APW Book Club 9/28 with Brenda Whiteside
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. For our September selection, we will be reading MacKenzie Chronicles, Secrets of The Ravine by Brenda Whiteside.
Date: Saturday, September 28
Time: 10 a.m. AZ
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85449056386?pwd=biRPHlTyYuAw6S4vmvDI5m61Lpaeix.1
Meeting ID: 854 4905 6386
Passcode: 303855
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/keu2eIwstc
MacKenzie Chronicles, Secrets of The Ravine
Lies can haunt, but the truth will kill. Magpie MacKenzie doesn’t believe in coincidence. But when a ringer for her long-dead love walks into her life the same day skeletal remains are unearthed, she’s convinced the universe is sending her a message. Fearing her father will be accused of the crime, Magpie will do whatever it takes to find the truth. Even risk her heart on this familiar stranger who may hold critical clues to the unsolved mystery. While visiting purportedly haunted Joshua, Arizona lawyer Zac Peartree is instantly drawn to the free-wheeling shopkeeper. His attraction propels him on a collision course between past and present where digging up secrets could prove fatal. Using decades-old clues and Zac’s déjà vu moments, the couple embark on a treacherous race to prove her father’s innocence before Magpie becomes the next victim. Can they save her from a murderous fate, or will love be the final casualty?
See you there,
Karen
Secrets of the Ravine is available on Kindle Unlimited for free or in paperback. https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Ravine-MacKenzie-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B08GPRFJBT/ref=sr_1_1
APW Book Club 6/22 with Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit
Please join us for our next APW Book Group meeting scheduled for Saturday, June 22, 2024 at 10 am via Zoom. It should be most interesting.
Topic: APW Book Club 6/22 with Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit and Leaning into Curves: Trusting the Wild Intuitive Way of Love
Date: June 22, 2024
Zoom: Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85158772773?pwd=bji20TcP9wrDn393Wymaxp9h8eeF65.1
Meeting ID: 851 5877 2773
Passcode: 318479
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/ke2lnxYSP
International Speaker, author, and mentor, Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit has written a memoir, a compelling tale of an intuitive intelligence that guides us through life. This is a story of hope that our journeys through life can be sure-footed when we listen from and follow the way of the heart, the beingness of love. It is a life raft.- judgment and forgiveness;
- separation, and connection;
- desire and surrender,
- mystery and miracles,
- intuition and synchronicity,
- faith and love.
Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit is an author, writer, speaker, and personal consultant to intuitive creatives. She is an influencer at the boundaries of psychology and spirituality.APW Book Club 5/25 Candy, Cigarettes, and Murder – Brenda Whiteside
The May selection for the APW Book Club is Brenda Whiteside’s new release Candy, Cigarettes, and Murder. We will be discussing it on Saturday May 25 at 10 a.m. on Zoom
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: APW Book Club 5/25 Candy, Cigarettes, and Murder – Brenda Whiteside
Date: Saturday, May 25, 2024
Time:10:00 AM Arizona
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85015210639?pwd=V0Z6UHE3bCtpR1RVdU8xZERuZHdZQT09
Meeting ID: 850 1521 0639
Passcode: 028932
Candy, Cigarettes, and Murder
It’s a birthday weekend with the gift of murder. Recently widowed, Emma Banefield looks forward to a getaway birthday weekend with her free-wheeling sister, Nicole Earp, sipping chocolate martinis at the peaceful, historic Dulce Inn. When a rude stranger, a nasty food critic, and a madhouse of temperamental artists greet them, all hope for a tranquil weekend evaporates faster than dew on a hot desert morning. Overlooking the riotous atmosphere is doubly hard after Em discovers the body of a hotel guest, and a second murder affects Nic personally. Now, entrenched in a caper that pits them against a surly detective, they cozy up to a hotel staff hiding dangerous secrets to uncover clues to the killer. Using their smarts and love of all-things mystery, will the Chocolate Martini Sisters solve the crime ahead of the obstinate Chief Detective or find themselves trapped in the middle of a third murder?
Amazon Series Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BQ9T7ZBX
Bio:
Brenda Whiteside is the award-winning author of romantic suspense, cozy mystery, and romance. She writes children’s books with her granddaughter under the names of Brenda Sue and Sadi Belle. She’s a born and bred Arizona native who sets her fictional stories in imaginary, but recognizable, Arizona locations. After marrying, she and her husband lived in six states and two countries, but a few years back they settled in Central Arizona. They admit to being gypsies at heart so won’t discount the possibility of another move. They share their home with a rescue dog named Amigo. While FDW fishes, Brenda writes.
