Baby Boomers Plus 2018 Authors

First prize in this year’s contest goes to Dennis Winkleblack. His story, Never Work for Someone Who’s Not as Smart as You, is a hilarious chronicle of one young man’s perception of himself and his life. Our hero looks at life through a filter that only he can perceive. We, the reader, can only sit back and laugh. A must read.

Dennis Winkleblack is a retired minister and lives in Connecticut. He is the author of three self-published books (Createspace) written under the pen name, Will Martin: Basically Good People; After Church Mysteries; and the novella, A Lucky Break. A short story, Twins, was included in the Zimbell House anthology, The Lost Door. He’s currently working on a sequel to Basically Good People. Dennis will soon publish his fourth novel, “…and Smell the Coffee” via Amazon under his pen name. His website is willmartinbooks.com.

Go to the book page.

A Worthy Spine by Pam Parker is our second place finalist. In this irreverent look at the relationship between two sisters, Annie and Cora Matthews, who have lived together since the death of their husbands who happened to be brothers. Cora narrates this story from her death sentence diagnosis of breast cancer to the surprise ending. Funny, cheeky, bold you decide for yourself in this must read story full of well-defined characters and emotional relationships.

Pam Parker, a New England native who lives in greater Milwaukee, WI, has worked in public relations and teaching, but now devotes her time to writing and traveling. She is an MFA candidate at Sierra Nevada College. Her stories have appeared in print and online journals, including THE POTOMAC REVIEW, THE MACGUFFIN, GREY SPARROW PRESS and more. Her essays have appeared in THE WASHINGTON POST (and then by syndicate in many more papers in the U.S., Canada & New Zealand), QUEEN MOBS TEAHOUSE, in two anthologies FAMILY STORIES FROM THE ATTIC and DONE DARKNESS. A regular contributor to her local public radio station – WUWM Lake Effect, her audio-essay, “The End of Pinktober,” received a 1st place large market audio-essay award from the WI Broadcasting Assoc. Additional work has been recognized by the WI Academy of Arts, Sciences & Letters and the WI Writers Assoc. Links to some of her writing and speaking can be found at pamwrites.net.  Go to the book page.

Our third place winner is Martha Worcester with her story, Softening Sorrow. Don’t let the title fool you, this tale doesn’t wallow in sorrow, it deals with the relationship between an elderly woman and her young next door neighbor in a magnificent and enlightened way. Jenny is a delightful little girl who meets Millie, who lives across the street. Both have issues that need each other to resolve. Wonderfully well-defined characters. 

Martha Worcester began writing at age 75. She enjoys writing most about the lives of older adults. Stories she writes start with a core of truth from her own life experiences. They grow as she writes to become more like creative non-fiction. They evolve from memories of older adults as a child, her past nursing career, and her current work at Senior Centers where she facilitates a variety of groups and works with individuals to assist them in meeting challenges life brings beyond age 65. She calls her work with elders Keys to Aging: Late Life Design. She is especially thankful for the editing and encouragement she receives from writing workshop teachers and her monthly writing group. “Writing gives me a voice to describe for others the many paths of life taken in old age. It opens wide the doors to my own memories and imagination. So many authors whom I’ve never met have added dimensions to my life I would never have known except through reading their work. I publish to give back to the writing and reading world what so many have given and continue to give to me.” Go to the book page.

Trial by Water is a modern witch tale about a vigilante-type heroine who exacts justice for an elderly lady after she’s exhausted all the other avenues. The author, Laura Boldin-Fournier, crafts an exquisite story steeped in the supernatural but believable at the same time. Although immoral, readers will applaud the heroine’s method of resolving the problem.

