11/6, Upstate SC Chapter of SinC to host Dr. Dena Rapp, President and Founder of Rivers of Justice.

Thursday, November 6, the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime has the pleasure of hosting Dr. Dena Rapp, President and Founder of Rivers of Justice. Dr. Rapp actively educates the public about Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

Dena earned a B.A. in Music, a M.S. in Education and an Ed. S. and Ed. D. in Curriculum and Instruction. She began her teaching career in elementary school and ultimately taught college undergraduate and graduate programs. During that time she was also a conference speaker at conventions and in churches. After 15 years of teaching as a college professor, Dena left her position to found Rivers of Justice and pursue her passion to help children who are caught up in Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Thursday, November 6, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Dr. Rapp and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Dena’ presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please visit our website—  www.sincupstatesc.blogspot.com  — and click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

10/02 Upstate SinC will host Ashley Harris

Thursday, October 2, the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime has the pleasure of hosting Ashley Harris, the Chief Chemist over the Forensic Laboratory at the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

Ashley Harris is a chemist, SLED trained drug forensics investigator, clandestine lab investigator, fire debris analyst, hazmat technician, bomb technician, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few. This short description does not do him justice. See below the meeting information for his complete bio. This should be a very interesting and informative meeting.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Thursday, October 2, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Ashley and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Harris’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please visit our website—  www.sincupstatesc.blogspot.com  — and click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

Ashley Harris is the Chief Chemist over the Forensic Laboratory at the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.  He graduated Wofford College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry.  He was hired by and completed training at the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) in Forensic Drug Analysis in 1997.  The DEA conducted a Clandestine Laboratory Certification course in Overland Park, Kansas in February of 1998 where Ashley started his clandestine lab investigation career.  In 1999, he left SLED to establish the forensic laboratory at Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.  He received his certification in Fire Debris Analysis in 2000.  He received his Master’s Degree from Furman University in Analytical Chemistry with a focus in forensic analysis in 2002.   He joined the Spartanburg County HazMat Team and the Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad in 2005.  He became a certified Bomb Technician in 2006.  He responds to clandestine labs, hazardous materials calls, and explosive calls in Spartanburg County and other neighboring jurisdictions. He has completed in excess of 15000 drug cases and 430 fire debris cases in his career.  He has also responded to more than 600 crime scenes, with the majority of those being clandestine labs.

Lowcountry Author Kathryn Wall To Visit 9/10

Wednesday, September 10, Kathryn R. Wall, author of 12 Bay Tanner mysteries, will present to the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Her Bay Tanner mysteries, including St. John’s Folly from Bella Rosa Books, are set on Hilton Head Island and in the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, September 10, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Kathryn and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Wall’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

Wall wrote her first story at the age of six then decided to take a few decades off. She grew up in a small town in northeastern Ohio and attended college there and in Pennsylvania. For 25 years she practiced her profession as an accountant in both public and private practice.  In 1994, she and her late husband, Norman, retired to Hilton Head Island.

Wall has been a mentor in the Hilton Head schools and has served on the board of directors of Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry. She is a founder of the Island Writers Network and served as national treasurer for Sisters in Crime. She has two stepsons, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

SHORT STORIES-THE HOW & THE MARKET

Paula Gail Benson, author, legislative attorney, and former law librarian will speak to our Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime on Thursday, August 7. She'll be discussing the writing and marketing of mystery short stories. She'll bring handouts to help authors plot out their stories and marketing strategies.

Our speaker's short stories have been published in many venues and she regularly blogs about writing mysteries.

Our monthly meeting is open to the public. It's scheduled for Thursday, August 7, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Paula and enjoy chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Benson’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m.

To speed service, dinner orders must be emailed by noon the day of the meeting. To see the special menu for our group, please click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.

CLEMSON CITY ATTORNEY FEATURED SPEAKER AT JULY 9 MEETING

On Wednesday, July 9, we’re delighted to have Clemson City Attorney Kay Barrett speak to our Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime about the challenges of a city attorney.

