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Tech Triumphs - Archives
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Barbara Logan Colley -- Mystery Woman

Hometown: Minden

Now Resides In: New Orleans suburbs

Best Tech Memories: Participating in the music program. Because of Tech, I got my first trip to New Orleans. Little did I realize then that I’d be living 20 miles west of the city for 40 years of my life. I think of Tech very fondly.

How I wrote my first novel: I read something by someone and it was either really good or really bad, I can’t remember. More importantly, I thought, ‘I could do this.’ I was brought up with the philosophy that I could do or be anything I wanted to be. I thought I could be a writer if I wanted to be one.


Since then I’ve published 14 books and have one more on the way. When writer’s block hits, I: Make myself sit in front of the computer. People have lofty ideas about how a writer writes, but the reality is that it’s a business. I signed a contract. I need to finish a book by a certain date. I have to write ‘X’ pages a day. If I don’t feel like writing, I make myself sit down and read over the previous day’s work. Eventually, I will get into the story and I will begin writing again.

Why I set ‘Scrub-a-Dub-Dead’ in a post-Katrina New Orleans: The book before that, ‘Married to the Mop’ was under production during Katrina and I knew I couldn’t just write a book and ignore it. Katrina has changed the face of the Gulf South forever. It had to be a part of the story in some way.

Who comes up with my titles: I do for the most part. My publisher wants them to have to do with cleaning or death. So I have to combine those two elements to make those titles. I do it very methodically. I list every cleaning term on one side of the page that I can come up with and I list every method of death on the other side and I try to match them up.

On learning how to solve and commit crimes: I watch a lot of movies and television. I read the newspapers a lot and I do research. I come up with an idea in my imagination. Then I figure out how my sleuth will solve the mystery and how she will solve it using cleaning supplies as her clues.

After that: I start playing, ‘What if?’ Then I sit and tell myself the story. I do it on computer, that way I can play with it a lot easier. It takes me two or three weeks to come up with a synopsis of 20 to 30 pages. I call the synopsis my map.

The book that hooked me on reading: ‘Gone with the Wind.’ I started one afternoon and I didn’t stop reading it until I finished it the next morning.

If I could have café au lait and a beignet with one fictional character, it would be: Jack Reacher. He’s the main character in a series by Lee Child. I’d say Scarlett O’Hara … but I’d want to slap her silly.

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Dr. Robert Rudnicki, an associate professor of English, was an invited guest speaker at Auburn University on Friday, Jan. 23 in a live web cast symposium honoring the life and work of celebrated Southern writer Lewis Nordan. The group of invited guest speakers included major creative writers or essayists, such as Clyde Edgerton, John Dufresne (author of Louisiana Power and Light, set in Monroe), Hal Crowther and Lee Martin. Moderators included Faulkner scholar and Mississippi Quarterly editor Noel Polk and critic Bert Hitchcock. The event will become available on iTunes, and the proceedings will result in a university press collection of essays from Pebble Hill Books.

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Donna Hood and Carol Owens, faculty members from the Division of Nursing, were recently selected to participate in a four-phase Health Information Technology Scholars (HITS) Program with Schools of Nursing from the University of Kansas, the University of Colorado – Denver and Indiana University, in partnership with the National League for Nursing. This project is supported by a five-year, $1.5 million grant provided by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bureau of Health Professions in partnership with the Office of Health Information Technology. The HITS project is designed to develop, implement, disseminate and sustain a faculty development collaborative to integrate information technologies in nursing curriculum and expand the capacity of collegiate schools of nursing to educate students for the 21st Century. Hood is Lincoln General – Glenwood Endowed Professor and has been on the faculty for 16 years. Owens holds the Franciscan Sisters of St. Francis Medical Center Endowed Professorship in Nursing and has been on the faculty for 13 years.

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The Rho Gamma Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society at Louisiana Tech, has been identified as one of the 10 most active chapters in the country. The national organization has extended an invitation to Rho Gamma to provide a special exhibit at the 2009 International Convention in Minneapolis, Minn. from March 25-28. The exhibit will offer strategies for other chapters on how to enrich their program and promote their own honor society.

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