Thanks, Georgia Writers

For Helping Me Write and Publish
'Whiskers on Pine'

In late 1996 I began writing the draft of a story about a teenage South Georgia tobacco cropper who has a coming-of-age crisis, in 1960, when he loses his sweetheart and nearly starts a clan feud. By early 1997, I had a draft but realized I needed some help. Then I heard about Georgia Writers Association.

First came encouragement from executive director Geri Taran. Then Paul McHenry, who was at that time the Critique Group Coordinator, placed me on a team of writers most critique groups can only envy: Sandra Hood, Teresa Parlato, Jedwin Smith, and Cheryl Syrett. Meeting in Gwinnett twice a month during 1997, this group applauded me when I needed it, then poured boiling oil on me, because I needed that too.

In 1998, I finalized all the group's revisions. Another member of Georgia Writers Association, editor Anne Kempner Fisher, pronounced the manuscript ready to be published, just in time for a Georgia Writers' guest speaker to say he would review any completed manuscripts. A year later, Bradd Hopkins of Russell Dean & Company returned to sign contracts for publishing two Georgia Writers' books: Barbara Jones's Moonlight Bowl Manifesto in 2000, for which she won the First Novel Category in the Georgia Author of the Year Awards for books published in 2000, last March, and my book, Whiskers on Pine, to be officially released on October 1, 2001. Whiskers on Pine will also be available as a "sneak preview release" at the Georgia Book & Arts Festival at Kennesaw State University, September 15.

Naturally, I hope many of you choose to read Whiskers on Pine (see cover below). It's a Georgia-based coming-of-age love story I'm sure you will enjoy. But I also hope that you will have pride in it as well.

After all, it's your book too.

-- Larry Hand