CCW Members Profiles

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Mari Lynch Dehmler is a native of rural central Illinois and moved to the Monterey Bay in 1976. She is the owner of Fine Wordworking, a writing and editorial services business established in Monterey in 1981. She serves local and nationwide clients, including authors, publishers, educators, nonprofit organizations, large corporations, small businesses, individual professionals, and others. In addition to ghost writing and collaborating, Mari writes under her own byline for books, magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and radio. To contact Mari, visit FineWordworking.com or phone (831) 375-6278.

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Martin Dodd a native of Atlanta, Georgia, moved to Salinas in 1965. He took creative writing at Hartnell College, winning their short story award in 1967. The following year, he edited The Spectrum, Hartnell’s literary magazine. Martin suspended his creative writing for thirty-two years, while he founded and directed Sun Street Centers, a community-based agency providing addiction prevention and recovery services in Monterey County. Following his retirement in 2000, Martin resumed creative writing. He joined the Pebbles Writers Group in January 2002. His most recent published works of poetry, memoirs, and short fiction appear in the 2003 Pebbles anthology: The Barmaid, the Bean Counter, and the Bungee Jumper. Also, His short fiction won second place in the 2003 Central Coast Writers contest and honorable mention in the 2003 Coast Weekly 101 word contest. Martin serves as member submissions editor for Scribbles (CCW newsletter) and can be contacted at gopumps@aol.com.

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Cameron Douglas handles all CCW Branch press releases and has taken on the majority of branch Membership Chair tasks for the 2008-2009 club year. Cameron was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He left in 1976 to pursue a warmer, if not better life in the Golden State. Cam has lived and worked in several parts of California from San Luis Obispo to Sacramento. His background includes sales, landscaping, food service, auto restoration and broadcast work in radio.

“I’ve always enjoyed writing, but only got serious about it eight years ago. ‘Painting pictures with words’ is what I like best. If I can take the reader to another place or time that seems real and vivid, then I have succeeded.”

Most of Cam’s time these days is spent working on a collection of biographies titled, “Quiet Lives.” There are several short stories in his files; some finished, some still in progress. He wrote “The Pearl of Lover’s Point,” a tribute to the last days of the Tinnery. It was printed in the P.G. Hometown Bulletin in 2006. He’s also working on a novel and a series of personal memoirs.

Cam lives in Pacific Grove with his sweetheart Darci. His daughter Megan is a student at U.C. Davis; and his son Jeff works in construction near Truckee.

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Jerry Gervase: I write a weekly column for the Monterey County Herald, and a monthly political satire column for The Valley Citizen a small magazine based in Danville, California, which reaches about 45,000 homes in that area. I also write a monthly humor column for Lifestyles Magazine out of Concord, California which reaches more than 40,000 persons in the East Bay. I write a monthly series for a nationally distributed Ophthalmic Trade Journal called "Through The Eyes Of..." whereby I become an historical figure and explain or justify my actions.
Earlier this year I signed a contract with Senior Wire, a syndicate that markets my work nationally. Last month, through them, I had articles in 12 different magazines and newspapers. My first published work was poetry so I maintain a soft spot in my heart for all things poetic. I have not abandoned fiction at all. I'm working on a novel that will include a partial or complete screenplay within it.

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Walter Gourlay A native of New York City, Walter moved to the Monterey Peninsula after retiring from teaching at Michigan State University. He has a doctorate in Chinese history from Harvard and has done considerable academic writing. Before his teaching career, he was a freelance writer for men’s adventure magazines. For some time he worked in public relations, and managed a concert hall in New York. He has now returned to writing fiction. He is a founding member of the Fiction Writers of Monterey Peninsula, FWOMP, a member of the Monterey Peninsula Writers Workshop and an active member of the local chapter of the National Writers Union serving on the Steering Committee and as an elected delegate of the local to the National Writers Union. Walter writes a monthly "Profiles" for the Carmel Residents Association Newsletter. FWOMP's first collected work, Monterey Shorts, contains his short story, Reunion. The "Pebbles” writing group in Carmel, of which he is also a member, has recently published five of his short stories in their latest collection, The Barmaid, The Bean Counter and the Bungee Jumper. An earlier collection, Pebbles, includes two of his short stories. He’s now writing his wartime memoirs and researching a historical novel set in New York City, Java, and Japan during the Napoleonic Wars. Walter lives in Carmel, California.

