In Gratitude for Friendship

"The friendship that can cease has never been real." - Saint Jerome

Okay, as promised, part two of my eight day sojourn south. I left my friends and their new black lab puppy and headed around the beltway to Springfield, where I met up with more friends from childhood. Can you say Chicago/Beach Boys concert? We were there, whatever summer that was—1974, I think it was, maybe 1975. Anyway, the three of us went out to dinner at their favorite restaurant, a wonderfully trendy place where I had the tastiest filet mignon and real mashed potatoes made from red-skinned potatoes.

I’m the kind of girl who would rather have a second helping of mashed potatoes than dessert, so I was in hog heaven. Those potatoes were my dessert! Afterward, we went back to their house, where they invited me to try out their new wireless internet thingy---it wasn’t a computer, but you could check your email and surf the internet on it--so check my email I did, for the first time in four days.

Amazing how quickly it piles up—and how quickly you can forget all about it—which is what I did at the conference. Totally. Didn’t give the internet a second thought. I was on vacation. The lobby of my floor, however, was a mysterious pocket of free wireless in a hotel that charged $12.95 a day for internet use, and $3.95 for 15 minutes of use down in the lobby, ka-ching ka-ching, so every time I stepped off the elevator, there were people left and right hunched over as many laptops as in a computer showroom. Over the course of four days, I watched our floor’s secret grow and grow. Nearly 2000 writers and free internet?...you do the math.

My friend’s husband went to bed and she and I sat up late into the night, talking books and trips. She’s a librarian and had attended the RWA booksellers and librarians luncheon the day before the conference, so we’d missed each other at the hotel. The national conference is known for passing out free books—each publisher hosts an autographing of their authors and provides the books for it—but the booksellers luncheon is a true bonanza. My friend came home with four shopping bags full of books.

Fortunately, she can donate the booty where she works, so even more readers will be able to enjoy them. Me, I managed to keep my take down to only a dozen books I don’t have time to read, knowing I’d just have to carry them back on the subway. But if you plan to attend a RWA conference, I’d suggest bringing a second carry-on size suitcase (empty) just to take home the free books. Every time we sat down to a meal there were free books on our seats. We also got free books in our free extra-sturdy tote bags provided by Harlequin, celebrating its 60th year in business.

Anyway, my friend and I talked about going to the RWA conference in Nashville together next year (still up in the air), and made tentative plans to take a trip to Ireland together in about eighteen months or so. Just enough time to save up for it and go. She’s on her way to London in the fall, but I’ve already been to Florida and DC this year, so it’s time to step back and save my pennies for a while.

The next morning we had breakfast, I checked my email again, and headed off toward the Chesapeake Bay for my next stop, the home of another childhood friend, the sister of my friend in Rockville (their brother was my 6th grade boyfriend.). She lives in a delightful beach community. Before I was even out of the car, the neighbor across the street was over offering to help if I needed anything. I just handed the phone out to him so he could talk to my friend directly, whom I had called to let her know I’d arrived.

My friend recently lost her husband, so I’m glad she lives in a community where they look out for each other. I spent the afternoon reading and resting and catching up on my laundry, an unexpected bonus, since I was now out of my conference clothes and into my casual wear. That night we went out to dinner at a steak and seafood restaurant on a pier at a marina. We sat on a picnic bench outside, ate our broiled scallops and fried oysters in the balmy breeze, and watched the lights come on in the boats on the water and the array of stately homes that lined the waterfront.

We also had a beer, my second of the year. For that story, read my blog post from the Florida cruise. After I ordered mine she looked at me knowingly and asked, “When’s the last time you had a beer?” I smiled proudly… “January.”

I’m such a wild woman, I know. We sat there, two friends of 40 years, sipped our beers, and talked about life and love and loss, until it was time to go. Then we went home and made peach tea with fresh mint and stayed up late talking some more, while she showed me the bead jewelry she makes and sells at craft fairs. She asked me to pick something out and I went to bed with six bracelets and a necklace, undecided. The next day I chose one bracelet and bought two more.

The following day, another friend from our childhood arrived. (I told you there were three of them, remember?) I’d called her the day before and asked if we could get together for lunch. Said I’d be happy to meet her half way or even drive all the way down to the county where we grew up and she still lives. But no, she wanted to come up and see everybody, so she all but dropped everything and came right up—on crutches, no less. She fell off a ladder cleaning windows and has been on crutches for two months.

