Meet Denny's Chick, Kelly! Cheep, cheep!

It's us! The Denny's Chicks! And we're actually at Denny's! Waiting for our breakfast. From left to right: Kathy, me, Kelly, Sandy. You have to admit we are probably the best part of the decor!

Last, but certainly not least, I'd like you to meet KELLY HAYES. Kelly is EXTREMELY well read. If she hasn't actually read a book you mention, she'll know the premise. It's pretty much impossible to stump her. She could make a lot of money on Jeopardy. Alex Trebek would be totally smitten with Kelly and her dry sense of humor. With bottles of his Pinot Noir, he'd try to bribe her to be Writer in Residence at his Napa Valley Vineyards. "No, no, no!" Kelly would cry. "I can't move north and leave my Denny's Chicks!" (Not to mention that she's also happily married.)

The tres tres humorous interjections in blue are mine (i.e. Barrie's)

My name is Kelly Hayes and I met Barrie several years ago at an RWA-San Diego meeting. Shortly thereafter we attended an RWA plotting bootcamp where Barrie and I shared a hotel room and partnered with Kathy Krevat for the whole session. We shared lots of caffeine and even more maniacal laughter. I still feel sorry for our poor fourth partner who no doubt thought we were insane. That night, Barrie and I plotted into the wee hours and came up with some great stuff. Or so we thought under the influence of too much green tea. (Uh, Kelly, it WAS great stuff!) It was the beginning of a productive, if at times slightly wacky, writing friendship.

Soon Barrie wrangled (translation: gently persuaded) Kathy into forming a critiue group with us and Kathy in turn wrangled (translation: well, actually, "wrangled" pretty much covers it!) Sandy. We started meeting at Denny's and the rest is history.

I started writing about nine years ago when I was still living in London (my husband's a Limey). I chose historical romance because I thought it'd be fun to write. And it was, for years. But in the last year or so I've branched out a bit and tried my hand at YA fiction. Yes, Barrie has been a big influence in that respect. Her talent for coersion is quite impressive. (Nix "coersion." Replace with "gentle persuasion.") I had an idea for a near-future sci-fi which somehow, after telling her about it, turned into a YA. But I'm grateful because it was a lot of fun to write something totally different. I'm still revising it and plan to send it out to several agents very soon. (And a smart cookie of an agent will snap it up!)

I work at a local library where I run the library book club. So I spend a lot of time talking about books.

Uh, Kelly, you forgot to mention how INCREDIBLY ARTISTIC YOU ARE! Below is a card Kelly CREATED for me. It's got all sorts of elements from I So Don't Do Mysteries.

Isn't this card just amazingly creative? The letters are hard to read due to my lousy photography, but it reads, Fearless Rhino Warrior


And here it is again next to a $1 bill, just to give you some perspective.




Besides being super artistic, Kelly's an excellent baker, reviews our manuscripts with a fine eye, has a delightful understated sense of humor and is always on time! Can you say EXCELLENT critique partner.

And, uh, no, you can't have her.

She's ours!

Cluck, cluck, cluck. Another Dennys' Chick!

And we're baaaack. At the scene of the crime--Denny's--to meet another one of my awesome critique partners. By the way, I discovered that I loved inserting little blue edits in Kathy's post. So....I'm going to continue the tradition with Sandy's post! Okay, Sandy Chick, take it away....

I’m Sandy Levin, the oldest Denny’s Chick (Note from Barrie: but still very very cute) and the last to join this wacky bunch of writers. I’ve been writing most of my adult life, but I focused on romantic suspense about ten years ago. Since then, I’ve completed four manuscripts but remain unpublished. I’ve started a number of other novels in different genres and tried my hand at non-fiction, but my muse has gone into hiding. Denny’s Chicks have been very supportive of me in my dry spell. This past year I’ve been plagued with a series a health problems, so my writing has been limited to blogging at Peaceful Heart Stained Glass. When I’m not blogging, I’m teaching yoga and creating stained glass. I find that practicing yoga and meditating while creating beautiful stained glass works of art keep me stress free.

I love being a part of this group. While we are all friends, we are all professional when it comes to writing and critiquing. Here’s a sneak peak into how we operate.

How Kathy's handwriting looks. For real!

A few days before our designated face-to-face meeting, we email our pages to critique. Sometimes it’s as little as a page, but most times it’s a chapter or two. It’s important to set enough time aside to review everyone’s work, so we do email in advance if we have a large number of pages or a deadline looming. Some of us like to have comments sent via email, so we can compare notes to our current version. Some of us write comments on printed copies (what better thing to do at your son’s water polo practice or daughter’s play practice, although some of us have neater chicken scratch than others :-) (Note from Barrie: Kathy is BY FAR the messiest. No doubt she was a doctor in a past life.) We always print on the back side of used printer paper (Denny’s Chicks love to recycle). The first one to arrive finds the quietest booth in the restaurant. After ordering our skinny breakfasts, we take a few minutes to chat about our families, (Translation from Barrie: we gossip) then it’s down to business.

We try to divide our time so that everyone gets verbal feedback. The nice thing about our group is that each of us seems to notice something different when we critique. Barrie is the GMC (goals, motivation, & conflict) queen. If the scene doesn’t have it, Barrie’s on our case. (in a supportive, saint-like way) Having been a newsletter editor in my pre-novel writing days, I tend to notice incomplete or disjointed sentences, odd spellings, multiple uses of the same word. Kathy picks up on continuity and can always suggest how to make a passage funny. Kelly seems to notice everything else.

So as we review our work, we not only point out what we think are flaws and make suggestions on how to improve it, but also comment on what we liked about the work. If we don’t all bring pages, we might spend some time plotting ideas for our next chapter or discussing GMC. Our meeting normally lasts about two hours.



After filling our stomachs and reviewing our pages, it’s back to the computer . Writing is not the easiest profession in the world, but it is very satisfying. (Tres, tres true!)






Sandy, Sandy, Sandy! You didn't say that you're a stained glass artist EXTRAORDINAIRE!

And that, dear bloggy friends, is Dennys' Chick Sandy Levin. Isn't she just too adorable?