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Born in Arroyo Grande, California, Branch President Harold Grice's main occupation as a youth was MISCHIEF. Moving often, his family finally settled on a ranch in Huasa Valley, an isolated place southeast of Arroyo Grande. Milking cows, slopping hogs, hunting, fishing, and riding and breaking horses were Harold's life as he attended a one room classroom through the eighth grade. Arroyo Grande High, San Luis Obispo and Bend, Oregon, were the venues of his high school education. Opting for discharge after serving three years in the Marine Corps in the Pacific, Harold worked for the Fire Guard, California Division of Highways and Neill Engineers, Carmel. In 1970, he founded Grice Engineering, Inc. in Salinas.
Harold married Ramona Johnson nee Zezetiheine and they have lived in their home on Torero Drive in Salinas for some thirty odd years. Grice is always free with his thoughts including, but not limited to, the "Philosophy of Success for the Entrepreneur," which identifies character requirements needed for success in something about which you have limited knowledge. These include: Ego, greed, tenacity, ignorance... and a big dose of luck.
Harold has already penned his epitaph: "Here lies Harold E. Grice, what he did was very nice. While he was having all this fun, he left his better works undone." We hope not!

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Dick Guthrie was born into an Army family and spent his younger years moving around the United States and Europe. When he enlisted in the Army at age seventeen years , two months, it was for the express purpose of getting the draft out of the way so he could go on to college and into a money-making job -- and live happily ever after. He found he liked the service, though, and went to West Point and was commissioned a second Lieutenant of Infantry in 1963. In 1974 he bought a small house on the Monterey Peninsula where his wife and two children lived while he served a year in Korea. After thirty-four years in uniform he retired and took a position as General Administrative Manager with Southern Peru Copper Corp. After five and a half years in Peru he and his wife moved to the house on the Monterey Peninsula.

He has published several magazine articles and currently is working on Memoirs of Company command in Vietnam. The wartime story of 1967-68 is supplemented with the account of a return trip he made to Binh Dinh Province in 1998 along with his former Senior Company Medic and First Platoon Leader.

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A fourth generation Pagrovian, Patricia Hamilton is descended from the Reverend Sylvanus G. Gale, Methodist minister in the Pacific Grove Retreat, 1890-93. Her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren live in San Luis Obispo, California.

After a career as a controller with an international restaurant corporation, Hamilton began writing and publishing interior landscape contractor books in 1982.

In 1994, she enrolled in UC Santa Cruz, completed her degree in Philosophy at the University of Lancaster, England, then lived in Spain where she taught English in Elche, near Valencia. She wrote and published two books abroad: “Peace Consciousness in Northern Ireland and Findhorn, Scotland,” a UCSC President's Fellowship, and "I Can't Be Bothered," about her mates in Lancaster.

She has just completed a healthful travel guide to California, and enjoys spending time with her grandchildren. Local authors interested in self-publishing can reach her for a free consult at 649-6640 or at her office at 591 Lighthouse Ave #20, Pacific Grove.

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Georgia A. Hubley was born and raised in central Ohio, moving to Silicon Valley when her husband's tour of duty in the Air Force ended. In 1996, she retired from 20 years in financial management and began writing her memoirs, and submitting vignettes of her childhood for publication.

In October 1996, since both sons were launched into adulthood, it was time to sell the empty nest. She and her husband moved to a condo in Carmel. Once settled, Georgia became involved in the writing community, and was the first Program Chairperson for the Central Coast Writers Branch.

Georgia continues to write full-time. She has had six stories published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Besides being a frequent contributor to the Chicken Soup series, her work has appeared in Plus Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Birds and Bloom Magazine, Story Circle Journal, Capper's, Good Old Days Magazine, Senior Wire Syndicate, as well as other national magazines and newspapers.

Georgia and her husband relocated to Henderson, Nevada during the summer of 2003.