We spent the afternoon catching up—I hadn’t seen her in three years, since my high school reunion—until my hostess got home from work. Then the Rockville contingent arrived (including the new puppy and its sleep-deprived family) and we all went back to the same steak and seafood restaurant on the water for dinner. Theirs was not the only dog present on the pier as we ate and took pictures and teased and reminisced. The Rockville group left right after dinner, no doubt to go home and catch some Zzzz’s. A sound plan, as long as the puppy didn’t sleep all the way home :).

Back to my friend’s house, where the three remaining women stayed up too late again, once again drinking tea and talking about love and loss—and faith. How faith gets you through. Both of my friends are overnight widows. One minute they had husbands and the next---they did not. One killed by a drunk driver, another lost to a heart attack. Then there’s me, divorced after 16 years of marriage. As one of them asked, “Who would have thought that three out of four of us would end up single in our fifties?”

You never know. And that is why friendships like ours are so important. So that you have someone in your life who will tack a couple of days onto a trip and come and have a beer with you at a picnic table on a pier. Or one who will drop everything and borrow a car (hers was in the shop) and drive a couple of hours (while on crutches!) to see you.

Here’s to 40 years of friendship, ladies, through good times and bad. I love you.

Remembering Gary

You know, just writing yesterday’s blog has brought back a ton of memories. Mostly about Gary Provost, whom I heard several people speak highly of at this year’s conference as we reminisced. Gary, also known as The Writer’s Writer, spoke at the conference I coordinated in 1989, then came back to speak at Pennwriters in 1995.

The Pennwriters conference is usually the second weekend in May, unless that weekend celebrates Mother’s Day. In 1995, Mother’s Day was May 14. So the Pennwriters conference was moved up a week that year. Gary was our special guest speaker. I was outgoing president, and sat next to him at dinner on Friday night. He wasn’t feeling well. He had a tremendous backache. I and the others at the table felt for him. What writer doesn’t have back problems, or get a backache that ‘just won’t quit’ now and then. He had also been traveling a lot, he said, and that can be hard on anyone’s back.

He completed his workshops the following day—another example of an author dedicated to delivering what he promised--and left the conference as soon as he could to go home and rest. Three days later he was dead of a massive heart attack. I later learned that backaches are a little known (at the time, anyway) symptom of what is called an asymptomatic heart attack. Today every heart attack website I checked lists back pain and nausea as something to watch out for. Not all heart attacks start with chest pains.

He was only 50, the same age I am now. Shocked along with the rest of the writing world, I wrote an article for the newsletter in his memory. Looking him up again yesterday, seeing the legacy his kind and gracious widow Gail has carried on in his absence, brought back all those memories. Gary and Gail asked me to be one of the first distributors of their Video Novel Workshop—an idea well ahead of its time. But, not being a salesperson of any kind of stripe, I didn’t do so well for them. In the end, I donated my copy to the Pennwriters library.

Still, my quote is on their video novel workshop promo page, and it lists me as the author of Ashton’s Secret, the same (but hugely improved, thanks to all I learned from Gary) book that is currently available on Amazon (with the purple cover) and will be released in ebook by The Wild Rose Press on June 26.

I’ve listened to all of Gary’s cassette tapes, over and over and over again. Watched the Video Novel Workshop. Read most of his books on writing. Corresponded with him directly. As I said yesterday, Make Every Word Count was my favorite of his books, and I recommend it to this day. I noticed just now when I clicked on the link for it from Gary’s site, it took me to the same Amazon page I had been on yesterday, and the number of copies had gone down by two.

Coincidence? I think not. Bless you, whoever you are. Your writing will improve immeasurably, I guarantee it.

The only thing left for me to do now is attend Gary’s Writer’s Retreat Workshop, a ten-day workshop currently running $1650, all materials, meals and lodging included. Not this year—I’m already going to RWA nationals in July, but it’s certainly something to think about for 2010. And it’s within driving distance….how could I have missed that all these years? I really need to step away from the keyboard now and then and see what’s going on in the world.

So anyway, that’s my little trip down memory lane, and I’ll be back some other time with memories of this year’s conference. I found the program, by the way. After looking for it for an hour, it was within reach from my keyboard. As my mother says, “If it had been a snake, it would have bit you.” I found it accidentally (of course), while searching for something else (of course), which I still haven’t found. Definitely time for a serious office cleaning.

