By KAY S. PEDROTTI

Staff Writer

Author Terry Kay met some old friends and made some new ones during his book-signing stop in Peachtree City last week.

Kay and Floy Farr, a well-known civic figure in town, reminisced about the "Oglethorpe Power days," when Kay did public relations for the electricity group on whose board Farr still serves. Kay appreciated the qualities of the people and the product at Cruse Coffee Company, where he read from "The Kidnapping of Aaron Greene," his latest novel.

The excerpt he read included an anecdote in which a veteran newspapermen is moping over a bitter cup of coffee.

"But that wasn't the coffee here, of course," Kay pointed out.

The coffee company and Omega Books sponsored Kay's appearance. Omega owner Don Jones said he appreciates Kay's friendliness and willingness to work with all kinds of crowds and venues. He told Kay that the coffee shop was "full of people waiting for you."

"Well, thank goodness," Kay said, "Believe me, I have done signings where I took everybody who showed up out to dinner."

Kay has a knack with stories that serves him well as both speaker and writer. He started out in the business as a sports writer, and says "every day I miss journalism," but not enough to give up the fun of fiction writing.

Giving workshops for aspiring writers is something he likes to do, he says, but he thinks sometimes that professors make writing "incredibly complicated." He says his workshops offer a few suggestions from "my own approach" to writing:

"It's absolutely imperative to use the verb correctly." Verbs can provide contrasts to create images in the reader's mind, Kay says. If a writer expends several sentences telling the reader how quiet the street is, and then says a car "roared" down the street, that's a contrast that immediately arouses curiosity.

"Create a rhythm." Kay says this can be done quite simply, with length of sentences. A frantic scene would use short, punchy sentences, while longer, descriptive sentences could be used to build a location, such as a house in the mountains.

And this enigmatic advice, after 40 years of writing experience: "Truth is better discerned in fiction, because truth has a kind of elasticity to it. All good fiction deals with life's essential truths."

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