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Ken Jones moved to the Monterey Peninsula after retiring from the Boeing Company in March of 2001. Southern Californian natives, he and his wife felt a growing attraction to the Central Coast that finally became too powerful to resist. Ken holds a Bachelors of Science in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from Northern Arizona University. His working career involved some technical and business writing, but he began writing for pleasure in the mid 80's, focusing primarily on short story fiction. Ken's short-short stories have received Honorable Mention in the Coast Weekly's annual 101 Word Short Story Contests in each of the last four years. In 2003, the Weekly's first prize ($101) went to Ken's Holiday Dinners. He is a co-author of Monterey Shorts, (Thunderbird Publication, 2001), and Monterey Shorts 2, (FWOMP Publications, 2005), collections of short stories set on the Monterey Peninsula, by the Fiction Writers of the Monterey Peninsula, (FWOMP). He is also working on a novel length mystery that builds on the primary character from his story Borscht in The Bay published in Monterey Shorts, and Canned Hunt from Monterey Shorts 2. Five of Ken's stories are contained in The Barmaid, The Bean Counter and the Bungee Jumper, a collection of short stories and poetry produced in November '03 by the Pebbles Writing Group of Carmel. Ken and his wife Anne have one daughter, Nora, and one grandson, Alejandro. Ken and Anne live in Pacific Grove with their deaf, one-eyed (or in the more sensitive words of her loving Veterinarian, "sound challenged and monocular") cat, Lucky. Ken is a past president and vice president. He currently serves the branch as its Webmaster.

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Carol Brown Kauffmann is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from college with a major in Psychology. In 1978, she co-founded a school supply manufacturing company which received Sam Walton's "Wal-Mart Vendor of the Year" award.

She has served on numerous civic boards and is Chair of the Mary Brown Fund of Atlanta, a philanthropic family foundation. From 1994-98, she interviewed Holocaust survivors as part of Stephen Spielberg's Shoah Foundation.

Carol co-authored Juvenile Digest in 1975 an Passport to Education in 1994. She wrote for "Peachtree Papers" magazine from 1982-1998. As its editor in 1978-88, she redesigned the magazine and won an international Public Relations Award. She currently writes fiction and non-fiction from her home in Pebble Beach, California. Carol is married and has a blended family, which includes four grandsons and a cat named Charlie, all frequent subjects of her writing.

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Scribbles editor and Central Board Representative, Joyce Krieg, is the author of the Shauna J. Bogart Talk Radio Mystery Series: Murder Off Mike, Slip Cue, and Riding Gain, all from St. Martin’s Minotaur. Murder Off Mike was the winner of the St. Martin’s Press “best first traditional mystery” contest and was nominated for an Agatha award. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Joyce grew up in the South Bay area “before it became Silicon Valley.” She attended San Jose State and was a member of the editorial board of Spartan Daily back when it was an unusual day not to have some sort of demonstration happening on Seventh Street. After careers as a daily newspaper reporter, television announcer, radio reporter and newscaster, Joyce settled in as promotion director for Sacramento’s KFBK News/Talk 1530. The latter experience served her well as background material when she started to write a mystery about a crime-fighting, mystery-solving talk radio host. While at KFBK, Joyce was part of the management team that discovered Rush Limbaugh and launched his career, which she calls “my greatest claim to fame or shame.” Joyce now lives in Pacific Grove, where her full-time job is serving as head of staff to a purebred Abyssinian cat known as Amberjack.

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Branch Programs Chair, Ixchel Susan Leigh has been a published writer for almost twenty years. Her editorials, articles, and columns have been published in magazines and newspapers both in the U.S. and abroad. Her book launch in 2001 took place in London, England and she is currently finishing up her first novel.

Since a teenager, Ixchel has explored her heart's desires and interests in alchemy, aromatherapy, physics, metaphysics, shamanism, spirituality, anthropology, vibrational medicines, and the natural world. Her travels have taken her to Europe, India, Philippines, North Africa, Mexico and throughout the United States. Years of study around the world in holistic therapies and with indigenous peoples is integrated into her life and reflected in her work, writing, and philosophy...“My heart and my life are committed to Love and Transformation and to guiding myself and others to make the many changes which enrich all Life.” Ixchel has been one of the pioneers of aromatherapy and complementary wellness therapies in the United States and Europe.

