SinC/Hawaii Guest Speakers for March: Lourdes & Dave Venard

On Wednesday evening, March 16, 2016, Lourdes and Dave Venard will be the guest speakers for Sisters in Crime/Hawaii's monthly meeting held at The Makiki Community Library from 6-8pm.

Lourdes Venard

Dave Venard

 

The Business of Writing

and

The Writing Business

Lourdes Venard talks about the how to successfully navigate publishing in a market that's been in constant change over the past 10 years, and is still changing, and tactics that have worked for some authors in growing their readership.

Dave Venard, president of a tax and accounting business, will talk about the issues that specifically face writers and how to run your writing business like the business it is.

There will be a Question & Answer session following their talks.

Below is a SinC/Hawaii interview with Lourdes Venard from 2014 for those who missed it.

*****    *****    *****

 

Interview with editor Lourdes Venard

 

 

 

Our guest today is Lourdes Venard, a journalist with more than 29 years of reporting, editing, design, and project management experience. She has worked at major newspapers such as The Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Newsday. She currently operates her own freelance business, CommaSense Editing.

Lourdes edited the material for MYSTERY IN PARADISE 13 Tales of Suspense, an anthology of short stories set in Hawaii and written by local authors.

Sisters in Crime/ Hawai`i: Thank you for joining us today for an interview, Lourdes. Can you please offer a brief insight into something humorous, poignant, or unusual in your life that led you to a career as an editor? 

LOURDES VENARD: I don’t know that it was that unusual. I’ve been involved in journalism since high school and even then I had editing roles (I was editor in chief of the school paper my senior year). I was the kid who edited the valedictorian’s English essays; while she was brilliant, she still needed grammar help! Nevertheless, I started out my career as a reporter. After a few years, I realized I really enjoyed and was more suited to the editing, rather than to chasing people who didn’t want to be interviewed. I found I have a real passion for editing. Sometimes I think, ‘What am I doing? I spent half an hour arguing over a hyphen with a cover designer.’ But, really, that hyphen was important!

 

Sisters in Crime/ Hawai`i:  How did you become involved in the editing process of MYSTERY IN PARADISE? 

LOURDES VENARD: When I found out that a group of Hawai’i authors was compiling an anthology, I jumped at the chance to edit it. Hawai’i is a special place for my husband and I (we have a second home there). It is unlike any other place in the United States, and I was excited about the possibility of stories set there. Also, short stories seem to be making a renaissance. The short story lends itself to our fast-paced, time-crunched culture. But writing a good short story is just as hard as writing a full-length novel. The short stories in this anthology are truly unique, shaped by the Hawaiian culture, lore, and landscape. They are also quite diverse. That’s another thing I love about anthologies: Authors might write about the same subject, but their take is always so different! All of these aspects drew me to editing this anthology, and I was glad to have a small part in bringing MYSTERY IN PARADISE to readers.

 

Sisters in Crime/ Hawai`i:  What is your role as a judge for a scholarship program run by the American Copy Editors Society? 

LOURDES VENARD: I’ve been judging this contest for 10 years. It awards scholarships each year to three college students who show promise in copyediting. Many students gravitate to the more glamorous reporting end of journalism, but few have a love (or aptitude) for the behind-the-scenes end of it: fixing holes in stories, working with authors to make the stories more lively or readable, writing headlines and captions, designing pages, etc. Copyeditors are the last set of eyes on stories, so it’s an important job—and ACES wants to encourage that. Each year, we get a stack of applications and we carefully winnow through them and then the judges go back and forth to decide which students get the scholarships. It’s a lot of work, but we feel it’s important to the future of copyediting.

 

Sisters in Crime/ Hawai`i:  Can you tell us a bit about your current project(s)? 

LOURDES VENARD: I’m juggling a few things—OK, more than a few! I’m editing two manuscripts: one science fiction and one crime fiction, my two favorite genres. I’m also writing my own book. I work with many first-time authors and they always have questions that go beyond the editing (Should I self-publish? Look for an agent? How do I write a query? How do I format my manuscript? How do I market my book?). It’s quite a learning curve these days to publish a book, especially with so many options. So I’m writing my own ebook, which will hopefully answer some of those questions. In between all of that, I’m editor for a newsletter for 500-plus mystery authors, the Guppies, a subgroup of Sisters in Crime. The deadline for the next issue is coming up, so I’m editing articles, designing the newsletter, and soliciting articles for upcoming issues. Finally, I teach a copyediting course online through the University of California, San Diego, and I’m in the middle of the summer semester. 

