Is it famous or notorious?

The Quill Sister weekend was a smashing success!  We had the best time.  There was shopping and talking about writing and reading and shopping and drinking and shopping and a little sleeping and then we did more talking about writing. Oh, and there was giggling. A lot of giggling actually.

We arrived Friday in the early evening.  We checked into the hotel and terrorized the front desk.  Then we went to dinner and terrorized the waiter at Claim Jumper.  That’s where the drinking began with pomegranate sangria – something I recommend for everyone, by the way. 

Later that evening, we met Jimmy Thomas, world famous cover model. He just happens to be the dude on Kelli’s cover.  Even as drunk as I was, and I’m mildly embarrassed to say that I was quite drunk, I still took a pretty decent picture of Kelli and him on my phone.

Ava went to bed early and Kelli poured me into bed around midnight.  I guess.  Apparently, I snored and kicked her all night long and Kelli hasn’t let me forget it yet.  For the ten thousandth time, “I’m very sorry.  Truly.  I feel very repentant.”  But I still hold that she should have just woken me up instead of suffering silently as she did.

The next morning we headed across the street to the outlet mall and shopped our brains out.  I was so excited to get away from the family and spend some quality girl-time I could hardly stand it.  It was so nice not to be responsible for anyone but ourselves for two and a half days. We shopped for hours.  Seriously, hours, and it was glorious.  Nordstroms and Saks 5th Avenue, Kenneth Cole and Wilson’s Leather.  We fell madly in love with puppies at a pet store – more on that later – and and tried on countless pairs of shoes.  We had so many bags when we left the mall, we were staggering. When I unpacked today I found gifts galore for everyone and bought exactly one

The "after" picture of the car

 thing for myself.  Typical.

We got back to the hotel and had dinner.  We sat at a table hosted by one of my favorite Sci-Fi Romance writers, Gini Koch.  After dinner we terrorized a clerk at a CVS where we got the makings for Mud Slides, Mojitos and White Russians.  Of course, that made us a big hit at all the author panels we attended for the rest of the evening as Kelli toted around a 55 gallon drum of Mojitos in her purse.

One of my favorite things about meeting many of the authors we did this weekend was that I’d done interviews with them for the Tucson Festival of Books this year, but I hadn’t time to read all of their books by then.  There just isn’t enough time in the day to read all I want and write all I want and still go to that stupid 9 to 5 job and speak with my family.  The Sisters bought several books of authors that particularly intrigued us that we’ll pass back and forth.

On the ride home, Ava tortured her husband with texts about the puppy “we’d purchased.” We seriously considered getting one and then just passing it back and forth, moving it to the next sister’s house as soon as each husband caught on.  We figured we could make that work for quite some time before we were figured out.

Then I almost drove off the road laughing so hard when, as we passed the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch on the freeway half way home. 

Don't I look friendly?

“Let’s steal an ostrich and then pretend like we can’t see it when we get home,” Ava suggested.  “Come on, let’s practice our straight faces.”

“What ostrich?  You see an ostrich?  That’s weird. You know, we did go shopping but we didn’t get an ostrich.  Who would do that?”

One thing that still has me pondering….

Everywhere we showed up at the conference, and we always showed up together, people would say, “Oh! The Quill Sisters.  I’ve heard about you.”

Weird, right? Should I be alarmed?