In the autumn of 2001, Ixchel's book Aromatic Alchemy ~ Recipes for Transformation was published (Boston, MA: Mansion Publishing, 2001) and she was a contributing author to The World of Aromatherapy (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd. 1996). Ixchel is the creator of Vibrational AromaTherapy^TM, a system of complementary healing which uses essential oils and Nature’s Vibrational Medicines for overall well being. In 1997 she authored a training manual of the same name that was published by Quality of Life Associates, Boston.

Ixchel says, “These days, my creative energy is focused on my writing. It’s what excites me...It’s my passion.” Her writing now takes her into the genre of fiction. In the summer of 1999 she wrote a memoir called “Musings in a Vibrational World” that was published in a magazine called Aromatic Thymes. It is an introduction to her novels: journeys of suspense through the senses, shifting back and forth from the present to different periods of history.

Ixchel writes the "Member Profile" section for our newsletter, Scribbles.

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Dan Lineham, author of Space Ship One An Illustrated History (Zenith Press 2008) that chronicles the extraordinary development path and ultimate success of SpaceShipOne, brain child of Burt Rutan and winner of the coveted Ansari X Prize for private space exploration, received a B.S. in physics from Stony Brook University (NY) and a M.S. in materials engineering from Purdue University (IN). He worked as a microchip engineer for Integrated Device Technology (CA) from 1995 to 2000, and then left engineering to pursue writing. Currently, Dan consults for Riverside Publishing, editing math and science, and has written articles and produced an award winning event program for the California International Airshow. Recently, some of his works have appeared in The Coast Weekly and Pacific Flyer. Dan is now working on a second novel; his first, Crash Pattern, is a supernatural thriller.

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Kemberlee Lugo-Shortland was born and raised in Carmel, California and started writing stories as soon as she was old enough to hold a pen. "I still have my first self-published book, a very originally titled "Mickey the Mouse." I remember writing it in my 5th-grade class and turning it in for extra credit. My teacher just shook his head and sighed, 'Not another one.' Up to that time, my stories were turned in on sheets of handwriting paper. This one was professionally done, complete with proper lined paper and a stapled-on red construction paper cover...and original artwork, thank you very much."

To learn more about Kemberlee, her four historical and three contemporary novels, and her life in Ireland, go to her Web site at: www.kemberlee.com.

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Barbara Ann Manning. I was five years old when I knew the lines and dots and crosses I "wrote" on the paper were only pretend writing. I had to go to school to write for real. I pulled up a chair to the ironing board. While I pressed wrinkles off the yellow flowers on my dress, the hot iron tipped over and scorched the back of my wrist. Momma put butter on the burn. I screamed as the butter sizzled on my wrist like in a frying pan. The butter turned brown.
But thinking of myself as a "writer" happened when I was in my thirties, after my last child was born. A friend and I were chatting one day when she said, "Barbara, you better write these things down because they won't come back to visit you again." I guffawed at her suggestion.
Not long after, without thinking, I picked up a pencil, turned over one of my kid's school papers and scribbled out a poem. That day, I wrote thirteen poems; the next day, twelve. Within a week I had written forty!
Then I wrote paragraphs. And then, essays. Then short stories, and I haven't stopped writing since.
I've written children's plays, children's stories and a couple dozen journals. Years ago, it was exciting to have a New York agent try to sell one of my three novels. Today, my memoir is looking for its agent.
The brown scar on my wrist has finally faded away.
And I'm still trying to learn how to write.

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Daniel Matuszewski published his first "novel," A Tiger Hunt in India, at the age of 8 at a neighborhood press in Chicago. In it, he built classmates and friends into an imaginary adventure in far-off, exotic lands. All proceeds (25 cents a copy) went to the school coffers, and every student had to buy one. Talk about a captive audience!
Later, real-life travel and research as a Fulbright Fellow and cultural exchange administrator in Russia, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and China, helped shape Daniel's current affairs books and articles on international relations, globalization, and rapid change in those countries.
Now blessedly free of policy responsibilities, Daniel is trying to weave 35 years of travel and foreign affairs networking into a series of historical novels and short stories around the theme of "The Clash of Civilizations".

