River Valley Authors Series
Introduction: The Chesterfield Arts Fiction Writers Group has declared tonight’s theme as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, referring to the good, bad, and ugly characters in their stories. They have grouped their stories into those categories for your enjoyment, but will let you see if you can figure out which stories are which!
Chesterfield Arts Fiction Writers Group
Helen Carter reads more than she writes. She loves to be entertained with mind-engaging stories and games. She cherishes the memory of the day she realized she could read and that words had meanings and painted pictures in her mind. She was hooked at age six. Her favorite card is her library card. Inspired to try her hand at writing, she submitted several poems and one short story to her high school's literary magazine, the Collage, and was surprised to find that all of her submissions were accepted for the small publication. Her non-fiction article on The Useful Skeleton was published by Cricket Magazine for Children. She works with Ryan Jones, author of Specters and Datashark as his editor, consultant, and publicist, and looks forward to working with him on his new book, Final Security.
During most of her professional life, Shirley Dowdy was a university professor of mathematics and statistics and a writer of college level textbooks. Later she moved to university administration and concluded her academic career as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at St. Louis University. Since retirement in 2001, she has been producing visual and literary art in the form of oil paintings and short stories. Much like her oils, which are often magnified views of faces or their parts, her tales look deeply into human experiences and linger on the mystery of relationships.
Ryan Jones is an aerospace engineer with experience on the Space Shuttle, the B‑1B bomber, the X-45C unmanned aircraft and several classified defense programs. He is a patented inventor, an instrument-rated pilot and a competitive pistol shooter. He thrives on research and interviewed fighter pilots, federal agents, former military officers and SWAT team members while writing his novels Datashark and Specters. He is currently inflicting rough drafts of his third novel, Final Security on the members of the Chesterfield Arts Fiction Writers Group.
Ushma Kothari recently joined the writing world. After listening to Ushma’s vivid tales, her friend nudged her into creating fiction. Ushma writes realism and historical fiction revolving around south-east Asia and its culture. Professionally, she teaches high school chemistry.
After winning a poetry contest in the second grade, Laurie Martinez fell in love with the written word. This eventually led her to pursue an English degree in Literature from the University of Missouri in Columbia. Throughout the years, she has leisurely written several poems and short stories, stemming from life experiences as well as dreams. One such dream led her to the challenging task of writing a novel for teen readers, which is her latest project, The Treasure Chest.
