The Reedy River Rats - 2010 a year of abrubt change

This month has marked an end of an era for a number of  reasons.  Some I will elaborate on later.  But this week, it;s in regards to a rough jolt to the Reedy River Rats Guerilla Writing Group A key and founding member,

  Brian K. Ladd  will be moving to Durham North Carolina. 
Brian has been in the group since its inception and there were long periods when he and I were the only ones in the group. Yet we kept meeting on a mostly regular schedule at various coffee shops, homes, pubs and parks, but most often at Coffee Underground in downtown Greenville.  We both state that our novels, Trimalchio's Couch for Brian and Shaman Circus for me, would not have been written without the constant meetings. And I can say that about a lot of my short stories and poems. Brian is now embarking on another chapter to his life. At least he's still close enough for a meeting a few times a year and we hope to set up some kind of Skype type of online face to face conference writers meetings.

I'm sad for me and happy for him because he's going back to school to earn his degree in ancient languages.  He'll have to tell you the exact degree - I can never how to say the real names.
It's been sad over the years as our members move away. Shaggy Randall and Wendy Swearingin are in Florida, Chris Patrick is in Kings Mtn, NC, Donna Nyzio is in Beaufort, NC, and tragically, Jason Scott of NC passed away last week (I'm working on a future post about Jason).
 So that will leave B. Miller and I here in Greenville. I hope we all will vow to continue as we struggle along in this wayward addictive  lifestyle of weaving stories and creating artwork.  For B. Miller and I, at this point, we couldn't stop writing if we wanted to, and we won't stop meeting and improving.
So it will be another transition to have Brian in  another state, and a new interplay for the Rats. A Good writers group or magazine staff becomes a family, as B. Miller so beautifully wrote in her post about Jason. We all  worked hand in hand in this crazy publishing world.
And Brian has always been so generous with his knowledge of language and history, philosophy and character. He will be missed a great deal, but we'll be looking for him on the world stage where his craft will continue to be appreciated on an international level.  Sure, we'd like to keep him all to ourselves, keep him here running the streets of  Greenville with the Rats, but that would be unfair.