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Founding Branch President Patricia Matuszewski grew up on a ranch in southwestern Washington State. Since then, she has lived in Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Princeton, NJ and Washington, DC. She and her husband Daniel first came to the Monterey Peninsula when he studied, and later taught Russian, at the Defense Language Institute. They live in Seaside Highlands.
The Matusezewskis have two sons, Erik, a journalist, and Ian, who is currently teaching in Spain. Pat has been a high school history teacher, lecturer and administrator at Princeton University, and grant writer for The National Geographic Society.
Although most of her publications have been in education and history, her short story, The Haint in the Hills, was a winner of The Monterey Herald's 2002 fiction contest, and she is a co-author of The Barmaid, The Bean Counter and the Bungee Jumper published by Thunderbird Publications in October of 2003. Pat continues to write short stores and is currently at work on a mystery series set in Monterey County.

Lisa Meckel trained as an actress and theatre major at Occidental College, the Occidental College Summer Theatre and the Pasadena Playhouse. She has performed at various summer stock companies and in San Francisco at the Geary and Curran theatre and on television. Her play, The Celebration, was produced at Occidental College. She received her Early Childhood Teaching Credential and MA degree at Pacific Oaks Children's School and College in Pasadena. Excerpts from her Master's thesis have been published in various educational journals. Currently Lisa is working on a collection of poems, titled, Moments. Lisa's poetry has received various awards, including the Prize for Poetry at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. In addition, her poems have been published in various journals. Most recently in Rattle and Nimrod: International Journal of Poetry and Prose.

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Deborah Rich

I shouldn't have attended college when I did; only now do I know what I really want to study. If I could do it again, I would double-major in biology and creative writing. Instead, I now research the questions that surface while I am observing spiders in the garden with my daughter, or hoeing weeds on my family's small olive ranch in South Monterey County, and turn the answers to those questions into magazine and newspaper articles.
I grew up a tomboy in Arroyo Seco, attended high school in Salinas, double-majored in Economics and International Affairs at the University of Puget Sound and received my MBA at Georgetown University. My paying jobs have included marketing for a privately-held grocery chain, managing corn production for Cornnuts, Inc. and co-managing a start-up corn genetics company with my husband. I am now a full-time mother, part-time writer, and part time rancher - all money-losing roles to be sure, but wonderfully rewarding.

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I am C. Jonathan Shoemaker. I came here from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to study Russian at the Army Language School in 1961. I have a Secondary Teaching Credential with a Major in German and Minors in Spanish and Russian. I also have a Bilingual Certificate of Competence.
I have taught in many academic areas and a variety of situations, as a foreign language teacher, department chairman, resource specialist, special day teacher, migrant resource teacher, summer migrant program director, English as a Second Language teacher, teacher of Personal Responsibility, and a home/hospital instructor.
I have now retired from full time teaching for various reasons, but I still enjoy working with the public, especially young people. I enjoy working as a marshal at the Pacific Grove golf course. I enjoy reading literature of all kinds, and I have written three books, two of poems and an instructional book on golf.

Jonathan serves the branch through volunteer development and hospitality related efforts.

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Michelle Smith A native of the Bay Area of Northern California, Michelle L. Smith aspired to pursue a profession dedicated to assisting people in need. During her freshman year at Mills College, a private women’s college in Oakland, she determined that a career in medicine was the perfect choice to accommodate her love of the sciences and passion to help others. After obtaining a B.A. in Chemistry at Mills, she earned her medical degree from the University of Southern California, and then returned to Oakland to complete an internship and residency in Internal Medicine.

After 11 years of practicing medicine, Dr. Smith listened to her inner voice and acted upon a longstanding desire to write. A proponent of preventive medicine, she was pleased to discover a venue that afforded an opportunity to communicate with a large number of people. While writing articles for trade and consumer magazines, focusing on subjects ranging from health to travel, she also enrolled in novel mechanics courses and took on the arduous task of penning her first novel.

