News from the Woods

Please join us this Sunday, April 15^th, at the Cottage* as Co-Pastor Jon Rieley-Goddard leads a discussion on grammar and usage, a subject that evokes passion in those who read and write and reflect upon these deceptively simple activities. Topics will include favorite authorities, favorite rules, and your additions to a growing list that Jon has started, titled The Top Ten Things that Make Writers Look Dumb.

Jon is writing a book on grammar and usage with the working title of House of Verbs: Grammar (a Little) and Usage (a Lot) for Writers. Visit his blog for the project at HouseofVerbs.com. The book, which is half-done, examines writing from the angle of independent, or print-on-demand, publishing as well as being a book for all on the subject. The style is personal essay. Jon’s POD efforts are the work of BaldyBooks. He is the editor and publisher and holds 12 other titles and their attendant tasks with the company (BaldyBooks.com).

Jon was a copy editor on daily newspapers for 14 years before attending seminary.

He is author of The Mystery Man Murders (TheBrosGrim.com) and maintains an insane number of blogs.

Jon, who favors a free and easy, rule-aware approach to grammar and usage in his own writing, realizes that the group could spend an hour picking apart the choices that he made in writing this blurb and still not be done with it.

*Riverside-Salem Environmental Chapel/Cottage, 3449 West River Road, Grand Island; 4-6 p.m.; potluck following.  All welcome.

Please join us this Sunday, March 18, 4-6 p.m., at The Cottage (3449 West River Road, Grand Island) for an Update from Occupy Buffalo and to watch the DVD:  “Living in the Shadow of the Bridge” from Channels: Stories from the Niagara Frontier 2011 (Squeaky Wheel/BFLO Media].

Program and potluck,  4-6 p.m.,  at our Environmental Chapel/Cottage, 3449 West River Road, Grand Island.

Please join us for an informal Poetry Round-Robin* at Riverside-Salem Environmental Chapel/Cottage, 3449 West River Road, Grand Island, NY from 4-6 p.m. on Sunday, February 19th (potluck following).

Notable poets who will inspire the rest of us to participate are Gene Grabiner, Chuck Culhane, and Fred Jensen.

Please bring a poem or two that you would like to share — whether you have written it or just appreciate it.  (Prose is also welcomed.)

* The term round-robin was originally used to describe a document signed by multiple parties in a circle to make it more difficult to determine the order in which it was signed, thus preventing a ringleader from being identified.

Join us this Sunday, February 12th, 4-6 p.m. (potluck following) at our Environmental Chapel/Cottage, 3449 West River Road, Grand Island, for a author event.

Jon-Rieley-Goddard-2Co-Pastor Jon Rieley-Goddard will give a reading from his just-published novel, The Mystery Man Murders. The story follows the lives of a group of over-the-hill spies who have gathered together to run a used bookshop in the northern section of Buffalonya that sells a number of covert services as well as books.

These men and women, who once occupied a country they call Spookistan, where they worked in the shadows, now maintain a quasi-criminal enterprise that seems to have lost its protection from the governmental agencies, commonly known as TLAs, or Three-Letter Agencies, that have called up on them in the past for what could loosely be termed piece work.

The narrator, Goose Grim, a man who is the life partner of the woman who runs the bookshop, is in recovery from a longtime op he calls Operation Beloved. Under the cover name of the Rev. Mr. White, along with his longtime friend the Rev. Mr. Black, Goose played the pastor so well that he eventually had a conversion experience that ended his days in Spookistan. The two had spied on the churches they served, churches notorious for their liberal stances concerning the Vietnam War and other liberal causes over time.

Such notoriety is not new for Riverside-Salem United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ. Church members attracted the attention of TLAs for their antiwar activities during the Vietnam years.

Things get sticky when Mr. Black turns up missing and presumed by the bookshop crew to be dead, victim of a suspicious bus vs. pedestrian accident in the dark and rain.

Jon will have trade paperback copies of the book on hand for signing. The special event price will be $10. Also, anyone who leaves their email will receive an electronic version of the book free.

As the editor, publisher, and everything else at BaldyBooks, Jon is publishing the book using print-on-demand technology. The book is also available as an Ebook for Kindle or Nook.

The Mystery Man Murders is the first of a series called Grimoire – the Bros Grim Breakfast Serial – a story in pieces.

At TheBrosGrim.com, a blog Jon uses to post pieces of his work on the Grimoire series, the motto is Have some crime with your morning coffee.