Welcome to our Spring issue. We’re going to go to a quarterly-plus system this year as I struggle to get back on track. Expect a Summer issue in early July, a Fall issue in September, and a Holiday issue before Christmas. Winter/January 2008 will be in your mailbox in January. After that, we’ll see where we are. Your subscription still gets you 6 issues. If we go quarterly after this year, we’ll reduce the price accordingly.
         In order to recapture some of the immediacy our SIG has lost with my inability to put out an issue every 8 weeks, we’re looking at establishing  a web site. Ralph, my best friend, husband, and member of the SIG since before the last Ice Age has set up a sample site for us to look at.  There are so many options. Do we want to make parts of it members-only, with a password for some sections? How much of Calliope should be available on line vice in print?  Go to:

                                                                         www.CalliopeWriters.org          

                                                                Take a look. Tell us what you think.

         Many of the Mensa SIGs have gone electronic over the past few years. I would hate to lose our print presence, although this may be my old-fashioned view of the world. Web sites are wonderful. I visit many, and the World Wide Web is the first place I turn for research, shopping, to answer tough questions like: Why does the date for Easter change each year? Or How old was Kurt Vonnegut?                But to me, printed matter seems more permanent. You never know where an issue of Calliope may travel, or who might find it and read it years from now. I had this preference reinforced a few years ago when I received a letter from a woman in Canada. She wasn’t a member (although she later joined), but she wanted to thank me for an article I’d written about getting an agent. One of her professors had given her a copy of Calliope, telling her it was the best article on the subject he’d found. When I looked through the back issues, I was stunned to find that the article had appeared seven years earlier.
         On the home front, I was traveling so often for the first three months of 2007, I was beginning to feel like Mary Poppins (See page 5 for photos). I was in California on business for a week in January, then a week in February on the East Coast to meet my first grandchild—Liam. Then back to the airport in March, flying 400 miles North of everywhere (to quote Lilian Jackson Braun) to meet grandchild number two—Cariana. I was home for a day and a half before heading for Dallas, another work trip.
         But I’m home now, vacation time depleted, and facing the loooong, hot, hot, hot summer in Tucson. Nothing much to do (besides the normal 60-hour work week) except stay indoors and write. Life is very, very good!
         I finished my first online writing class (Writer’s Online Workshops from Writer’s Digest) in April. I enjoyed it so much that I signed up for another and am now about a third of the way through Focus on the Novel, a 14-week course that culminates in a 12,000 word assignment that should be a healthy hit on the opening of a novel.
         The best part about the current class is the instructor, SIG member G. Miki Hayden. She’s encouraging without letting you get away with anything (yes, given the chance, I tend to be lazy.)
         I embarked on writing classes because I couldn’t “find the time to write.” I know, it’s cliché. But there you have it. Work deadlines were always looming, and unlike many famous (rich, successful, popular) writers who schlepped through their early jobs, writing on the sly while collecting their salary and cheating their employer, my work ethic is ingrained. A sad commentary. Think how much poorer we’d be if Mark Twain spent all his time writing newspaper articles!
         Anyway, what the writing class did for me was force me to move WRITING onto the TO DO list. It gave me deadlines. And most wondrous of all, it gave birth to a fully formed character who might stand the test of time and the boredom threshold (mine) to be the protagonist in a mystery series. I can’t tell you what the sudden bursts of creativity, driven by assignments like: write a plot for a mystery, describe your setting, list and describe your main characters, have done for my overall quality of life.
          So, that’s the news here in the desert. Thank you to the many members who wrote to express condolences about the loss of my father. They meant a lot to me.
         It’s April, and the temperatures have flexed between 65 and 95. Summer will soon swallow us. Time to hunker down in the air conditioned cabin and enjoy the writing process.