “Fire in the Wine Country.”
- Kelly Hess (Vacaville) has recently published “Upon the Dark with Furious Wings” under the name of R.K. Hess. It is a fantasy novel for young adults about dragons set in modern Los Angeles.
- Betty Lucke, who holds Master of Religious Education and Master of Divinity degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary, helped found the writer’s group. Schenk has been in the group since its inception.
Alice Wilson-Fried of Vacavillehas has published “One Drop,” the second of a mystery trilogy set in New Orleans as Katrina bore down on the city. (contributed photo)
“Betty and her husband were with my choir in church,” said Schenk “We had always been friends, and one thing led to another. We had common interests. She started writing a book and then I did.”
Schenk has a degree in commercial art from the State University of New York.
“But I wanted to eat so I decided to work as a librarian,” said Schenk, who served as a librarian at Vanden High School for 25 years. “I realized that a lot of the kids didn’t know things so I started writing the book about a cat of ancient Egypt because geography is not in all of the grades anymore.”
“The Adventures of Auf: A Cat of Ancient Egypt” takes place in 51 B.C. Auf is named after the Egyptian god of adventure. He lives in Thebes and goes on many journeys around the ancient world.
Schenk illustrates her own books.
“They started out as children’s books,” she said. “But the adults love them and I have sold more of my books to adults than to children. I call them a people’s book. It’s for any age group.”
When the Bay Area was hit by a powerful 6.0 earthquake in 2014, Schenk decided to write a book about earthquake safety.
“I wrote a story about this cat that lived in San Francisco in 1906 and his experiences in the earthquake,” she said. “He had this adventure going through the city, being lost, being found by someone living in the park, and he was finally returned to his owner. In the back of the book I put the things to do for earthquake safety.”
That book was titled “Bartholomew and the Great Quake.”
“Then the fires in the Napa Valley came in 2016 and my friends who live in Calistoga were evacuated, and she had three cats, so I had them come to my house,” recalled Schenk.
That birthed her book, “Fires in the Wine Country,” about the cat Hank and his experience of living the cushy life of Calistoga and the Napa Valley and then having to pack up and go to Fairfield and live with Schenk’s cats. She donated some of the proceeds from the book to cat rescue efforts.
Her upcoming book, “Mischa’s Dream: A Christmas Story” was inspired by iconography classes Schenk took in San Francisco.
“He’s a cat who lives with a monk in old Russia and the monk is an iconographer,” said Schenk. “The cat falls in love with the lady and the child in this icon. He falls asleep at night by the icon and is transported back in time to Bethlehem. It is retelling the Christmas story from his viewpoint.”
Schenk was the organist at Vacaville’s Church of the Epiphany for 30 years and now works at the church office one day a week. She also serves on the Solano County Library Advisory Council.
Wilson-Fried became an author as the result of her love for reading.
“I grew up in a housing development in New Orleans, and my first year of middle school mom couldn’t afford the $1.50 for me to go on a field trip,” she recalled. “So when you couldn’t go to these activities you had to go to the library. And the librarian gave me ‘Pygmalion’ to read that night. I read all night and that was just the beginning of my trips to the library… The world was bigger than the projects that I lived in and I just wanted to see how I could fit in.”
Wilson-Fried attended Tulane University, where a college professor told her she should become a writer.
“But I had to make a living so I didn’t pursue it,” she said. “But when I moved to California and my husband, Frank, said, ‘What is that you really really want to do?’ I said, ‘I really would like to be a writer.’ And he said, ‘Go for it.'”
When she moved to Vacaville five years ago she went to the library and asked to join a writer’s group. The librarian suggested the Town Square group. Wilson-Fried has been part of it ever since.
“I learned early on that you cannot edit yourself,” she said. “You need a workshop.”
The first book in her trilogy, “Outside Child,” takes place pre-Katrina. The second, “One Drop,” is set during Katrina and the final book, yet to be titled, occurs after Katrina. All the books are subtitled, “A Novel of Murder and New Orleans.”
“The sleuths in my book are reluctant, they are not private eyes,” said Wilson-Fried. “It’s a sister and brother team. The sister is an MBA who works in New Orleans for the Floating Palace Steamboat Company, and her brother remains a small-time con artist in the projects where they grew up. But she’s the one who is always in trouble and her brother has to help her get out of the situations she gets herself into.”
Wilson-Fried often travels back to New Orleans to make sure her references are accurate.
“Even the visuals in New Orleans have changed,” she said. “After Katrina there were no street signs for some of the areas I knew and grew up in, so the landmarks are gone. It’s all different now. So I have to go back to make sure that I make it believable to the people who live there.”
She also keeps a journal whenever she visits her old hometown.
“We’re big storytellers in my family and sometimes it would get very interesting,” she said. “Especially my mother and grandmother. They are gone now, but they told these wonderful stories and I found myself writing some of those stories down, taking notes… I didn’t even realize I was preparing myself to write these novels by writing down these things.”
She has had to adjust during the pandemic.
“I like engaging with the public and that’s how I would sell the books in the past,” she said. “I’m having a hard time with social media marketing. It hasn’t discouraged me. I enrolled in a class to understand how to use the computer in social media.”
She is determined to finish the final book in the series.
“No matter what happens I want to make sure that I finish this trilogy,” she said. “It’s something that I want to leave behind for my kids and my grandkids to know that when you start something you finish it. That’s very important and also to make sure that they understand that you hang in there. I just don’t want them to feel that you give up on your own dreams.”
For more information on the writers’ group, email Betty Lucke at bylucke@aol.com.
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