Aspiring authors can hone their craft in one of Rowan-Cabarrus Community College’s personal enrichment writing classes, taught by Melinda Metz, author of more than 50 books, including “Roswell High,” which was turned into the TV show, “Roswell.”
Teresa Hearn said she wanted to take the class because she wanted to draw from Metz’s experience.
Hearn’s day job is working with people with special needs, but she just finished writing her first novel, which will come out in October.
“I love writing,” she said, “I have all these characters in my head that need to be on paper.”
She’s also written drama pieces for the past 15 years, primarily for church, but Hearn doesn’t have any formal fiction-writing training.
Linda Coplin is also taking Metz’s class.
Three years ago, she joined a writers group to rediscover her creativity.
“I’ve always known I was a writer, so I decided to take a basic writing class,” she said.
“Life is a story. I see stories everywhere,” she said, adding that she wants to learn techniques to better tell those stories.
Metz is currently teaching the college’s second offering of fiction writing, where she covers the basics. She talks about characters, plot, point of view and setting in the four two-hour classes.
“A lot of people think it’s more mysterious than it is,” Metz said, adding that the point of the class is to help “jump-start people.”
Metz will teach “Writing mysteries, thrillers and horror novels” on Fridays between Oct. 24 and Nov. 14 from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. at Rowan-Cabarrus’ South Campus in Concord.
Metz, a Concord resident, has written for both print and TV and spent more than a decade in editing.
She is currently working on a young adult thriller called “Sanctuary Bay” due out spring 2015, as well as a series of short mysteries for third- and fourth-graders.