APW Book Club 4/27/24 with Connie Cockrell
Topic: APW Book Club 4/27 with Connie Cockrell – Downtrodden
Date: Apr 27, 2024
Time: 10:00 AM Arizona
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87097024268?pwd=cktJODlqM0dLcERLV0xXaXJwbDRJQT09
Meeting ID: 870 9702 4268
Passcode: 210784
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kc94grNqxT
Get started reading now so you can contribute! The Downtrodden is book two in the
Book description:
Wary after escaping from the Children of God, Alyssa and Kyra stop to help another survivor community but it’s up to Kyra to save them all from a mad man’s plans before they’re trapped.
Hardship, hunger, and thirst plague Kyra and Alyssa after their escape from the Children of God. A lucky find allows them to re-arm and resupply. Now they’ve found another survivor community and after watching the place for two days they decide to risk introducing themselves. They’re greeted with enthusiasm at the door but by that evening, find they’re trapped again in a community teetering on the brink of desperation. The survivors beg Kyra to help them remove the community’s leader but her plan pushes her to her limits. Can she carry out the plan or will she and Alyssa join the ranks of the downtrodden?
Bio

Connie Cockrell
A 20-year Air Force career, time as a manager at a computer operations company, wife, mother, sister, and volunteer, provides a rich background for Connie Cockrell’s storytelling.
Cockrell grew up in upstate NY, just outside of Gloversville, NY before she joined the military at age 18. Having lived in Europe, Great Britain, and several places around the United States, she now lives in Payson, AZ with her husband: hiking, gardening, and playing bunko. She writes about whatever comes into her head so her books could be in any genre. She’s published twenty books so far, has been included in five different anthologies and been published on EveryDayStories.com and FrontierTales.com. Connie’s always on the lookout for a good story idea. Beware, you may be the next one.
APW Book Club 2/24/24 with Connie Cockrell
Save the date!
Connie Cockrell has graciously agreed to present her book for our review. If you are interested in presenting, send Karen an email and she will put you on the schedule.
APW Book Group with Connie Cockrell and First Encounter
Date: Saturday, February 24
Time: 10 am
Zoom link to follow
First Encounter: A SciFi, Young Adult, Post Apocalyptic Story by Connie Cockrell
Book Blurb:
It took a month of hard travel to find their first survivor community. After a cool welcome and a meager feast, Alyssa and Kyra find that the community has very restrictive roles they expect women to take. Imprisoned and starved, a young woman befriends them at great risk to herself. When the woman tells them the men of the community are bidding on Kyra to take to wife, they form a plan to escape. Weak, hungry and afraid, will Alyssa and Kyra have the strength to escape certain slavery?
Connie Cockrell Bio

Connie Cockrell
A 20-year Air Force career, time as a manager at a computer operations company, wife, mother, sister, and volunteer, provides a rich background for Connie Cockrell’s storytelling.
Cockrell grew up in upstate NY, just outside of Gloversville, NY before she joined the military at age 18. Having lived in Europe, Great Britain, and several places around the United States, she now lives in Payson, AZ with her husband hiking, gardening, and playing bunko. She writes about whatever comes into her head so her books could be in any genre. She’s published twenty books so far, has been included in five different anthologies and been published on EveryDayStories.com and FrontierTales.com. Connie’s always on the lookout for a good story idea. Beware, you may be the next one.
She can be found at ConniesRandomThoughts.com or on Facebook at: Facebook.com/ConniesRandomThoughts or on Amazon at Amazon.com/author/conniecockrell
You can purchase the book at Amazon on Kindle ($.99) or in paperback.
APW Book Club 10/28/23 with Bobbie Scopa
Please join us for the October meeting of the APW Book Club. Bobbie Scopa will talk about her book, Both Sides of the Fire Line: A Memoir of a Transgender Firefighter.
Topic: Both Sides of the Fire Line: A Memoir of a Transgender Firefighter by Bobbie Scopa
Date: October 28, 2023
Time: 10 a.m. Arizona
Join Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88383180755?pwd=a1FlaDZ6M2JuVFhZYjJBYlhWR3Y2dz09
Meeting ID: 883 8318 0755
Passcode: 739048
Bobbie will talk about how she got to the point of writing her story and making it public. It was a long and circuitous route. After not talking about her gender issues for years when she was young, then in her marriage, then after transition while working as a firefighter. Now after 65 fire years, she was now going to make her story public. Writing her story took only a few months to put on paper. The stories were already in her head. She just had to sit and start typing. It wasn’t a cathartic process like some friends thought it might be. But rather it was just an important story that needed to be told.”