*** PLEASE NOTE. Since our normal meeting date of the first Thursday fell
on July 3rd, we changed the meeting date for this month
to accommodate people with Fourth of July holiday plans.***

Kay Barrett has served as the Clemson City Attorney since 1995. Her duties include prosecuting all of the City's jury trials and helping the City resolve minor legal problems. At the meeting, Barrett will describe how she prepares for trials, and what factors into decisions to offer and accept plea bargains. She’ll also share her thoughts about small city crime trends and discuss the types of cases she handles, including ones unique to a college town.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, July 9, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Barrett and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Barrett’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't eat, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure to have you a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please visit our website— www.sincupstatesc.blogspot.com —and click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

An Atlanta native, Barrett majored in history at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia and spent her junior year at the University of London, specializing in Shakespeare.  After receiving a Master’s Degree in history from Duke University, she taught junior high school for five years before entering law school at George Washington National Law Center in Washington, DC. She was admitted to the bar in July 1977, five days before her first son was born.  

Barrett has lived in Connecticut, Lost Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Boston in addition to spending a year in Guatemala. When her three children were young, she did volunteer community and political work. The family moved to Clemson in 1986. She has owned her own law practice since 1977, and began practicing in earnest after a 1990 divorce.   

Real estate and wills were an early focus since the time requirements provided the flexibility to handle parenting duties. As her children went off to college, she worked longer and longer hours at her private practice and signed on as the Clemson City Attorney.

In 2010, she closed her private practice but continued as Clemson City Attorney. She loves sports, plays a lot of tennis, and still finds time to hike, read, play bridge, and enjoy plays and concerts. She goes on a  two- to three-week trip three of four times a year. Her recent travels have included Southeast Asia, Costa Rica, Turkey, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Tanzania, Ecuador and Peru.  

Michael F. O’Shea, the Director of Investigations at Forensic Research Group, will speak to Upstate S.C. SinC June 5

Michael F. O’Shea, the Director of Investigations at Forensic Research Group, Inc., an accountant and a licensed private investigator, will be the guest speaker at the Upstate S.C. Chapter of Sister in Crime meeting on Thursday, June 5.

During his 25 years of financial investigative experience, Michael has worked closely with such agencies as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Resolution Trust Corporation, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the US Secret Service and ATF.

In addition to being a licensed Private Investigator, he is a member of The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the American College of Forensic Examiners (Certified Homeland Security Level II, Accounting & Security), Association of Legal and Medical Investigative Experts (Past Treasurer), The Association of British Investigators and the Institute of Directors in the UK.

Michael has authored several articles on fraud investigation and risk management and has appeared on television on several occasions as an advisor on reports concerning financial investigations. In addition to his work in the US, Michael has conducted investigations in England, France, Germany, Italy and China.

Michael has been our guest before. The creativity of fraud perpetrators always amazes me. Michael proved to be an interesting and informative speaker. It will be a good meeting.

The monthly meeting is slated for Thursday, June 5, starting at 6:15 p.m. for dinner and informal conversation with Michael at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. His talk will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

The Runway Café prefers our group’s dinner orders be emailed in advance to speed service. To see the special menu for our group and the procedure for placing an order, please visit our website — www.sincupstatesc.blogspot.com  — click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  Dinner orders need to be placed by noon the day of the meeting. The early orders allow the restaurant to prepare the food and serve our group promptly at 6:30 p.m. so we can finish eating before our speaker is introduced. If you place an order and do not attend or cancel by noon , you will be charged for the meal. And we will of course eat it with gusto.

Lady Rowan To Discuss Psychic Abilities, Pagan Beliefs at May 1 Meeting

On Thursday, May 1, the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime is pleased to host Lady Rowan. Rowan is considered empathic, clairaudiant, claircognizant and sometimes, clairvoyant.  This should prove to be an interesting, informative, and of course, fun meeting.

Instructing is one of Lady Rowan’s passions. She teaches religio-magick to local community members, and she educates on Paganism to help dispel a lot of the most common fears of non-Pagans. She is a High Priestess and leads her own coven located in Starr as well as serving other Pagan community members as clergy. In 2012, she led a didactic at An-Med hospital to educate their clergy on basic Pagan beliefs. 
Rowan has been reading tarot cards for over 10 years. For a short time she read for an online company, Circle of Stars, and was a Master Psychic for their site. For 2 years she served as the resident reader for McGee's Irish Pub in Anderson.