Laura Boldin-Fournier is a former teacher and librarian who writes for all ages. She lives in Florida, but would consider moving to a place where pizza and chocolate don’t have calories. Because she’s an animal-lover, her favorite spot to write is near a window where she sees lizards, birds and squirrels in the field behind her home. Laura’s a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and the Mystery Writers of America. She’s a contributor to CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL books and magazines. One of her short stories won a contest sponsored by wordsandbrushes.com. Her humorous children’s book, AN ORANGUTAN’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS was published by the Pelican Publishing Company and is available on Amazon. Follow Laura on twitter and learn more about her at lauraboldin.com or twitter: @lauraboldin Go to the book page.

Emotions run high in, Guardian Angels Came Late by Marilyn V. Davidson. In the 1980’s, the horrors of domestic violence was still an often hidden social issue. In this harrowing first person account, a dedicated counselor and a mysterious bit of unexpected advice help an abused woman and her children escape from the nightmare that is their home.

A baby-boomer plus a firecracker, Marilyn Davidson was born on July 4th. Davidson, a native Minnesotan, graduated from Sauk Rapids High School. In her twenties she vacationed out West and was drawn by the beauty of the Big Horn Mountains. She moved there and lives in the Big Horns still. After raising her children, she graduated with a social work degree from the University of Wyoming. Marilyn shares life with her husband, Roger, a retired college instructor and their boxer, Lars and cat, Sophie. The Davidson’s have three children; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Watercolor painting, reading, and writing fill Marilyn’s free time. Her mother’s story-telling of bygone days inspired her love of writing. In warm months Davidson writes on their log home’s deck where she is likely to observe wildlife or they observe her. Currently, she is preparing an historical fiction manuscript for publication encompassing the neglected history of the railroad industry’s tie hacks. Go to the book page.

Ron L. Dowell’s Longest Journey is a delightful, lighthearted look at an elderly woman and her physical fitness obsessed son who does everything in his power to get her away from the television and out of her car. Funny and impertinent, this story is a must read just for the entertainment value but there is also an insight to be gleaned from the wisdom of those who have survived to a ripe old age. Don’t miss Longest Journey. 

Ron L. Dowell holds two Master’s degrees from California State University Long Beach. In June 2017, he received the UCLA Certificate in Fiction Writing. His short stories or poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Oyster Rivers Pages, Rain on Rooftops Review, Writers Resist, Stories Through the Ages Baby Boomers Plus 2018, Unlikely Stories, The Fear of Monkeys, Watermelanin Magazine, Moon Magazine, and in The Poeming Pidgeon. He is a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and a current member of the Community Literature Initiative Poetry Publishing Class at the University of Southern California.
Visit Ron at Crooked Out of Compton

Go to the book page.

Hocus Pocus, a wonderful story, full of insight and family relationships that are so well defined they could be any family. Written by Jean Ende, this is a chronicle of an immigrant Jewish family who bond together to care for a sick mother and watch over her two children. The youngest son decides to solve problems in his own way and the result is a surprisingly emotional scene that brings them together in a most unexpected manner. 

Jean Ende is a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx who moved to Brooklyn and is trying to exorcize her background by writing about her immigrant family. Her stories have appeared in Stories That Need to be Told, Bosque Magazine, Poets and Dreamers, Jewish Literary Review, University of California Press and JewishFiction.net. A graduate of the City College of New York, Jean worked as a newspaper reporter, political press secretary, and publicist for non-profit agencies before going over to the dark side, getting an MBA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and working as a marketing executive and college business professor. Since retiring she’s taken writing courses with the Stonybrook University MFA program, and has been admitted to the Breadloaf writing conference three times. Jean is almost finished with her first novel. Her stories have been recognized by Glimmer Train Magazine, the TomHoward/JohnReid Fiction Contest, Tennessee Williams Fiction Contest and Virginia Woolf Short Fiction Competition. Go to the book page.

Dub’s Secret by Rick Forbess is a completely believable and well-written account of a legend that has become reality for two men who work together at a brick manufacturing plant. Ordinary men who live ordinary lives but become involved in an extraordinary adventure that had all the earmarks of a tragedy. The surprise ending is well crafted, as is the entire story, about men of faith who are confronted with an impossible situation. 

