Home – safe and sound

First, I’d like to apologize for the lack of our presence Thursday and Friday. When I realized on Saturday that we hadn’t even written up the 5 Favorite Things on Friday I was appalled. Usually Ava and I spend the week keeping lists of all the potential things that it’s impossible to forget about it.

The writers conference we attended this past week was…was…overwhelming. All of our expectations were surpassed. We learned so much we didn’t even know what to remember by the time we left this morning.

We had lots of revelations and epiphanies and reevaluation of everything we thought about publishing.

It wasn’t just all paradigm shifts, though. There were shining moments of girlish squeeing. This is not something we

Ava’s gonna kill me for putting this up, but I think it’s a great pic that accurately shows just how excited she was to meet Jayne.

usually see from Ava. She’s not real big on hero-worship – not like Amylynn. If there was ever going to be an opportunity for her to lose her mind over an author, the national convention was it.

I was super excited about Susan Elizabeth Philips. I’ve mentioned that we have recently come to truly adore her. Her characterization is outstanding and I just wanted thirty seconds with her to ask her questions about her technique. I got that and, consequently, feel much better about my own process.

Presenting with Susan was a long time friend of hers and the all time favorite writer of Ava, Jayne Ann Krentz. Ava readily tells everyone how she’s read every single Krentz book, ever, since the dawn of time.

Both Susan and Jayne are tiny, petite things and we were fairly sure we could tuck them in a pocket and abscond with them. They probably should consider getting security. Honestly, if we’d been the type of people to drink large quantities of alcohol and act on these plans of ours, we’d be writing this from jail.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and we were happy to leave with a photo and an autographed book.

There’s always next year.