In 2001 Dr. Smith founded The Ebony Quill, LLC through which she continues writing freelance. She enjoys attending writers conferences and critique sessions and studying the writing styles of other authors to congeal much of what she has learned in the classroom. Her website (theebonyquill.com) highlights some of her work, and in 2006 she hopes to find an agent to represent her novel, Deadly Innocence, a suspense-drama that follows the metamorphosis of a troubled nine-year-old girl who encounters an uncanny ability to communicate with spirits while her dysfunctional family struggles with the death of her younger brother.

While Dr. Smith maintains her medical licenses in the states of California, Arizona and Hawaii, she is also a member of The Authors Guild and Small Publishers Association of North America. Currently, she splits her time between residences in California and Arizona.

Visit Michelle's Web site.

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Illia Thompson is the author of Moments, Gracious Seasons, and Heartframes. She teaches memoir writing through Monterey Peninsula College, MPC, and presents private classes and workshops on Journaling which emphasize writing as an art form and a tool for growth and healing. A graduate of Antioch College in Ohio, Illia has taught preschool through college and delights in those who find joy in discovering their ability to write their life stories. Illia serves on the Board of Directors of The Creative Edge and is a charter member of Pebbles, the Thunderbird Bookshop writers group. A poem of Illia's, Dancing on the Brink of the World, will appear in a collection of poetry celebrating Point Lobos which will be available in April, 2003.

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John A. Thompson
I was born in 1921 and spent an ordinary childhood. Like those of my generation my life was turned upside down on December 7, 1941. After spending three years, seven months and 15 days in the army, 16 months in India, I was discharged healthy and got my law degree on the GI Bill.
I practiced law in a small town in Tennessee until coming to California in 1959 to begin a career writing law books for a major publishing company. After two years of that I practiced law in San Francisco until my retirement in 1988.
For personal enjoyment and intellectual fulfillment I then undertook to write fiction. I self published two mystery novels and have written several unpublished short stories. The Ellery Queen magazine has sent me rejection slips. I now plan to put the short stories in one volume and take it from there.

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Fran Vardamis
Frances Diem Vardamis was born in New York City. A graduate of Queens College of the City of New York, she has taught English and history, at the high school level, in California, Germany, New York City and up-state New York, and in Vermont. For several years she worked in public outreach and sales positions with the Sugarbush Ski Resort in Warren, Vermont. She was employed as a journalist and lecturer in North Dakota. She is Membership Chair and Newsletter Editor for the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation in Carmel, California. Fran serves as Treasurer on the Carmel Harrison Memorial Library Board of Trustees. She is on the Board of the Friends of the Carmel Library.

She is the author of the Yannis Lavonis series of detective novels published by Silk Label Publishing Co., a subsidiary of Royal Fireworks Printing Co. of Unionville, NY. The novels, Russian Doll, Ancestral Voices, and Pity the Children are set in modern Greece and deal with contemporary politics as well as crime. The fourth novel in the series, Vermont Sea Glass, follows Yannis Lavonis to the United States. The novel looks at the America through the eyes of a Greek visitor. Its themes are immigration and terrorism.

In addition to the Yannis Lavonis novels, Vardamis has done considerable translation of Norwegian texts. Among them are some half dozen self-help books published by Psyk Opp, the Norwegian Psychiatric Information Foundation. She has translated Freedom and Fear by John Arne Markussen, a contemporary analysis of American society, as well as a medieval verse play set in tenth century Norway. Her translation of The Carriage Stone, by the modern Norwegian novelist Sigbjørn Hølmebakk was published in 1996 by DuFour Editions, Inc. of Chester Springs, PA. She is, also, the recipient of a Nordic Council translation grant for the prize-winning short story collection, “What Will We Do Today?” by the contemporary author, Øystein Lønn.

She is married to Alex Vardamis, also a writer, and a retired Army Officer and university professor. She is the mother of two adult children, a daughter, Sharon, a poet and playwright, who resides in Massachusetts and is a professional fundraiser, and a son, Daniel, who teaches in Colorado and is a freelance journalist and blog manager who writes at http//offcambertypepad.com/dv8/ Colorado.

