If you are a person who keeps these newsletters on hand for years and years, and if you were to drag it out in ten or fifteen years, please reread my predictions:

• Reddingwood is thriving.
• Walk-of-Fame has thirty-seven stars in front of the Cascade Theatre.
• Reddingwood sign has letters that stand twenty-two feet high and is on the bluff above the Sundial Bridge.
• Renamed Reddingwood Boulevard is the place to be on Friday night.
• Clarity Entertainment Inc. has won seventeen Oscars since building its studio complex on three-and-a-half lots totaling more than 77 acres at Stillwater Park.

These and more imaginative predictions came to me, and maybe others, during our Screenwriting Basics presentation by George Winship and Sharon Owen last month, which included a Q&A with Steve Durkee of Clarity. While we are writers at heart, and have several in our midst who excel in screenwriting, it didn’t stop many of us from catching “Audition Fever” the following Saturday at Redding School of Arts as more than 1200 people of all ages auditioned for a film that was scheduled to start shooting in August. Visit redding.com/news/2012/feb/18/film-company-conducts-local-audition/ for more of the story.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings, our new website is close, if it hasn’t been made public yet, to being unveiled. With a new name, Redding Writers Forum, it should be easier to keep you updated on upcoming and past events with articles and photos, submitted writings (look for Member Monday which posts work of our members), Board of Directors activity, etc. Powered by Word Press, it is formatted like a blog with multiple pages. Subscribing to it is easy and any updates and new postings will be emailed if you so choose.  Our new Webmaster, Director at Large Alicia McCauley, is doing a bang-up job, catching the enthusiasm of her first grade students for projects. Her bio includes this “…Throughout her childhood Alicia won awards for her truly magnificent poetry.  She’s since stopped torturing people with bad poetry and instead spends her free time trying not to crash while endurance cycling.  Alicia is published in the anthology What Teaching Means: Stories from America’s Classrooms and is a featured blogger for A News Cafe.  You can read more about her life as a teacher, writer and cyclist at her blog pedalsandpencils.com.”

Larry Watters,

President