October 17 Meeting

Mary Jo Putney is a much-accomplished New York Times best-selling author of romantic fiction. Since 1987, she has published over twenty-nine books. She also earned degrees in 18th-century English Literature and Industrial Design at Syracuse Univerity. Before beginning her career as an author she ran a successful design business. In a 2004 interview Claire E. White described Mary Jo's writing: "Her stories are known for the psychological depth of her characters and for their sometimes unusual subject matter. She opened many doors in the industry when she tackled such formerly taboo subjects for the romance world of alchoholism, death, and dying, and domestic abuse."
See http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dec04/putney.htm for the complete interview.

Mary Jo Putney shared with us her journey from astrology student to romance novelist. One of her first astrology teachers was Margie Herkovitz. She commented that since she began writing her books, she put astrology on the back burner but has woven in descriptions of signs and planets in some of the characters of her books. Mary Jo mentioned that her primary use of astrology is to have her solar return chart done each year as well as to consult a horary astrologer to determine the best time to publish her books. She has had varying success with this technique, once having to wait until a editor left a particular publishing house before her book was published. She also like so many others, takes heed of the mercury retrograde cycles when determining the timing for signing contracts. She walked us through some examples of descriptions of well-known celebrities and asked us to guess their sign based on the description.
Mary Jo talked about her series of novels that combine historical romance with science fictrion and the paranormal. The series has been popular so far and she hopes to continue it as long as the public shows interest. She mentioned some of her early writings including a short story called The Stargazer's Familiar and offered to send a copy of the story to anyone interested if they send an email to her requesting it. Her email is MJP624@aol.com.

Announcements
- Breanna Gomberg has updated the membership contact list.
- Carolyn Lewis presented ideas for our membership campaign. A number of options were presented including having meetings at Towson Library (tentative date Dec 9, 2006), the Enoch Pratt Central Library (tentative date Mar 10, 2007) or Breath Books (after March 2007). Another option is to have a meeting place at the Tremont during the NCGR conference either in a separate meeting room or hotel room. The plan would be to host a party two hours prior to the start of the key note speaker. Personalized invitations would be sent out in advance inviting local people on our mailing list who have indicated an interest in astrology and attending our group.