Lourdes Venard can be found on the Internet at:

www.commasense.net

www.facebook.com/commasense

 

Sisters in Crime/Hawaii Does HPD SIS and Museum Tour

 

Honolulu Police Department
Main Police Station, Beretania Street



“. . . fascinated by the real-life origins of Charlie Chan.”

“. . . spent some time talking to Officer Fatu,”

“. . .whirlwind tour due to emergency call-out of the crime scene techs.”

Officer Croom



Officer Fatu

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny Delos Santos presented our guides with traditional kukui nut lei at the beginning of our tour. 

The Scientific Investigation Section of the Honolulu Police Department is located at the Main Police Station on Beretania Street in Honolulu. On April 21, 2015, Sisters in Crime/Hawaii had an opportunity to tour the HPD lab and museum. Due to an emergency call-out, the lab was being shut down early, so our museum tour was halted while Officer Fatu escorted all 24 of us down to the lab first. Rather than cancel the tour, the HPD tour officers merely juggled their schedule and graciously allowing us access to the lab.

Glowing summaries from Sisters/Misters in Crime/Hawaii members of their experience on the tour:

Kent Reinker, author of Science Fiction and Medical Thriller novels

http://www.amazon.com/Alain-Gunn/e/B00J84QD1Y/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1430090522&sr=1-1 

 I particularly liked the historical background that Eddie Croom gave us (in the museum). The fact that the police department has existed under the monarchy, independent republic and American state of Hawaii is very interesting, particularly since the historical roots continue to be represented symbolically on the present-day badge, which includes depictions of both the kapu sticks of authority and the law of the broken paddle. I was also fascinated by the real-life origins of Charlie Chan. 

Officer Croom welcoming SinC/Hawaii
to the HPD museum tour

 

 



 

 

A.J. Llewellyn, author of Mysteries set in Hawai’i

http://www.amazon.com/A.-J.-Llewellyn/e/B002DBJBC2/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1430090547&sr=1-2-ent

 

HPD Officer Fatu

I spent some time talking to Officer Fatu, and asked how the HPD cops felt about the TV series Hawaii Five-O. "We laugh at it. We think it's funny. It's off the mark in so many ways, including the kinds of crimes really taking place in Hawaii and the weapons that are used by both criminals and HPD." That said, he wanted to audition for the role of Kono Kalakaua in the reboot. "The original Kono was a big, Hawaiian guy like me, but they said, 'No, we're going with a Korean-Canadian actress for this!'" He did get to appear in the series however. "Look at this handsome guy!" he cracked, showing me footage of him firing a gun in a street scene. "Such good fun!" 

 

 

Joanna Bressler, Author

https://www.facebook.com/joanna.bressler

The Deceptograph

At almost the last minute, Vicki White pointed something out to me in the museum: The Deceptograph, Lie Detector Desk Model, HPD, 1948. Every inch of this ordinary-looking desk was wired to hunt down the lies of the suspects hooked up to it.

I couldn't tear myself away from the Deceptograph because I'm a Deceptograph too. I police my stories relentlessly to find and eliminate the lies in them. Alas, as with all polygraph machines, I am notoriously unreliable.

 

Gail Baugniet, author of Soft-boiled Pepper Bibeau mysteries 

http://www.amazon.com/Gail-M-Baugniet/e/B004QYTEGC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

SinC/Hawaii members
A.J. Llewellyn, Laurie Hanan, Gail Baugniet

 

 

Everything about the tour was exciting for me, including the luncheon at Auntie Pasto’s afterwards. The photographs I took tell much of the story. Our visit to the science lab (SIS) was a whirlwind tour due to an emergency call-out of the crime scene techs, but the sights and information imparted by our guide were invaluable to us as mystery writers and Hawaii residents alike.  

What is a Mass Spectrometer?

Mass Spectrometry (SM) is an analytical chemistry technique that helps identify the amount and type of chemicals present in a sample by measuring the mass-to-charge ratio and abundance of gas-phase ions. A Mass Spectrometer measures ionizes chemical compounds to generate charged molecules or molecule fragments and measures their mass-to-charge ratio.

Mass Spectrometer
 

Evidence collected by Honolulu Police Officers or Detectives is first turned over to Evidence Lockers, to protect chain of custody and to label and record. Any evidence that must be tested is then sent to the Lab, most often drugs such as marijuana or methamphetamines.

Once the evidence is tested, if it leads to a suspect already recorded in NCIC, National Crime Information Center, then a sample of the evidence is sent to the agency that entered the information. That agency then verifies if the sample is a match. If it does match, then the Honolulu Police Department can move forward with their investigation.

