My fabulous writing chapter, RWA Online, is sponsoring our yearly writing challenge named after a former member, Kia Cochrane. Many thanks to DanaRae Pomeroy (we miss you DR, wish you’d come back) for writing the following article on our beloved Kia.
Dear Kia,
RWA Online hopes we honor your memory well.
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Copyright 2002
DanaRae Pomeroy
The Kia Marathon
Kia was a special lady to many of the people in the Romance Section and, later, the RWA Forum. She was published in contemporary category romance as Kia Cochran. Just prior to her death, she’d turned her hand to attempting mystery romances.
I was one of the few fortunate enough to meet Kia in person. In fact, we ‘camped’ in her back yard in our RV for three weeks, the spring before she died. Kia is responsible (long story) for our move to Greenville SC, ‘tho I’d never met her in person until we pulled into their driveway.
Several of us came to know Kia well through doing the Artist Way course via email and forming a Sacred Circle. When I had the opportunity to spend three weeks literally in her backyard, it was as if we were old friends. In addition to her writing, Kia was a voracious reader. She made weekly trips to the local library and and supported the Friends of the Library in their sales fundraising. She was also a crafter and viewed her knitting and her quilting as she did her writing … a puzzle to be put together, a story to be told, an image to be created.
Kia was always encouraging and her primary mantra to the rest of us was to write, write the story, tell the story, do not stop, do not pull out the red pencil, do not listen to the internal critic, until the story is on paper or disk. Then, go back and plug the holes, flesh the characters, add the description, whatever. The important thing was to write and tell the story, then worry about the “warts.”
Kia survived breast cancer and was headed toward her fifth year “clear” exam when bone cancer set in. Most folks never knew she was a cancer survivor, nor that she was as ill as she was the last several months. She refused to go to the hospital until the very end, wanting to stay at home with her husband, surrounded by the plants she loved and the dogs who were her “children.” She passed away in August of 2000, but she left a memory of her caring and a reminder that the most important thing a writer can do is tell a story that will touch the readers’ hearts.
Bitchin' Fiction: Musings by author Melissa McKenzie / Melissa Francis 