Previous Featured Authors
Menalcus Lankford |
My life history as a movie theatre usher and marquee maker, bank runner, general factotum at a newspaper, traffic engineer, Latin tutor, city planner on both coasts, community college prof, literary magazine editor, lay Episcopal campus minister, founder and president of the Baltimore Dickens Society, long time fiction writer and — what have I forgotten—has helped me get to know from my youth all kinds of people and develop an appreciation of their individual outlooks and lifestyles.
But, at the same time, because I write literary versus formula fiction (romances, detective stories, scary-scarys, shoot-em-ups, etc.) I’m after what those different types of folks are truly about, and what that tells us about human life in general.
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Rae James |
Rae James grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She completed the masters Public Policy Program at California State University at Hayward. From there she was recruited to join the State of California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office where she drafted legislation affecting local and regional issues. Later she was appointed Deputy Mayor for the City of Los Angeles.
After a career in public service, she sought her first love—writing, and published nine books by Camel Press. James won a best fiction award from Northern California Publishers and Authors. Her Hollis Morgan Mysteries series was sold to A&E/Lifetime for a TV movie series. The Inheritance, the first book in her Johanna Hudson Mystery series, was published in 2021. Book two and three in the series, Look Twice (2023) and The Missing Link (2024) followed.
James served as Chair on the Bouchercon Board, an international mystery organization producing an annual convention. She is a member of Sisters-In Crime, Mystery Writers of America and Northern California Publishers and Authors. James lives in Rossmoor.
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Balroop Singh |
Balroop Singh, an educator, a poet and an author always had a passion for writing. She would jot down her reflections on a piece of paper and forget about them till each drawer of her home started overflowing with poetic reminders, popping out at will! The world of her imagination has a queer connection with realism.
Poetry is her first love. Soaring on the wings of words, she gathers the dreams, blends them with the melodies of nature and crafts her poems. She writes about people, emotions and relationships. Her poetry highlights the fact that happiness is not a destination but a chasm to bury agony, anguish, grief, distress and move on. No sea of solitude is so deep that it can drown us. Sometimes aspirations are trampled upon, the boulders of exploitation and discrimination may block your path but those who tread on undeterred are always successful.
When turbulence hits, when shadows of life darken, when they come like unseen robbers, with muffled exterior, when they threaten to shatter your dreams, it is better to break free rather than get sucked by the vortex of emotions.
A self-published author, she is the poet of Sublime Shadows of Life and Emerging From Shadows, both widely acclaimed poetry books. She has also written When Success Eludes, Emotional Truths Of Relationships, Allow Yourself to be a Better Person, TimelessEchoes , Moments We Love, Magical Whispers, Slivers, Hues Of Hope and Fusion. Her latest poetry book Just One Goodbye has just been released.
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Marianne Gage |
Born in rural Oklahoma and later traveling west to the multi-cultural environs of the California Bay Area, Marianne Gage encounters a profusion of notable personalities: a famous cartoonist, an art professor, several well-known actors (including one musical comedy star), a presidential candidate, a young black revolutionary, a celebrated blind pianist, a jazz musician, and many more. Some of these meetings are pleasant and friendly; others are blundering and gauche. But they all add up to a lifetime of noteworthy experiences spanning the 20th century and leading into the 21st. In the final chapter, Gage and her husband host a fantasy party with all the luminaries in attendance, both living and dead. Noel Coward meets Huey Newton, Maria Tallchief gets to know Mercedes Ruehl, and a good time is had by all.
Marianne Gage has published The Wind Came Running, The Putneyville Fables, All Kinds of Beauty, and The Quirky Kids of Sunshine Hollow. Gage, a former teacher in the Oakland public schools, is a portrait artist and printmaker. She was married for sixty-eight years to San Francisco illustrator Ed Diffenderfer. She now lives in Rossmoor.
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Twila Slesnick |
Twila Slesnick is an unlikely memoirist, but some years ago, when her father first opened up about his experience as a Japanese language interpreter during WWII, she dove right in.
Shortly on the heels of that endeavor, she discovered that her father-in-law, William Freund, also had an amazing WWII story to tell. So she dove in again. The result this time, was his memoir (as told to Slesnick), Take Me Back to the Bloody 100th. The book chronicles Bill's journey from indifferent high school student to eager member of the Army Medical Corps and then, improbably, to pilot trainee. Next came the war and Bill's assignment to the Bloody 100th Bomb Group. His adventures did not end there, and his sometimes hilarious and sometimes terrifying escapades captivated Slesnick and inspired her to set his stories to paper. Slesnick was not new to writing when she took on those projects, although much of her writing was of a different sort. She spent her high school years in New Delhi, India. Upon graduations, she reluctantly left the subcontinent for college. While in graduate school at UC Berkeley, she co-authored mathematics curriculum materials for both teachers and students, and wrote for academic journals.
Once she left academia, she became a partner in a legal, accounting and investment firm in San Francisco. During that time, she wrote an investment newsletter and has authored a number of books for Nolo Press in the area of retirement planning. Slesnick has recently joined PWR, as well as the Rossmoor Writers group, and is enjoying the friendly and supportive nature of both groups.
She still returns *home* to India from time to time.
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Phyllis Wachob |
Phyllis Wachob is a relatively new member of PWR. At her first meeting, she introduced herself as a writer of cozy mysteries. Cozy mysteries are considered “gentle” books, no graphic violence, no profanity, and no explicit sex. Most often, the crime takes place “off stage” and the victim was a nasty character who badly treated others. The main character, usually a woman, is always very likeable and smarter than the local police. Think of Jessica Fletcher in the TV series, Murder She Wrote - she typifies the heroine in a cozy mystery.