Rick Forbess immigrated from Texas to Maine in 1980, where he still lives happily with his wife of forty-five years. He’s an emerging writer with four previously published short stories and a long list of rejections. He has three stories published since Baby Boomers Plus 2019; Flash Fiction Magazine; Typishly; and Good Works Review As his long career in the mental health field winds down, he’s devoting time to learning the craft of writing fiction. It has been a humbling and gratifying experience. Go to the book page.

In Monterey Papa, Debbie Fowler, tells us about a journalist who makes a chance sighting of a familiar face in the crowd as she writes a story about the Monterey Pop Festivals from the 1960’s. A fringe character from that era dies and a reminiscence of his life leads to unseen consequences for the journalist, Hildy, and her mother.   

Debbie Fowler was born in the middle of the legendary Baby Boom and has always been fascinated by the fascination with this demographic. She has raised a family and worn many hats during her many decades. She enjoys writing about The Most Famous Generation and is the author of an upbeat, nostalgia-sprinkled novel: ’62 Chevy, an Auto-Biography, the imagined story of consecutive owners of a 1962 Impala over the course of 45 years. Buy it on Amazon. Debbie and her husband Wayne’s have an anthology available on Amazon: Authors’ Pique. She has also released a new novel, A Jasper Tale. Debbie and her husband Wayne live in Arkansas and are the authors of the blog the mirthful roadrunners where they write about their frequent road trips or various and sundry topics they find entertaining or interesting. Go to the book page.

Geraldine Hawley’s story, Whistle in the Fog, has Victorian overtones but is set in post-war London. Worthy of Poe or Dickens, a London Constable, new to the job, is confronted with an impossible situation. He saves the day, but accidentally, and then faces the prospect of explaining to his superiors something that could not have possibly happened. Or did it?

Gerry Hawley is an ex-Wren, Royal Marine wife and mother of three, granny of five. In 25 years she moved house 29 times, twice overseas. She has written short stories and poems for years and done a good deal of writing of pantomime scripts for the local amateur dramatic club. She started her parish magazine and went on to edit it for nine years. Recently widowed after 64 years, she shares a cottage on a Somerset village green with a small, elderly and eccentric Springer Spaniel. Go to the book page.

Ernesto Marcos gives us, The One That Got Away. This is a love story, in a way, but an unusual one and we aren’t exactly certain what happens at the end. But that is part of the joy of this story and one man's remembrances of a time in his youth that he wants to recapture. A time when the man thought he had exactly what he wanted yet was unable to hold on to. 

My former employer once posted photographs of employees with thirty years of service. Photos of when they were first hired. I stared at one barely recognizing the woman in the picture, when my boss saw me and said, “Getting old sucks, doesn’t it? But it sure beats the alternative.” Not in her case! “Getting old sucks” is only a part of the story. Sure I can’t beat my grandchildren in a footrace anymore, mirrors are to be avoided at all costs, and I spend more time naked at the doctor’s than I do with my wife. But it’s not all bad— now my time belongs to me. I do the things of my choosing, I don’t write memos anymore I write whatever my imagination conjures up. I wake up without an alarm clock and drink wine whenever it pleases me. Best of all, I nap comfortably in my bed instead of hiding behind a computer screen. In a nutshell: it’s the new story of the old guy. Sure beats the alternative! Ernesto is working on a short story book that will include some of his own illustrations as well as a mystery novel Go to the book page.

Susan McLane’s An American Story takes us from immigrants in the hold of a 1740’s sailing vessel bound for Pennsylvania to new parents in a South Carolina hospital in 1960. This chronicle of the intertwined lives of ordinary people is a fascinating study of how we become who we are. We are all products of those who came before, and that is never more apparent than in the lives of the characters in An American Story.