In the Firearms Laboratory, analyses are conducted on weapons and ammunition. They have the

capability to conduct any type of examination associated with weapons offenses as well as toolmark examination.  The Rear room of the laboratory is a one-lane indoor firing range, where test fire examinations are held. They also compare fired bullets and shell casings, and restore defaced serial numbers on weapons and other items.

The Gunshot Residue Lab is where they test for what we all know from CSI shows as “GSR”. GSR can be found on the skin or clothing of the person who fired the weapon, on an entrance wound of a victim, or on other target materials at the scene. Clothing or other items submitted to the lab can be tested to determine presence of GSR.

The type of weapon can influence the distribution of GSR, barrel length and caliber affecting how it is emitted. Delay in obtaining residues, movement and/or washing of the body prior to autopsy will diminish or destroy gunshot residues.

A special MAHALO to Jenny Delos Santos, our newest Sisters in Crime/Hawaii member, for scheduling the tour and for working closely with Officer Fatu to ensure we received a tour of Scientific Investigation Section of the Honolulu Police Department.

Jenny with the Motorcycle Display in the Museum

Sisters and Misters in Crime/Hawaii
HPD arranged special seating for us
in the Police Museum for a special presentation
by HPD Officers Croom and Fatu 



Officer Croom telling the story behind the HPD Police badge

   

For more information about the Honolulu Police Department and about their tours, visit:

http://honolulupd.org/community/index.php?page=museum

 

 

 

Kapolei Library Panel Discussion: Short Story Writing




Panel members Laurie Hanan, Greg Field, Doris Chu,
Gail Baugniet, Kent Reinker, and Dawn Casey welcome the audience



As moderator, I opened

the panel discussion with a comparison:

Short Story or Novel: What’s the Difference?

Counting off the differences. 

 On Saturday, October 25, 2014, at Kapolei Public Library, Sisters in Crime/Hawaii presented a panel discussion on short story writing to an audience interested in reading and writing mystery stories as well as other genres. As the group’s president, I had the pleasure of moderating the discussion. 

Sisters in Crime/Hawaii (SinC/HI) is the local chapter of Sisters in Crime, Inc., an international organization consisting of "authors, booksellers, editors, agents, librarians, critics, teachers and readers, whose primary purpose is support through communication.” 

As “Sisters-and-Misters” members of Sisters in Crime/Hawaii, we encourage new writers with various projects throughout the year. One such project consisted of compiling and publishing an anthology of mystery short stories set in Hawaii, MYSTERY IN PARADISE 13 Tales of Suspense, available in eBook and print at Amazon.com. 

Our discussion for Saturday afternoon addressed the different aspects of writing a short story. Panel members were SinC/Hawaii members Kent Reinker, Laurie Hanan, Greg Field, Doris Chu, Dawn Casey, and Gail Baugniet. 



Kent Reinker
Plot Construction

Captivating the audience!

Kent Reinker, the author of the cross genre mystery/medical/sci-fi novel entitled If Pigs Could Cry tackled the topic of Plot Construction, detailing the steps on how to convert an interesting anecdote into a memorable short story.

 

One of his suggestions: Tantalize your readers - Get them thinking!

 

 

 

 

Dawn Casey
Creating Setting

Author of the children's Christmas book set in Hawaii: A Christmas Gift, and librarian for the Hawaii State Library, Dawn Casey covered Creating Setting within a short story. Her advice included an important that all writers, not only beginners, need to be reminded of: Weave details about setting into the description of action. 

 

 

Doris Chu
Point of View

Journalist and screenwriter Doris Chu focused on View Point used in telling a story. She described the different points of view used by authors to tell their story and stressed that choosing the view in how the story is told is very important.

Introduction of our next speakers: Laurie and Greg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laurie Hanan
Character Development

 

Laurie Hanan, a cover artist (as demonstrated with MYSTERY IN PARADISE) and the author of the Louise Golden mysteries, explored Character Development and Creating Memorable Characters. Laurie stated that the reader experiences the setting through the character and the plot develops through the charter, making the character the most important element in any story. 

 

Greg Field
Functions of Dialog

 

 

Greg Field, editor and crime novelist author of Red Dirt White Bones, discussed the myriad Functions of Dialog. He explained that dialog is the verbal and non-verbal interchange between two or more characters.

 

Throughout the panel discussion, each participant offers their views on the topics presented, giving an overview of the basic requirements in writing a novel. 

 

In 2015, Sisters in Crime/Hawaii will continue to hold panel discussions at libraries around O’ahu. Anyone interested in hosting one of our panel discussions is welcome to contact me at: gbaugniet@aol.com

 

 

A special Mahalo to David Jones for taking and sharing all the photographs displayed here.