Lady Rowan served as the Director of the Upstate SC Pagan Pride Day in 2009 & 2010 before launching her own group festival that celebrates all faiths, the Unity Project. She was published in AREN 
(Alternative Religious Educational Network) for the Samhain 2009 issue and served as the first Pagan advisor for the Anderson Independent Mails Faith and Values board in 2011-2012 where she wrote Pagan informed articles each month. She still reads for clients, and she owns her own dream store, The Crooked Broom.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 1, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Lady Rowan and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Rowan's presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

April 3, Wayne Zurl to speak to the Upstate SinC

On Thursday, April 3, Wayne Zurl retiree of the Suffolk County Police Department and author of the Sam Jenkins mystery series will speak to the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Wayne grew up on Long Island and retired after twenty years with the Suffolk County Police Department, one of the largest municipal law enforcement agencies in New York and the nation. For thirteen of those years he served as a section commander supervising investigators. He is a graduate of SUNY, Empire State College and served on active duty in the US Army during the Vietnam War and later in the reserves. Zurl left New York to live in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with his wife, Barbara.

Twenty (20) of his Sam Jenkins mysteries have been produced as audio books and simultaneously published as eBooks. Ten (10) of these novelettes are now available in print under the titles of A MURDER IN KNOXVILLE and Other Smoky Mountain Mysteries and REENACTING A MURDER and Other Smoky Mountain Mysteries. Zurl’s first full-length novel, A NEW PROSPECT, was named best mystery at the 2011 Indie Book Awards, chosen as 1st Runner-Up from all Commercial Fiction at the 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and was a finalist for a Montaigne Medal and First Horizon Book Award. His other novels are: A LEPRECHAUN’S LAMENT and HEROES & LOVERS. A fourth novel, PIGEON RIVER BLUES, is under contract to be published in the near future.

For more information on Wayne’s Sam Jenkins mystery series see www.waynezurlbooks.net. You can read excerpts, reviews and endorsements, interviews, coming events, and see photos of the area where the stories take place.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 3, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Wayne and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Zurl’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please visit our website—  www.sincupstatesc.blogspot.com  — and click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

March 6 Meeting Cancelled

Due to inclement weather, the March 6 meeting has been cancelled. We will reschedule with Kathryn Wall, our talented guest author. Sorry for any inconvenience, but we didn't want our members and our guest to be driving with bad road conditions.

March 6, Kathryn R. Wall will present to the Upstate SinC

Thursday, March 6, Kathryn R. Wall, author of twelve Bay Tanner mysteries, will present to the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime. 

Kathryn wrote her first story at the age of six then decided to take a few decades off. She grew up in a small town in northeastern Ohio and attended college there and in Pennsylvania. For twenty-five years she practiced her profession as an accountant in both public and private practice.  In 1994, she and her late husband, Norman, retired to Hilton Head Island.

Wall has been a mentor in the Hilton Head schools and has served on the board of directors of Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry. She is a founder of the Island Writers Network and served as national treasurer for Sisters in Crime. She has two stepsons, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Her twelve Bay Tanner mysteries, including St. John’s Folly from Bella Rosa Books, are set on Hilton Head Island and in the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry.

The monthly Sisters in Crime meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 6, at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to meet Kathryn and enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. Wall’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

In order for the Runway Café to speed service, dinner orders must be emailed to Ellis Vidler by noon the day of the meeting. If you can't dine with us, we would still like to know you plan to attend so we can be sure you have a seat. To see the special menu for our group, please visit our website—  www.sincupstatesc.blogspot.com  — and click on the Advance Order Menu tab at right.  If you place an order and do not attend or fail to cancel by noon, you will be charged for the meal. And like always, we'll enjoy it.

Feb 6: Members Share Publishing Insights

Information/knowledge sharing is the theme of our Feb. 6 (Thursday) meeting of the Upstate SC Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Instead of a guest speaker, our talented and knowledgeable members will address a list of topics that our group has indicated they want to know more about. The conversations will be timed/moderated to keep us on track. Here are the topics: 

Social Media—Necessary? and/or Necessary Social Media
Formatting Books for Print and Ebook 
Self Publishing
Creating Audio Books
What to Expect From Agents
The Traditional Publishing Experience
Establishing a Relationship with Bookstores

We meet at The Runway Café, 21 Airport Rd, Greenville, S.C. Be there at 6:15 p.m. to enjoy the chapter fellowship. Supper should be served at 6:30. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. Both the dinner and the meeting are open to the public.

Please check out the Advance Order Menu on the tab at right. We order ahead to speed service. And don't forget to bring your cash and/or checkbooks to renew your membership for 2014.