Mechanicsville’s muse inspires local writers
By Angela Woodford
Special Correspondent
May 13, 2008

Hanover Writers will hold its third annual Hanover Book Festival August 2 at VFW Post 9808.

Mechanicsville is home to several fiction and nonfiction writers, many of whom find inspiration in their work and life experiences in Hanover.

In 2003, area writers began meeting for critiques and networking through the Hanover Writers support group.

The three fiction writers profiled below all live in Mechanicsville and belong to Hanover Writers, which meets on the third Saturday of each month at 10 a.m. at Mechanicsville library. Hanover Writers will hold its third annual Hanover Book Festival August 2 at VFW Post 9808.

Teresa Adele Bettino
Teresa Adele Bettino was inspired to publish her first novel, “The Adventures of Sugarbabe and Thunder,” when she turned 50. In the seven years since, Bettino has written three additional novels and a humor book for social workers, plus published two poetry collections.

With 30 years in social work, Bettino moved from New Jersey to Richmond in 1977 to work with mentally ill adults as a VISTA volunteer. Much of her writing is inspired by heart-breaking experiences in child and senior services. She describes her poetry as “dark,” but her novels as having happy endings.

Her second novel, “Degan and Me,” revolves around an impoverished girl with spina bifida who learns dressage horseback riding, which is guiding a horse through complex maneuvers. Bettino learned dressage as one of her goals for turning 50.

The novel’s main character lives in Caroline County, and is loosely based on a single mother Bettino visited in 1995 who was living in such abject poverty that her infant was turned over to social services for fear it would not thrive.

Bettino’s fourth book, “The Cats of Hanover Juvenile Correction Center,” also draws on her social-work experience, but focuses on the plight of feral felines.

While working at the Hanover Juvenile Corrections Center, Bettino helped lead a trap, neuter and release program for the campus’ feral cats.

A change in the correction center’s administration brought an end to the volunteer program. Bettino was so displeased that she wrote a book from the perspective of a mother cat about her feral kittens’ mischievous encounters with facility staff.

As Bettino approaches retirement, she is working in adult protective services with abused and disabled seniors. Her experience with this population inspired her second poetry book, “A Wicker Rocker.”

“In the first poem, a family leaves the house and abandons this wicker rocker on the front porch,” Bettino said. “This is a metaphor for how we abandon people who have problems – whether they’re mentally ill or physically disabled – when we have used the person. We discard them like things.”

Bettino’s latest book, “Two Dogs and a Boy,” also examines end-of-life issues, but through a young boy who learns about life-cycles through the death of his two dogs. “This is not a sad book where you cry at the end,” Bettino said. “It’s just about learning that life throws you different punches.”

Bettino’s books are available on Amazon.com and at Coffee Lane Café on Pole Green Road. For more info, visit http://www.teresaadelebettino.com.

Joanne Liggan
In 2000, a doctor’s misdiagnosis moved Joanne Liggan to dust off a book she wrote decades ago and have it published. For four months, the Mechanicsville real-estate agent thought she had multiple sclerosis.

“It sort of made me re-evaluate my life,” Liggan said. “I had these manuscripts and thought, ‘If something happens to me, this thing is going in the trash.’”

Three years later, Liggan published “Heir of Deception,” a murder-mystery set in an economically depressed Appalachian town. That year, she also founded the Hanover Writers support group.

Liggan’s renewed focus on writing grew, and she took writing classes. In 2007, she published a sequel, “Air of Truth,” and is now working on a third book in the series.

Liggan is also a writing instructor, leading a 20-week class on how to write a manuscript and get it published through Hanover Parks and Recreation and the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen. “I love teaching” Liggan said. “I really wish I had found that calling earlier in life.”

Her primary advice to students is “do not edit as you write, because if you do, you will never finish,” Liggan said. “Write a really terrible first draft, straight through, on paper, and go back and edit.”

Liggan speaks from experience. “It took me 10 years to write my first three chapters because I wanted that first chapter to be perfect, and it drove me crazy.”

She submitted it to an agent who read the first sentence, threw it back at her, and told her to try again. She decided to drop the novel’s labor-intensive beginning after all.

Liggan’s books are available by special-order at area book stores. For more information, visit http://www.liggan.net.

Miriam Walker
Miriam Walker drew on her experiences with bizarre dates for her first novel, “Kiss Millie,” which was published in 2005. The book began as a collection of stories about weird dates she had after her divorce, including one with a man who showed up with a leather skirt and halter top four sizes too small.

In “Kiss Millie,” the main character does find love in the end, but not after a few quirky adventures. Walker said she’s drawn to romantic stories, and based her latest novel book “It Took an Earthquake” upon the story of how Massachusetts Colonial aristocrat Sir Harry Franklin came to marry Agnes Surriage, a woman of humble means.

“My own experience prompted ‘Millie,’ and my hometown [of Marblehead, Mass.] prompted ‘Earthquake,” Walker said. “I guess I’m a romantic person.” In both real life and Walker’s novel, Franklin marries Surriage after she digs him from the rubble following a Lisbon earthquake.

Walker has written seven books since “Kiss Millie.” Her novel “Geneva Remembers” is a told by a grandmother whose grandchildren urge her to write a humorous memoir, but she instead tells a poignant account of her life.

“That was inspired by my own family,” Walker explained. Walker’s father attempted to save a friend who fell overboard while duck hunting in 1937. Her father brought the man, who was in his 60s, to shore, but he was already dead. Physicians assumed he died from heart failure since he had no water in his lungs.

“So I got to thinking, ‘How would my life be different if he did not survive that?’” Walker said of her inspiration for “Geneva Remembers.” Family dynamics are also a main focus in her book “Peeled Onions,” a novel about a girl who uncovers the mysterious reasons behind her mother’s distant, cold behavior.

Walker said she has always loved writing, even though she began writing novels later in life. “I wondered why I didn’t start earlier,” Walker said. “But I thought that maybe I had to live this long to write these stories.”

In giving advice to budding writers, Walker suggests they always write down what’s in their heads. She added, “There are two things you need to be a writer:
one is a bit of talent, and the other is what musicians call an ‘ear.’ You have to listen to it. Does it flow? Is it easy to read? Or do you get stuck after this word and wonder where it goes? That’s almost more important than talent.”

Some of Walker’s books are available at Coffee Lane, and she facilitates direct public sales. For more information, call Walker at 559-4829.

Teresa Bettino

Joanne Liggon Liggon

Miriam Walker

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