A.C.T. Consulting’s  Executive Coaches — Don Hardy-Holley, Dede Osborn, Linda Galindo, David Dorn — and I  will be providing another LEAD training for Equity Residential Properties, helping participants work through several individualized instruments including the MBTI, The Firo-B, and two competence-measuring 360s. We’ll divide into teams for Emotional Intelligence education, instrument review, role-playing and team action exercises. Overall, I’m looking forward to another exhilarating experience with the forward-thinking EQR Leadership Training Team and the participants they’ve chosen. We all benefit from reinforcing skills as valuable in our own families as they are in our business careers.

Charlie will be visiting the Redding Writers’ Forum Saturday morning, April 8th, to deliver an hour’s workshop on the importance of first sentences and first pages in hooking an agent’s interest. He will also touch on developing an “ear,” character formation, dialogue, proportion, and the mindsets that can be useful for creation and revision.  Participants will get an opportunity to practice their own style. The community is welcome.

Charlie had a great time reading and talking with the Redding Babes and Nobles Book Club Monday night.  The members, kind and fun as usual, had a host of great questions. Always a pleasure.

Thursday October 22   Redding    Shasta College Main Campus   Room 806  5:30 – 7:00 p.m.  Refreshments will be served.  Free and open to the public.

BOOK RELEASE PARTY AND LITERARY MAGAZINE LAUNCH: Charlie will read excerpts from his new novel, DEAD INVESTIGATION, sequel to earlier novel DEAD CONNECTION.   This event helps publicize the launch of Shasta College English Program’s new LITERARY JOURNAL. Joining him will be members of his local Writing Group: Kathryn Gesser, Robb Lightfoot, Melinda Kashuba, Jim Dowling,

Saturday,  October 10th,   Redding,   Charlie will be speaking at the REDDING WRITERS FORUM, All Saints Episcopal Church, Memorial Hall, 2150 Benton Drive at 10:30 a.m.                                                      Topics:  National Writer-in-Residence Program options, Writing Inspiration, and the experience of creating his first sequel, DEAD INVESTIGATION, a continuation of the DEAD CONNECTION story from 2006.

DUNSMUIR ART WALK:  That same afternoon, 1to 5, Charlie will be joining his wife, artist Joan Pechanec, and musician George Rogers for an expressive arts celebration in the ex-Raven Cafe building next to the Ted Fay Fly Shop and across the street from the Dunsmuir Theater.                                                                              At 3:00 p.m. Charlie will read a brief excerpt from his new book, DEAD INVESTIGATION.

Charlie’s  psychotherapist/artist wife, Joan Pechanec, —  http://joanpechanec.com/  —  has a successful one-woman art show: Color Drenched: Mystery and Mood, at the Orland Art Gallery. The show, September 4th – 26th, features forty-five oil paintings, giclées, mixed media, and prints.

Hats off to her for this marvelous transition!

A.C.T. Consulting’s  Executive Coaches and I recently provided another LEAD training for Equity Residential Properties, helping participants work through several individualized instruments including the MBTI, The Firo-B, and two competence-measuring 360s. We divided into six teams for Emotional Intelligence education, instrument review, role-playing and team action exercises. Overall, another exhilarating experience where we all reinforced skills as valuable in our own families as they are in our business careers.

February 2015  – Starting in March, Charlie will again be writer-in-residence at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts south of Mobile Alabama on the gulf. During  last year’s visit he worked on his upcoming novel DEAD INVESTIGATION, a sequel to his first book, DEAD CONNECTION. Farrar Strous and Giroux is publishing this sequel  in August at the same time the paperback of his fifth book, DEAD GIRL MOON, will be released.

The Center for the Writing Arts cottage is a great place to start a new book and the people of Fairhope are particularly open and interesting and talented — an altogether amazing community. Charlie has started an informal writing group and is currently brain-flossing, writing short stories, prior to beginning a brand new novel.

He is also collaborating with local artist/painter Chris Knight in a “spontaneous inspiration” experiment. Over a month ago he and Chris were talking about the similarities of inspirational experience between artists, musicians, writers, scientists, engineers, probably everyone from time to time. As a result they decided to go outside to different locations and, once there, work simultaneously for an hour with the same vista of inspiration.

Chris would paint what was in front of him and Charlie would write a short-short story the area evokes. Afterward, they would rehash, see what transpired — what caught their separate fancies — look for the similarities and differences in their processes.

So far it has been gratifying and very challenging. They’re proceeding for the pure educative and expressive pleasure of it. Yesterday they were working in a Fairhope alley.

DUNSMUIR ART AND AUTHOR WALK –  October 11, 2014

Charlie read novel excerpts, short stories & poems, signed books, and co-presented with his wife, Artist Joan  Pechanec. Her painting above: Fish River, Alabama.  www.jpechanec.com

Farrar Straus & Giroux has purchased DEAD INVESTIGATION for release in 2015.

This is the sequel of the earlier novel DEAD CONNECTION

(Starred Review: Publisher’s Weekly; Best Book Young Adult) about a reluctantly clairvoyant boy who is so alienated, he secludes himself in a cemetery and so lonely he talks to the headstones.
In the new novel DEAD INVESTIGATION the boy becomes tangled in an “un-cleared” murder investigation involving missing homeless people.