Getting to Know Each Other and Sharing Our Accomplishments

February 18, 1998
Notes By Bonnie Britt

We traded gossip at February's Show 'N' Tell and inspected books and CD-ROMs on everything from windshield bugs to software edited by our members.

Highlights included Hilary Powers' tissues and tome titled The Language of Tears. Hilary contributed "a very light, sensitive copyedit," and the sales staff kicked in tissues. Hilary also brought an Internet how-to.

Aubrey McClellan assured all comers he knows exactly what's in a book he indexed called Attenuated Total Reflectance Spectroscopy of Polymers: Theory and Practice. We believe him. In an earlier life, Aubrey worked as a chemist. Science editing is also a Carol Stone specialty; she displayed new books she edited on chemistry and on the biology of infections.

David Featherstone brought a film noir calendar book and another saluting the long-playing musical revue Beach Blanket Babylon. He managed an innovative project on ground-penetrating radar for archaeologists, a process to save artifacts from destruction by uncaring shovels. Jeanne Pimentel displayed French texts (proofreader) and a collection of high school voices (copy editor).

Samples from Lisa Auer-project manager, copy editor, and technical editor-included Running MS Office 97 and a tip book on computer game strategy. Lynn Ferar's editing samples offered a look behind the scenes at an ad agency.

Kristi Hein's first love is editing gardening books, but she also spots and zaps nonitalic parentheses in computer catalogues. She also displayed Web pages on choosing a public school in California. Chelsea E. Vaughn of Ten Speed Press contributed to Nitty-Gritty Grammar: A Not So-Serious Guide to Communication and was editorial assistant for the Iran-Contra book written by the independent counsel.

Linda Jay Brandt brought a CD-ROM she wrote captions for and the Multimedia Reporter newsletter she edits. Walter L. Kleine, ghost-writer, exhibited an advice book on earning $10,000 a month and another on bondage. Sally Smith showed a travelers' guide she edited and another on vegetables.

Lisa Carlson invited Timothy J. Korzep, author of a Wag-the-Dog-like novel she recently edited. Virginia Rich picked out easy-to-carry things: a CD-ROM for AutoCAD online help, plus two books: one, a rabbi's account of losing everything in a brush fire; the other, a workbook for teaching children to avoid violence.

Denise J. Fletcher drew laughs with her pseudo-site spoof on the Webheaded Woman with two webbed feet. It spotlights weighty issues like E-mail or Toe-mail: White papers on the pros and cons of electronic and postal mail.

Publisher Terri A. Boekhoff of Rudi Publishing showed her house samples-a book on early 20th-century civil rights, another on starting out as a chiropractor, and several collections of photos, paintings, and verse. What started Terri as a publisher? She confesses to buying expensive computer equipment that she put to every use imaginable but still underutilized. One day someone walked in and asked if she did books. "Yes!" replied Terri, and her career took off.