March New Authors Hall of Fame featuring Sandra Dallas

Will Spring arrive in Colorado this month? Maybe ... and maybe not.
The calendar says so, but my experience says that spring snow will arrive this month and the next—as in heavy, wet, white stuff. The kind that snaps tree branches that have started to show the promise to come of sunshine and warmth.

I’ll refocus on St. Patrick’s Day and honor the tale that Patrick drove the snakes to the sea, drowning them. According legend, the patron saint of Ireland chased the slithering reptiles into the sea after they began attacking him during a 40-day fast he undertook on top of a hill. Maybe better—he is credited with expanding literacy in Ireland.
I’ll cheer for that.

Onward … Did you miss out on February’s Author Happy Hour with Marilyn Van Derbur Atler, an author who have impacted millions with her life story? Each month, one of our Inductees is featured on the second Friday of the month. Insights, ahas, creativity reveals, tips for authors at all stages, and of course, what they are currently working on in their writing ... and life. Dom Testa kicked it off in January—it was a fun hour filled with surprises. Marilyn Van Derbur Atler revealed painful insights along her journey as an author. This month, mega bestselling author Jerry Jenkins opens up on authoring and so much more—Jerry has sold over 70 million copies of his books. Don’t miss it.

This month, 2019 Inductee Jerry Jenkins sits in the Hot Seat. Other Hall authors ready to real their “truthiness” on the Author Happy Hour during 2023 include Michael Gear, Mary Tyler Young, Margaret Coel, Charlotte Hinger, Kevin J. Anderson, Patricia Raybon, Jill Tietjen, and Avi. It’s a FAST hour. Incredibly revealing.
Always with surprises.

It's the Hall’s gift to anyone who What a gift for any author ... and book lover to be part of. They will have the opportunity to ask the featured author questions.
Answers are sometimes surprising.

A separate email will go out with registration to attend. All sessions will be recorded. Hold the date on your calendar: Friday, March 10th with Jerry and me.

Register to grab your Seat HERE: https://bit.ly/FRIAuthorHappyHour
It’s free ...

And ... why not get your seat now for the Induction Gala? ... September 16th is the big night for the 3rd Induction Gala for the Colorado Authors Hall of Fame.
We will know in July WHO will be honored ... and they will, too! Nominations have just closed—the Selection Committee will gather this month and begin the evaluation process.

Get your TICKETS HERE: https://coloradoauthorshalloffame.org/2023-induction-ceremony.html

And this month 2021 Inductee Sandra Dallas reveals her insights on The Mother Tongue ... think word usage. She and 2019 Inductee Clive Cussler our featured authors.

Attitudes at Altitude’s promise to our readers …

We celebrate the outstanding authors inducted into the Colorado Authors’ Hall of Fame in 2019 and 2021. They are the first in the United States that only honors published authors exclusively. The next Induction will be on September 16, 2023. Put the date on your calendar. The venue is the DoubleTree Hilton Denver Tech Center in Greenwood Village.

Each month, past Inductees are featured with their background and latest books.

One of our past Inductees will offer their sage advice on “how they do it”–whatever “it” is.

You will be the first to hear about Hall Events that are planned. Nominations for 2023 Inductions are OPEN ... Who is your favorite author—one that has delivered mega hours of reading enjoyment ... one that has made an impact on society or their field? Nominate them in February. Forms are on the Hall’s website.

Who Will Be Inducted in September?

The Colorado Authors' Hall of Fame honors the authors of extraordinary, published works who meet the Hall’s criteria. Members of the public nominate exceptional authors that have impacted them.

A diverse group of Colorado residents—including literary professionals, have been recruited to serve as the Selection Committee. It reviews all nomination submissions received by February 28th in depth, performs additional research if necessary, meets as a group and selects nominees for induction into the class of 2023 Colorado Authors' Hall of Fame.

Nominations are now CLOSED. All submissions will be sent to the judges to narrow them down to the final 12. They do not read the books, although many may be aware of some of a nominee’s published work.

Grab your tickets for the Gala Induction, September 16 HERE: https://coloradoauthorshalloffame.org/2023-induction-ceremony.html

Jerry Jenkins is in the Author Happy Hour Hot Seat and is part of the Hall’s 2019 honored Inductees.

He is the author of the international phenomenon Left Behind series, selling more than 70 million copies. Jerry has written more than 190 books across several genres (including romance, mysteries, children’s adventures biographies of several famous people). His writing has also appeared in magazines like TIME, Reader's Digest, Parade, Guideposts and many others. Left Behind was listed as one of the 100 favorite novels in America by PBS.

Jerry wrote his first books on a manual typewriter that sat on a board suspended between two chairs, learning early that there are no shortcuts to publishing success.
As a teenager, an author he admired took an hour to advise him, and he vowed that if he ever succeeded, he'd pay forward that kindness. And he does. Daily. Jerry owns the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild, through which he trains writers online from his home in Black Forest, CO.

During this month’s Author Happy Hour, you will hear his voice … how he found it … and how millions of readers and aspiring authors have been impacted.

Clive Cussler

A Colorado resident for many years, began writing novels in 1965 and published the first work featuring his continuous series hero, Dirk Pitt®, in 1973. His first nonfiction, The Sea Hunters, was released in 1996. The Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York, considered The Sea Hunters in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis and awarded Cussler a Doctor of Letters degree in 1997. He has penned over 70 novels, published in more than 40 languages in more than 100 countries.

Cussler was an internationally recognized authority on shipwrecks and the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, (NUMA) a 501C3 non-profit organization that dedicates itself to preserving American maritime and naval history, searching for lost ships of historic significance. He and his crew of marine experts and NUMA volunteers have discovered more than sixty historically significant underwater wreck sites. He has been honored with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration.

