Check out my short story, Shanti, at www.authorsden.com/laurellamperd
A excerpt below

I met Stephanie, the new arts teacher, the week after I saw Caroline on the plane to England.

"I'd like someone's help to hang my paintings?" Stephanie said at morning recess after everyone had introduced themselves.

"I'll give you a hand," I said, attracted by her vivacious pixie face framed by short dark hair so different to Caroline's cool blondeness. We made a date that evening.

 Stephanie's eyes lit up. "Thank you. Come for dinner."

Nigel, the manual arts teacher, a gangling one hundred and ninety centimetres, leered at us in his usual inane way.

I knew what he thought. Caroline has been gone a week and you're already on to another.

Stephanie's front door was open when I arrived at her unit on the second floor of a three-story block of flats. Receiving no answer to my knock and call, I went in.

She sat on the mat in the living area wearing a pale blue sari, edged with silver and red trimmings, staring through me as if in some subliminal trance.

I went outside and lit a cigarette, wondering whether I should go home. I’d finished my second cigarette when she came out.

“Oh, there you are. Do you want to hang the paintings before or after dinner?” 

lighthearted fantasy.

www.kobobooks.com

April's Calamity's Corner is available for download at calam@live.com.au
For Readers, Writers and Movie Buffs.
There is plenty of interesting reads in this month's CC.
Author of the Month is Rick Chesler, a thriller writer living in California.
Rick explains what research he did to write about his main character, Tara Mores,
who is a female FBI agent.
Always had a hankering to visit Brittany in France? The next best thing to travelling there is to read children's writer, Alanna's article and accompanying photographs.
Want to join CC's contributors? Send in a book review or favourite travel destination to calam@live.com.au

www.sonybooks.com

More on Harry Potter

More on JK Rowling and the Harry Potter books.

The children in my family love the Harry Potter books and movies. I have adult relatives and friends who love the books and movies. A writer myself, I think JK Rowling has a wonderful imagination. What do you think? Laurel

The below was taken from Paul's Writing Blog     http://paulcurd,blogspot.com.au

There was a minor furore when someone said the Harry Potter books were "poorly written, ill conceived and trite", drawing this impressive rationalisation:

"Being overly fond of adverbs isn't enough to totally condemn her as an author. I do believe she is of unparalleled importance, especially in what her books have done to bring not just more children into reading, but to jump-start the publishing industry into publishing more children's books. In a similar way to how Tolkien redefined high fantasy and has his spot in history for it, Rowling redefined magical fantasy and children's literature to a large degree. 40 years from now I doubt an author like Don DeLillo will be much discussed outside of 20th Century American Literature classes, but Rowling will still be eagerly looked over by young readers in 40 languages. Critical opinion will become more favorable to her as time goes on."

www.apple-ebooks.com

Three children try to save a creek for a wounded cormorant from the developers.

Skulls

Young woman considers suicide when she is jilted by her boyfried.

SKULLS 

Skulls adorning a landscape of hills

Teetering beside chasms

Cut brown into green softness.

In the foreground, a folding of green

like my green crumpled dress

which I wore

when I went out with Robbie

who doesn't want me anymore. 

I thought of the skulls

And how one day I'd be one. 

Why wait fifty years? 

They are flying above me

Against the skyline

Like balloons of methane gas.

I want to be up there with them

looking down on my desolate world. 

Laurel Lamperd

                                                Download from www.barnesandnoble.com
                                      Three children battle to save a creek for a hurt cormorant

How do you define a paragraph? Jessica Crockett a member of YAWRITE@LISTS.PSU.EDU>

Gives her view.

There is no hard and fast rule, but a paragraph should generally contain a
single 'thought' or 'idea'. This could be a phrase one character speaks, the
description of a place (which may be quite a long paragraph), or a coherent
bite of something like action where one major thing is happening.
Sometimes there will be one point in a paragraph, but sometimes there may
also be several unified points (this tends to happen more often in formal
writing like essays or other non-fiction works rather than in fiction, where
very long paragraphs risk slowing the pace of the work). A paragraph break
is also used to give readers a pause where one seems to be needed.
You really have to do it by feel.

I was told when I began to write - one new paragraph for each character's dialogue. This was turned on its head when in some classic novels more than one character spoke in the same paragraph. Like Jessica says - you really have to do it by feel.

Free read Short story Night Meeting at www.authorsden.com/laurellamperd

A bitter sweet love story

An excerpt below

"Damn," Darren cried aloud when he stopped the motorbike in frustration and realized what he'd suspected for the last twenty minutes. He'd taken the wrong turn.

He rode along slowly, looking for somewhere to camp, when in the fading light he noticed the cottage by the river. He traversed the little used track leading to the building. Getting off the bike, he stood for a moment outside the broken gate, staring at the small garden enclosed by a tumbledown fence. The grass grew thickly as it tried to smother the sprawling lavender bush and straggling red geraniums. Pushing open the gate, he went along the stone path and up the few wooden steps and knocked on the weather beaten door. When no one answered, he tried the door handle. It opened protesting. "Is anyone home?" he called a couple of times.

The room was sparsely furnished with a wooden table and several chairs pushed into it. Against the opposite wall was an open stone fireplace. Beside it was a small stack of wood.

He called again but no one answered. The place looked deserted.

Writers Reading

Are you a writer who reads?
Was there a book in which you became completely lost in the characters? I read Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and became involved in the characters in their struggle of good against evil. Tolstoy's books have made me aware that theme is repeated in some form or other in most of the books I've read. 

Suzannah from Write It Sideways has some thoughts on Writers reading.

1. Renew Your Love of Reading

Do you remember the first book you ever loved, perhaps one that was read to you over and over again as a child? Or the first book you read all by yourself? Or that love story you read as a teenager that made you fall in love with falling in love?

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.” — Ernest Hemingway

I’m wiling to bet there isn’t a writer, dead or alive, who hasn’t been transformed by reading. But when was the last time you got lost in a wonderful story?

If you believe, as I do, that writers do half the work and readers do the other half, then the act of reading is an act of writing.

Maybe we need a new word to describe this phenomenon, but for right now, make a writerly commitment to enjoy reading on a regular basis. Make a date with the library or that pile of books on your nightstand, and rediscover the joy of reading.

Read the rest of this article. Contact suzannah@writeitsideways.com>