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Joy McCullough Ware is a charter member of CCW.

Joy has been published nationally by Prime National Publishing in their juried magazine: Healing Ministry Journal, a hospice related publication. A feature article appeared in The Handmaiden, a Journal for Orthodox Women that focused on caring for parents in their declining years.

Joy was also a member of the original Pebbles, the Thunderbird Writers group from 1999- 2003. Stories published while a Pebble include Granny and the Case of Seagram Seven, The Shock of Recognition, The Princess of Periodicals; a Carmel Fairy Tale, and The Floozy, the Frump and Fred.

In addition to teaching, Joy has been credit manager in a jewelry store, sold print and radio advertising space and worked for the State of California as a Job Developer. Now that she is retired, Joy wants to continue writing Book Reviews, publish reflections on her years in public education, as well as finally produce the stories that are hidden in her nearly seven decades.

The teacher has retired; the writer has emerged. Joy is poised in her cottage on the edge of Hatton Canyon, only blocks from Scenic  ready to find out what ELSE goes into writing professionally  beyond the ubiquitous, “If I only had the time”.

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Gwyn Weger has been writing all her life. In her teens and early twenties she wrote children's stories and poetry, and as a college student she focused on scholarly papers and personal essays. By her thirties she was involved with media where she flirted with screenplay writing. She has recently also begun to work in nonfiction. At the 2008 East of Eden Writers Conference, she took 3rd place in the Memoir/Nonfiction category.

Gwyn attended California State University, Chico, where she completed her master's thesis, "Women's Stories" as an interactive CD-ROM, which was new at the time in 1995. She has been an editor/writer for the Department of Defense since 1996, with her office located at Fort Ord. She lives in Salinas with her husband and their two children. Her first novel, East Garrison, will be published in February 2009. For more information check out her website: www.gmweger.com

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Karyn Witmer-Gow January 2007 Karyn Witmer-Gow grew up in Niagara Falls and comes to the Monterey Peninsula by way of St. Louis. She wrote her first stories in crayon, was published in the school newspaper in the fourth grade, and finished a historical novel by the time she was fifteen. She set storytelling aside to complete a BS and MS in Education and teach elementary art in upstate New York. When she and her husband moved to St. Louis, Witmer-Gow taught children’s classes in the nationally recognized program Arts in the Basic Curriculum program at the St. Louis Art Museum. She also completed her first adult novel.

Published in 1986 under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kary, LOVE, HONOR AND BETRAY garnered a Waldenbook Award for Best-selling First Novel. Since then she has published three historical romances as Elizabeth Kary and six historical novels as Elizabeth Grayson. For those books she received a Lifetime Achievement Award for American Historical Romance from the Romantic Times Book Club, A Write Touch Readers Award, and the Beacon Award of Excellence. As Elizabeth Grayson, she has twice been a finalist for the prestigious Willa Cather Literary Award. Her most recent historical novel, MOON IN THE WATER, was a 2005 Romance Writers of America Rita Award Finalist.

Her first contemporary novel, A SIMPLE GIFT, was published under the name Karyn Witmer. It was a Christmas Exclusive at the Literary Guild in 2005 and reached bookstores in 2006.

Karyn is currently working on both contemporary and historical projects and hopes to try her hand at travel writing when time permits. She makes her home in Monterey and St. Louis with her husband and cat.

Visit her website at elizabethgrayson.com or karynwitmer.com

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Kerry Wood Kerry M. Wood is a graduate of Yale University, San Jose State, and DLI. He taught high-school English and foreign languages in East Palo Alto, Woodside, and Istanbul. While in Turkey he wrote book reviews for the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, California. He got $5 per review. He moved up to $25 per when he returned to California and reviewed for the Chronicle. Co-authoring literature textbooks supplemented his teaching salary and sent his two sons to college. He meets with a weekly writing group led by Illia Thompson and is working on a memoir which he plans to complete on his deathbed. Some of his recent writing has appeared in the San Jose Mercury and the Monterey County Post.

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Member Profiles

Central Coast Writers