Web Site Running

The website is running at last. It is simple at best, but will grow in a few days. First we've got to get books packaged to go out the door for Monday the big day.

It's been a long road since handing in the first short story that led to this final step on Feb. 1.

It started back in Naples, Florida. My friend Rhodes Hundley and I were having a cup of coffee at the club house at Silver Lakes RV park on Monday morning at the regular coffee hour. It was early November in 2003. I had helped Rhodes to put his book about his father into print the previous spring and we were talking about it. At some point the conversation moved on to the writing process and he or I began brainstorming involving others in the park in a similar process of writing about our life stories. Out of that morning's conversation grew the idea of a Monday after seminar that we called "Writing for Fun". We talked it up and come January the seminar began.

It was supposed to be Rhodes and me co-chairing it, but Rhodes, the humor man, quickly found his voice sitting at the side gently prodding me to the head of the table. I merely guided the group and the 10-15 men and women came each Monday and shared stories. They were great. Out of that seminar we collected the best and published a collection called, Was This the Way it Hapapened? I Think So. And 62 More Short Stories

The stories I read were "The Farm on Summit Ridge", "The Bee Tree", "Hiving the Bees", "Catching Skunks", "East Lakeview Grade School" and "Afraid of the Dark".

It was interested to me that every one of the people in the seminar who had rural backgrounds had attended one room schools just as I had.

The first four of these short stories ended up in the anthology.

There are wonderful stories in there by the old timers. The stories are universal and mostly humorous.

I have a few copies of this anthology left of my portion to sell by the way. If you are interested you may contact me through the web address. All proceeds from the sale of that book go to the Silver Lakes RV Resort Activities Committee who underwrote the publishing of it. We sold that book for $12.

Getting back to where I was going with this in the beginning of the posting. In 2004, the same year the SL anthology came out, we drove the RV back back Oregon and settled in Bend on the sunny side of the mountains after a stint from 1963-1998 on the rainy side in Springfield, Oregon. Bend has a beautiful Senior Center operated by the Bend Parks and Recreation Center and it just happened to be within walking distance from where we settled in.

One day I went in and asked if they would be interested in having a writing class on a weekly basis. Not a critical class but a positive, class where people could come and we could share stories under no "red pen" stress. We began meeting weekly. Out of that class came several memoir, travelogue, and numerous short stories.

Also out of that class came the first fictional chapters based on Summit Ridge called The Ruin.

So technically speaking the launch on Monday began with that conversation back with Rhodes over a cup of coffee at Silver Lakes 2003.

Respectfully submitted

Kenneth Fenter