A Busy Day

This morning when I left my room to go down to register for the conference I noticed the hall.  I'm in the room at the very end of the hall.  If you wanted to stay farther away from the elevator, you'd have to sleep in the stairwell next door.  Standing there reminded me of every horror movie ever made, especially The Shining.  Can't you just feel that hallway getting longer and longer?  Creepy.  I made sure that my door is double locked.  Just in case.


The first session I went to was confusing.  I don't think that the presenter was real clear on his subject because about halfway through one of the attendees handed him the schedule turned to the page and he changed his talk.  Kind of.  Which makes me reconsider whether I'll go to any of his other presentations.

After lunch I had my one-on-one critique and it was amazing.  CDS compared my style to a couple of popular and wildly successful authors and told me to get the thing finished because she wanted to finish reading the story.  She also asked me to resend the 10 pages when I've rewritten them and she'll do another read-through, no charge.  I spent the rest of the day on Cloud 9.  The timing of the critique was such that I couldn't attend the one presentation I was looking forward to today but it turned out that the presenter was ill and couldn't come anyway.  Dang it, that was one I was really looking forward to but there's a similar one tomorrow or Saturday and I have the handout from the cancelled one.  It'll be okay.

Since there weren't any sessions I could attend I went down to walk on a treadmill for 20 minutes or so.  I'm determined to keep moving to overcome my achy legs.  I think I'll call for a checkup when I get home.  Couldn't hurt.

LMC and I had supper together.  We met at The Clearing a couple years ago and arranged to meet here.  I had crab cake appetizers and a side salad and she had French onion soup and a salad.  Big spenders.

4 April--Tropical Obsession. 

Red, white, and blue, the little fishing boat, really more of a skiff, reflected its patriotic colors onto the still water of Lac Cai. It seemed to Manning that trying to get through the waves that reared across the mouth of the bay and out into the open ocean beyond would take a bigger boat, and definitely a motor. He stood on the rocky sand near the moored boat glaring at a brown pelican that seemed to have settled down to make a home on the bow. He couldn't figure out how Bunny imagined they would make it out to meet Santiago. Oars? As far as he could tell there weren't any oarlocks, no place to attach them either. At the sound of tires on gravel behind him the pelican straightened up, glared back at him, and spread its wings, flying around the bay looking for breakfast. Bunny pulled up in his ancient Toyota pickup with an even older looking outboard in the back. Ah, now things became possible.

Sorry I don't have any bird or sunset or flower pictures to share.  I'm just here in my aerie working on filling in that gaping hole in my novel and thinking about which sessions I'll attend tomorrow.  *yawn*  Time to hit the hay.
--Barbara