By Don Vaughan It’s been a few months since the membership of Heart of Carolina Romance Writers (HCRW) joined Triangle Association of Freelancers (TAF), and the TAF Board of Directors would like to extend a formal welcome to this wonderful group of writers. They have brought tremendous joy and enthusiasm with them and have helped make TAF one of the best writing organizations in North Carolina. Some people have asked how this arrangement came to be. HCRW used to be under the [...]
Photo by Matthew Ball on Unsplash By Don Vaughan, www.donaldvaughan.com Triangle Association of Freelancers (TAF) was formally established in 2003. But the organization’s roots run much deeper. I had been teaching a class for novice freelance writers through Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, and quickly realized a need for additional mentoring among some of my more promising students. We started meeting monthly to discuss their work, and as our numbers grew, I wondered if [...]
By Don Vaughan, donaldvaughan.com Last year, I lost one of my best friends. We’d known each other for eighteen years, and had grown extremely close. We visited almost weekly, and shared innumerable stories on topics both intimate and far-reaching. I miss my friend a lot. This special friend wasn’t a person, but the McKay’s Used Books & More in Raleigh, which suddenly and inexplicably closed its doors in April 2017. When Nan and I moved to Raleigh from South Florida in 1999, [...]
By Jeff Davidson, breathingspace.com An insidious trend is impacting authors, writers, poets and all creative individuals everywhere. As a result of the Amazon.com review process, virtually anyone can post anything about any intellectual property at any time. Such postings can be made independently of whether or not one has actually, say, bought and read the book, or has anything coherent to say about it. In Amazon’s quest to provide a “forum” for users, all reviews, those [...]