Writers Bloc Twelve: Writers Bloc, #12

By Henderson Writers Group, Michelle Kirgan, Audrey Balzart and 15 more

The Henderson Writers Group challenges its members each year to submit works for blind judgement. Those with top scores are presented here.

 

Enjoy this multitude of works written by Audrey Balzart, Pat Brownell, Donna DeVargas, J.M. Dohanich, Diana Fedorak, Ann Garretson Marshall, Stu Haack, Craig E. Higgins, Michelle Kirgan, Cynthia Kulikov, Fred Rayworth, Michelle Smith, Lauren Tallman, Frank Westcott, Jo A. Wilkins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Henderson Writers Group
• Release date: May 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223467090

Henderson Writers Group

Beverly J. Davis, Brandi Hoffman, Pat Kranish, David R. Long, Keiko Moriyama, Rick Newberry, Chike Nzerue, Wolf O'Rourc, Lori Piotrowski, Donna Pletzer-DeVargas, Joe Van Rhyn, Valerie J. Runyan, Laura Engel Sahr, Judy Salz, Willow Seymour, Arleen Sirois, Nancy Sanders Tardy, Bryant C. Thomas, William Darrah Whitaker, and Duke Woodrick.

Book preview

A Note to The Reader

The Henderson Writers Group is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a goal of helping writers all of skill levels improve their craft. We accept everybody and all types of writing. With this in mind, we encourage members to submit their best works of up to 4000 words for blind judging outside of the group and establish a score cut-off for publication. The results are published unedited in this anthology.

––––––––

Special Thanks to Our Judges

––––––––

The HWG extends appreciation to members of Writerscache, the Cache Valley Chapter of the League of Utah Writers, for taking their valuable time to judge our many submissions.

Henderson Writers Group

2022 Anthology

Poetry

A selection of poetry from Henderson Writers Group members.

Hands of Heaven

Audrey Balzart

––––––––

Mama

Mama, you sing so sweet

A gentle lullaby so low

You asked, "Oh, God

Her soul to keep

And Angels watch my baby grow."

––––––––

"Hands of Heaven

Guardians pure

Angels watch my baby grow."

––––––––

Mama

Mama, grown children graced

With health and hope and partners new

Before eternal God

You asked 

Angels bless this union true.

––––––––

"Hands of Heaven

Guardians pure

Angels bless this union true."

––––––––

Mama

Mama, you pray so strong

Though corporeal failings cause you fear

You asked God

"If this fight grow long

Then Angels bring me strength to bear."

––––––––

"Hands of Heaven

Guardians pure

Angels bring me strength to bear."

––––––––

Mama

Silent in your pain 

Now I will pray

Take on your song

Dear God

Your light of love please send

And Angels guide my mama home.

––––––––

Hands of Heaven

Guardians pure

Angels guide my mama home.

––––––––

Author Bio:

With a BA in Visual Media from Nevada State College, Audrey Balzart is a writer, filmmaker, and President of the Henderson Writer Group. Hands of Heaven is her first work not related to the YA/SciFi AJ Silver Misadventure series universe she usually writes under A.L. Campbell.

Vicissitude

Cynthia Kulikov

––––––––

Esther’s friend is much older

but I had her cancer years ago. An easy survivor,

I offer my story as if it could comfort

some small longing, simplify the questions, as if

anything makes it livable. Twice your age

may seem closer to death,

but I’ve already walked that bridge

and my years did not matter, slipped

through the ice shield, the dark balm

reaching out as mother to child, the terror

of simplicity, the actual, the moment, when

every tale ever heard and all history repeated,

only for me, for the first time,

and for the first time in my life,

the only experience required of life,

the only experience worth remembering. The instant

the plug reaches the spark of electricity.

The moment I know my name.

What really happens at conception. Inevitability realized.

Where there is no glimmer of understanding

because I’m right there in the core, so close

it’s part of me, inside me, no separation,

no distinction between myself and the moment, myself,

the experience, myself, the knowledge. Not merged but

defined, restructured, reborn, eclipsed.

Every path is its own. There is no map.

What could I tell her, what could I say to anyone?

The walk I took is mine.

It can’t be duplicated.

That the walk is more like sliding, tripping,

the quick moot step alive with bearing the unknown?

I cannot say. But she will ask

questions and I will answer with trivia,

banal details, lists, cryptic sentences

but they’re all lies, it is never the same. I could say

you go into a room but it’s not, it’s a cave underground,

vapor chamber, a tiled box waiting, my mother’s womb,

an entrance, cathedral of glare, sacred space of operation

where ether and spirit mix and kindle

and change the breath so it returns

altered evermore. And when the room that is not a room

releases its honored victim

spewed into this little life,

the cone of silence lingers.