BOBBIE SCOPA is a retired firefighter/chief, author, podcast host, and public speaker. She has forty-five years of firefighting experience and has received numerous professional awards and industry recognition, including Firefighter of the Year (1990) from the Professional Firefighters of Arizona; the Governor’s Award, State of Arizona (1990); a Certificate of Appreciation from the City of New York for work performed at the World Trade Center in 2001; and the Unit Citation Award for efficacy in the US Forest Service (2014). She was a featured speaker at the US Forest Service’s Pride Outside diversity, equity, and inclusion event in June 2021. She is a popular keynote speaker for leadership and diversity. She is also the host of the podcast BobbieOnFire that has had over a million downloads and is the author of Both Sides Of The Fire Line. Scopa divides her time between Puget Sound, Washington, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
APW Book Club 9/23/23 with Elaine Auerbach
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: APW Book Club: Dirty Linen: How Women Sued The Reader’s Digest and Changed History by Elaine Auerbach
Date: Saturday, September 23, 2023
Time: 10:00 AM Arizona
Zoom: The Zoom link has been sent to Book Club Members. All are invited. Email Karen at kslateiner@gmail.com for the link.
Dirty Linen: How Women Sued The Reader’s Digest and Changed History by Elaine Auerbach is the story of the landmark 1970s sexual discrimination lawsuit against the well-known magazine and publishing empire. It is a tell-all peek behind the doors of the ivy-covered tower that was home to what was then the world’s best-selling magazine. The lawsuit changed the communications industry forever. This personal tale of the fight for gender equality is both a look at how far we have come and how much there is still to do.

Elaine Auerbach
Elaine Auerbach’s broad experience includes writing for and editing books, magazines, newspapers, television and corporate communications. She spent 13 years as an editor with Reader’s Digest and more than 30 years at PepsiCo, Inc. She lives in Kingman, AZ. Elaine will talk about the process of writing and publishing her nonfiction book and the challenges of first person history.
Dirty Linen: How Women Sued the Reader’s Digest and Changed History is available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited and via Amazon. Elaine has hard copies available for this group at $10 plus shipping, which is less than what Amazon charges. Contact her directly to order: elaineauerbachauthor@gmail.com
Heads up: For our October 28 meeting, we will review Both Sides of the Fire Line by Bobbie Scopa
APW Book Club 6/24/23 with Nancy Marshall
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to the June APW Book Club meeting on June 24 at 10 a.m. with Nancy Marshall’s new book, A Dry Hate.
Topic: APW Book Club – A Dry Hate: Power vs. the People with Nancy Marshall
Date: Saturday, June 24, 2023
Time: 10 a.m. AZ time
Zoom: The Zoom link has been sent to Book Club members. All are welcome to join, however. Contact Karen at kslateiner@gmail.com
ABOUT THE BOOK
A Dry Hate began the morning a friend called Nancy Marshall to say, “They’ve thrown Jason in jail! What do we do?” A practicing attorney, Marshall offered to bail him out. Realizing that four activists had been jailed without justification, and defending one of them pro bono, Marshall decided to put the story into writing.
But the book goes way beyond that one arrest and trial. Nancy learned about the extent of abuse of power in the period of roughly 2000-2012, and she has included a lot of stories that have been “inspired by historical events.”
Nancy hopes that A Dry Hate: Power vs the People will have a broad readership with book and discussion groups and in high school and college classrooms. She has a deep and abiding belief that by continuing to educate ourselves, to think and talk about ideas and events, we will become a stronger democratic society. By opening ourselves to the interchange of ideas and knowledge we will be more able to combat propaganda, lies, abuse of power and threats of violence.
The book is available on Kindle.
- Nancy Marshall
APW Book Club – 4/27/23 with RuthAnn Hogue
Date: May 27, 2023
Zoom Meeting link has been sent to members. If you’d like to attend, contact Karen Lateiner kslateiner@gmail.com for the link. Guests are welcome.



I’m excited for this new year in the Arizona Professional Writers organization.