Susan McLane has taught first-year and advanced composition courses at various colleges/universities in North and South Carolina for 25 years. Upon becoming an empty nester in 2017, she decided to investigate creative writing. After attending a few writing workshops, she joined a weeklong writing retreat in the NC mountains, where mention of a nearby bear-sighting a couple of years earlier kept her city-girl feet indoors and her mind exploring. She discovered the words “behavioral epigenetics,” which spawned the idea for her first short story. This theory embraces the notion that our genes have deep memory and call out to our current selves whether we know it or not. Discovering through DNA testing that she’s 45% German and 25% Scots-Irish reinforced McLane’s intuition that her senses awaken when she hears certain traditional German and soaring Scottish music. She likes to imagine her diverse ancestors interacting as they travelled south on the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road in the 1700s. In addition to this short story, McLane had an article published earlier this year analyzing an Emily Dickinson poem. She looks forward to learning and writing more. Whether at the beach or the mountains, she appreciates being able to call the Carolinas home. Go to the book page.

Spying on the Gestapo, by Robert L. Nelis is one of those short stories that you can put down and when finished want to ask, ‘is this true?’ Juliette is recruited to spy on the Germans in occupied France. The challenges and dangers she experiences should be made into a movie. Wonderful story and well written. 

Robert L Nelis began his writing career as he commuted to and from his job as a municipal official in Chicago suburbs, creating characters and laying out plots as he drove. Now retired, he enjoys having time to write the stories he planned over his twenty-seven years of commuting. Rob received a master’s degree in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois where he also served as adjunct faculty. He lives in Chicago with his wife of 42 years in a 110-year-old house and enjoys his four grandchildren. He is working on a portfolio of different short stories. Long term, he plans to assemble an anthology. As shown in his story “Spying on the Gestapo”, he writes stories with an arch; beginning middle and end. So far, six have been published. Go to the book page.

Ana Thorne’s entry, Miss Mimi’s Charm School, is a delightful story of a young girl, a bit out of her element, who handles the challenge with grace and wit. She and her father face the community prejudices when Inez attends a department store charm school. You’ll enjoy Miss Mimi and all of the characters in this entertaining tale of young girls growing up in the 60’s. 

Ana lives with her granddaughter in the Carolinas by way of Los Angeles, the Virgin Islands, New York City, Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle and Cincinnati. With an MFA in Creative Writing and a doctorate in Cultural Studies, Ana teaches nonfiction writing classes, film studies, English, and Africana studies online and in the classroom. Her short story, No Thank You, Otto Titzling, appeared in the Santa Fe Online Journal and the Two Hawks Quarterly. She is a reviewer at large for the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Program publications, Confluence and Western Tributaries. In homage to her Dad, a former Negro League baseball player, she maintains a visual research/digital storytelling website, www.thomasturnernegroleague.org. Ana writes stories about her experiences growing up as an African American/Mexican (Blaxicana) baby boomer in the Midwest and is currently working with the 2018 cohort of the Charlotte Lit’s Author’s Lab to complete a memoir. Go to the book page.

1200 Rupees by Nancy Zupanec does more than describe a camel trek into the Indian desert. The author takes us on a journey into a world of unknowns, physical and emotional, that she and her fellow travelers experience. Guides, camels, desert, and a glorious sunset are just the beginning of the adventure. Expect to learn more about human nature along with our heroine as she explores undiscovered places within herself.

Nancy Zupanec was born and raised in western Massachusetts and considers herself a New Englander no matter where she lives. After closing shop on her legal career a couple of years ago, she found herself free to write pieces that weren’t required to be logical. That’s one reason she loves the “creative” in creative nonfiction. Her greatest accomplishment thus far is the memoir she has completed. She knows she won’t be able to declare victory until the revisions are done, but she believes herself up to the task. Nancy is fond of traveling and gets ideas for pieces through her adventures, such as the trip to India that produced “1200 Rupees.” Next she plans to move on to Slovenian stories gleaned from time spent in her grandparents’ homeland. She doesn’t believe that distant travel is necessary to see or learn new things, though. She can just sit still and pay attention. Go to the book page.