––––––––

Author Bio:

Cynthia Kulikov’s poetry has been published in After I Fall, ONTHEBUS and other lit zines, and she's covered travel, health and restaurants as a freelance writer. She hates summers but adores gelato in Italy.

Nonfiction

Yes, Henderson Writers Group members also publish nonfiction.

Contemporary Feminist Police Procedurals: The Woman Homicide Detective Character

Pat Brownell

––––––––

In the 1990s and 2000s, a sub-genre of police procedural mystery novels evolved through the work of contemporary women mystery writers who created female homicide detective characters. A sample of these writers include Tana French (Ireland), Ann Cleeves (England), Paula McLain and Jane Casey (USA), Denise Mina (Scotland), Yrsa Sigurdardóttir and Eva Bjorg AEgisdottir (Iceland), Sara Blaedel (Denmark), Helene Tursten (Sweden) and Sarah Hollister (Sweden/USA), and Jassy Mackenzie, South Africa.  Some female mystery writers, notably Paula Hawkins (England) and Shari Lapena (USA), insert female detectives as side characters in their mystery novels, usually paired with male partners.

None of these authors had backgrounds in police work when they wrote their police procedurals. Their professional and work backgrounds ranged from nurse, lawyer, poet  and engineer to children’s book writer, waitress, secretary, editor, and actress.

Margaret Maron, and Sarah Hollister are two female mystery writers who created fictional women homicide detectives working for the New York Police Department (NYPD). Maron, a prolific fictional crime writer, created her female homicide detective in the 1970s. and never engaged in police work. She began her fiction writing career while working as the secretary for the dean of an art school. Hollister, who is Swedish-American and an editor by profession, teamed up with a male colleague to write her edgy police procedural about a disgraced NYPD female detective who moves to Sweden to apprehend a serial killer of Romany women.

The work of these and other female mystery writers represents a sub-genre of police procedural mystery writing that diverges significantly from male mystery writers like James Patterson, Michael Connelly and other popular authors with fictional male (and sometimes female) detectives. Like women mystery authors before them writing in the 1960s to 1980s, many contemporary women authors of police procedurals with female detective characters are  influenced by Nancy Drew books read as preteens (see The Girl Sleuth A Feminist Guide by Bobbie Ann Mason).

While not devoid of structure, typically the plots are not tightly woven and controlled. They cannot be characterized as either thrillers or tea cozies. Rather, they evolve and meander to conclusion with detours into sometimes lengthy sub-plots. They tend to address contemporary issues important to women.

The murders investigated are most likely related to violence against women or children. Victims are usually vulnerable people, whether trafficked women, domestic violence victims, people with disabilities, immigrants, the elderly or children. Perpetrators are  more likely to be troubled than evil. Importantly, the female detectives themselves struggle with personal issues that stem from traumatic experiences earlier in their lives. They often battle power and control issues with unsympathetic male colleagues in their homicide units as well. 

Perseverance and commitment to righting a perceived social wrong linked to a personal issue are  likely impetus for these fictional women homicide detectives. In this, there is common ground with some fictional male detectives like Bosch (Connelly), but the pace of the action is slower, and there is less emphasis on direct violence and high speed chases, for example, and more on relationships and reflection.

Addictions linked to traumatic experiences are likely to be anti-anxiety and stimulant-related and not seriously incapacitating, typical of women’s substance use and abuse habits. In this sub-genre, main characters may drink too much on occasion or take prescription medications but typically do not abuse high-risk illegal substances like cocaine or heroin. An exception is Hollister’s detective who struggles with a dependence on methamphetamine; however, while she has concerns about  this, she is not incapacitated. Chronic alcohol abuse, common in some male fictional detective fiction like Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series, is not generally a problem with these female detectives.

In addition to the female detective, there is usually a side kick who is male and who is in a supportive and sometimes, but not typically,  romantic relationship with the main character. An example of the former is Cleeves’ homicide detective Vera Stanhope, who always has a young and usually married male detective assisting her. Often the female homicide detective is not married and lives alone.

There are exceptions, such as the first of Tursten’s two detectives  Irene Huss, who is happily married to a chef. Even here, the relationship is atypical with the wife in a male-dominated field (police detective) and the spouse in a traditionally female role of cook, not only in the restaurant where he works, but also at home. The family tensions revolve around twin adolescent daughters who assert their independence in ways that trouble the main character and sometimes distract her from her police work.

Tursten’s second detective, Embla Nyström, unveiled a couple of years ago