Sandra Dallas

Denver based New York Times best-selling author Sandra Dallas is the author of 16 adult novels, four young reader novels, and 10 nonfiction books. She was dubbed “a quintessential American voice” by Jane Smiley in Vogue Magazine. Her novels with their themes of loyalty, friendship, and human dignity have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and have been optioned for films.

A journalism graduate of the University of Denver, Sandra began her writing career as a reporter with Business Week. A staff member for twenty-five years, she became its first female bureau chief. Sandra covered the Rocky Mountain region, writing about everything from penny-stock scandals to hard-rock mining, western energy development to contemporary polygamy. Many of her experiences have been incorporated into her novels.

While a reporter, she began writing the first of her nonfiction books. They include The Quilt That Walked to Golden and Sacred Paint, a biography of artist Ned Jacob. She has reviewed books for the Denver Post since 1961.

Sandra has published sixteen novels, including Westering Women, and four young adult books, the latest Someplace to Call Home. She is a six-time recipient of the Women Writing the West Willa Award, a three-time winner of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s Wrangler Award and has won the Western Writers of American Spur Award four times. Among other honors, she is the recipient of the 2014 Eleanor Gheres Award from the Denver Public Library and the 2014 Frank Waters Award from the Pikes Peak Library District.

Sandra lives in Denver and Georgetown, Colorado, with her husband, Bob.
She is the mother of two daughters, Dana,
a lawyer in New Orleans, and Povy,
a photographer in Golden, Colorado.

Books of note: The Persian Pickle Club and Westering Women

The Mother Tongue

By Sandra Dallas

I love the nuances of English. That’s probably one reason I became a writer. I was fortunate to have three superb English teachers who taught not only proper usage and diagramming but the quirks of English as well. Among the things I learned:

The difference between further and farther. They are not interchangeable. Farther is measurable distance. Further is something you can’t measure in inches or miles. Example: You are further along in your studies than I, but I live farther from the school.

Me not I is the object of a preposition. How many times do you hear someone say, “Give it to Bill and I?” Take out “Bill” and you have “Give it to I.” People seem to think that me is ungrammatical.

Turn sentences around to find the right verb. This is one of my favorites. Which is correct? He is one of those who are going, or He is one of those who is going. Most people pick the second, reasoning “he…is…going.” Wrong. It’s the first, and that’s clear if you reverse the order of the sentence so that it reads Of those who are going, he is one.

All this came to mind recently when I read Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue. It is a history of English and proper—if sometimes absurd—usage, with nifty little tidbits thrown in.

A woman at a book signing once told me that someone in her book club listed all the made-up words I had used in a novel. The reader did so in a sort of tsk-tsk manner, and the woman who brought the list and I laughed about it. Well, I read in The Mother Tongue that Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his writings, and 10 pct. were made up. They include leapfrog, obscene, countless, gloomy and summit. Oh, and excellent. (Barky and brisky fell by the wayside.)
So I’m just following in his footsteps.

Another cool little fact is that Davy Crockett made up the word blizzard.

English, Bryson writes, contains more sounds than almost any other language. And the sounds of pronunciations often are different from what we think we’re saying. Ladies comes out as laties, handbag as hambag, and something as sompthing.

Regionalisms still exist, although they’re disappearing. We drink pop in Colorado. Elsewhere, people drink sodas. Northerners frost their cakes, Southerners ice them. Groceries go into a bag in the East, a poke in the South, and everyone else uses a sack. In Salt Lake City, where I went to high school, ignorant (pronounced ig-nert) was interchangeable with mean. I remember hearing a girl say, “He was so ig-nert to me.”

Bryson says there’s no reason for many uses. We’ve all been taught not to end a sentence with a proposition. Why? Who knows? You can ignore that one, he suggests. It brings to mind the rejoinder Winston Churchill gave a woman who admonished him for doing just that. He replied, “Madam, that is nonsense up with which I will not put.”

Of course, English doesn’t always translate well into other languages. In one American movie translated into Italian, a cop tells a motorist to pull over. In the translation, Pull over becomes sweater. And a man who asks to bring a date to a funeral, instead asks permission to bring a fig.

Of course, I learned plenty of things I’ve gotten wrong all these years. I always wrote “Betty’s and Bill’s house.” Bryson says just go with Betty and Bill’s house—no possessive for Betty.”

There are others I’ve been wrong about, too, but I won’t tell you. I’m sure, however, that the reader with the list will be happy to do so.

Mary is the co-owner of Peak Wealth Strategies and Director of Wealth Management & Planning for their clients. She is an author and book enthusiast, and a supporter of the Aspiring Author Scholarships, the Author Happy Hour, and looking forward to this year’s Induction Gala.

As a Certified Public Accountant and Personal Financial Specialist, she’s been advising and guiding individuals, families, and business owners since 2004. Her professional memberships include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Colorado Society of Certified Public Accountants, and CREW-Denver (Commercial Real Estate Women).

Support the Hall

The Colorado Authors' Hall of Fame celebrates the accomplishments of living and passed authors who have been connected to Colorado—their words, wisdom, accomplishments, and the life-changing impact their works create. The result: their legacy lives on.

The Hall is an all-volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that honors and celebrates authors connected with Colorado by birth, residence, temporary residency for writing encouragement and support, writing about elements within Colorado, or placing storylines in or about Colorado.

Authors’ words have immense power and impact on changing others’ lives. They solve problems, bring awareness to a topic, and provide hours of pleasurable reading. It’s the power of their words.

Your financial assistance through donations and participation at events supports the bi-annual Induction Gala in odd-numbered years, the Aspiring Author Scholarships, and the general operation to bring these events to the public.

Support the Hall for this year going forward.