Welcome to Lynnette Spratley's Home

More sappy sentimental stuff I won't apologize for

Doug Clegg, horror writer

The Barefoot Monk

Jim Cypher, Literary Agent

Dave Feldman, author of Imponderables

Deb Puente, cookbook author

Pam Kane's cruise travel site

Download Neurotica's music at Smackdown Records.com

Gin's Place (crafts)

McKeesport, PA, Symphony

Miscellaneous writing links

Multi-Jurisdictional Investigators Assoc.

I am a journalist and a frustrated fiction writer. Some of what you will find on this site has been published in the Spirit weekly newspaper, and some has not. Regardless, the contents of this entire site are ã 2001-2 by Lynnette Spratley and may not be used without permission of the author. The Garden City Volunteer Fire Department is permitted to place any of my newspaper features and/or photos on their website, and I am flattered that they have done so in the past.

What you won't find here are stories from the Spirit or anywhere else that I didn't write, unless at some point I get permission to post those. Other than a dollop of opinion, you won't find a lot of personal stuff, either. I detest popup ads, and will never place one on this site.

I'm still building this site, so please bear with me until I get the layout and content properly set up. Ritchie Scholes has been kind enough to scan photos for me, earning himself many, many brownie points. I plan to get a scanner as soon as I can afford it, and publish even more news and features here.

For Garden City council minutes, visit the city's website.

That I am able to accomplish anything at all in this space is thanks to my good friend, The Barefoot Monk. Special thanks to the Garden City and Port Wentworth Police Departments for diligently doing what they do and allowing me to horn in and do what I do.

All pages are up, now, but the content is still fluid. This is not as easy as I thought it would be, but it's more fun than I imagined.

With one exception, the other links listed relate in one way or another to members of the writing group I joined in 1993, Housewife Writers (HWWs). The name is tongue-in-cheek, since we have several male members. (The exceptional link is the Multi-Jurisdictional Investigators Association, a group of law enforcement and support agencies from several Georgia counties.)

The HWWs are as dear to me as family, even though I've never heard some of their voices or seen most of them in person. We are the epitome of diverse--not only in location (spanning the continent), but in age, economics, religion and genre.

Doug Clegg writes horror and Deb Puente writes cookbooks. I can't bear to read Doug's books so I buy them and donate them to the library.

Dave Feldman's long-running series of Imponderables books are filled with answers to such burning questions as, do dogs have belly buttons?

(Yes, they do.)

Peg Bowen's son has a band, Neurotica, that is participating in something called Ozzfest. She tells me I wouldn't like their music, and she knows me so well that I can take her word for it. Their tunes might interest younger people who visit here, so I've added a link to Smackdown's site, where a sample song is available free.

Badbeth Amos, one of the few Housewife Writers I've met in person and my closest friend, writes thriller/suspense type novels spiced with a bit of the supernatural. She's written a humorous mystery that I hope will find a publisher soon so she'll be motivated to write some more. Great stuff. She has many useful links on her site, including some fabulous forensics links.

Each of the sites listed here is worth a click on the link. I will add a couple more as soon as I can.

I've only sold one short story so far, so I don't call myself an author. I do have five novel manuscripts. One of those, Memory's Child, won first place in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category in Authorlink's New Author contest last year. The listing for MC spent quite some time as the featured site when it was first placed on Authorlink's site, and I am quite proud of that accomplishment. I may post the same small piece of the manuscript that Authorlink uses in listing available works. Who knows? Maybe an editor or agent will come cruising through here. That's all the bragging I can bear to do.

To find books by any of the published HWWs or to find music, videos, gifts, electronics (even power tools!), you can use the search box on this page to surf Amazon.com.

Above are the PIT instructors, Sapp's Wrecker Service drivers, and one of the mechanics from the series of classes conducted jointly by the Garden City and Port Wentworth Police Departments. This is one of my favorite pictures from the classes because no one was ready except James (the guy reclining on the police car's hood).

Also on this page, you can see my main dog, Groucho, clad in his cop costume. Groucho will be 16 years old this year, and because he has congestive heart failure, is hard of hearing and those sweet, nearsighted brown eyes suffer now from cataracts, I take him with me almost everywhere I go.

He's the nosy type, even more so than I am, and likes to poke around whenever possible, and see who and what is around us.

Since Groucho is often out of the car with me around the Garden City police, they are the ones he knows best. Despite his decreased visual acuity, he recognizes the distinctive design of the GCPD cruisers. We know that because, while he hardly spares other city's cars a glance, Groucho always checks out Garden City cruisers to find out whose they are.

Two of his favorite officers are Sgt. Brian Hood and Officer Benji Selph. I can't prove it, but I suspect Groucho can pick Benji's car out of a parking lot full of police cars with the same design. I know he can pick it out in a garage filled with civilian cars, even though Benji's doesn't have a lightbar on the roof to make it readily identifiable as a police car. I know, because he spotted that car in the garage at Goodyear one day and made a beeline for it, running right past other cars and some startled employees, with me in hot pursuit!

Not long ago, Benji stopped by the house to show me some photos. He was in his police car, but not in uniform. Groucho was fine when the car stopped at our house, but he was several yards away--too far for his nearsighted eyes to clearly see the person getting out of the car. All he knew was that it wasn't a cop, and therefore was not Benji. Groucho came running, hackles raised, ready to do battle, and only subsided when he was close enough to hear and see that it really was Benji after all and not a car thief.