P.S. I did find out why Tim Esaias was tossed out of the organization during the 2009 conference. It was at the Saturday morning business meeting. Apparently during a polling of the membership on some issue, he was the only NAY-sayer. So the president disenfranchised him on the spot. I’m sure he’s back in the organization’s good graces by now, especially after his wonderfully inspiring keynote speech. More on this later, too :).

Sunday's Inspirational Quote

Four weeks ago today the 2009 Pennwriters conference ended. Amazing how time flies. But between recurring car troubles and my parents visiting for a week and several other projects I needed to get off my desk, I simply haven’t had time to sit down and reflect on the conference. I do know it was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended anywhere, and for that, kudos go out to Annette Dashofy, conference coordinator extraordinaire, who managed to make the whole weekend look effortless. Check out her Diary of a Conference Coordinator blog here.

My biggest surprise was to check the conference schedule the night before and find out it started at 9:00 a.m. on Friday instead of noon, as it has in years past. (Although not in recent years past, but I was fixated on noon for some reason.) I managed to get there around 11:00 a.m. and check in before heading on down to a delicious—best conference food I’ve ever had—Published Author’s Luncheon with two guest speakers.

The first was copyright attorney Heather S. Heidlebaugh who impressed upon us the absolute necessity of having our work registered with the copyright office, and the second was former Pennwriters keynote speaker D.L. Wilson, author of Unholy Grail, whom I was unfortunately unable to stick around for, as my workshop on dialogue had inadvertently been scheduled next door at the same time.

So I slipped out of the luncheon to prepare myself for my workshop, which was the best attended of my workshops for Pennwriters over the years, and went off without a hitch, except for the fact that due to chemical sensitivities to perfume and such, I developed a tickle in my throat and started to lose my voice during the presentation.

Finally I had to ask if anyone had a piece of gum or cough drop with which to keep my throat lubricated so I could get the words out. I didn’t plan to give my talk unprofessionally chomping on a piece of gum, but you do what you have to do, and I kept thinking of friend and fellow author Susan Meier, another past president of Pennwriters and former keynote speaker I had once witnessed giving an all-day workshop in the midst of a horrendous cold, and the image of Susan gamely carrying on and delivering what she had promised the group despite her obvious misery inspired me to keep going.

The workshop went well—I handed out 19 of my 20 handouts, and just before the end D.L. Wilson stopped by for moral support and asked a question about dialect I had skipped during my presentation due to keeping an eye on the clock, enabling me to deliver my workshop in full. Thank you, David :). After that, I headed upstairs for my editor/agent appointment, which as anyone who has been to one knows can be a harrowing or even devastating experience, both of which I have survived in the past, but this time went extremely well—her last words to me were, “How soon can you get it to me?”

It doesn’t get any better than that.

After that, I was free to relax and enjoy my weekend. Which is exactly what I did. Twenty years ago I was the Pennwriters conference coordinator. How things have changed since 1989! When I did the conference, it was an optional Friday night cocktail party—I still remember Susan’s awesome dress!--and a one-day conference on Saturday, with one headline speaker--in my case the late and totally great Gary Provost—lecturing for most of the day. My, how we made that poor man work. But we wanted to know everything he could possibly tell us about writing. I still regularly recommend his book Make Every Word Count, which is long since out of print can only be found on Amazon, used. The other speakers that day were Victoria Thompson, Carla Neggers, and Alice Orr. But we only had one speaker scheduled at a time.

Now we start at 9:00 a.m. on Friday and closing ceremonies are at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, with three choices of workshops to attend at any given time, a slew of editor/agent appointments, a banquet with a headline speaker, a business meeting breakfast, an awards luncheon, the aforementioned published authors luncheon, an authors’ autographing tea—loved those brownies!!--a cocktail party or some other social event (in previous years we’ve gone to the racetrack or on a riverboat cruise, or had a murder mystery play or masquerade party—come as your favorite literary character), and read and critique sessions long into the night. Not to mention the bookstore, merchandise table, basket raffles, writing contests and numerous other activities in the hospitality suite. See what I mean? Annette and her committee did an amazing job. See Annette's photo album of the conference here.

I’ve attended 19 of the 22 Pennwriters conferences to date. That’s a lot of people met and a lot of memories to relive, and relive them we did. I can’t remember when I spent so much time laughing and just having a non-stop good time. I spent most of my down time hanging out in the lobby, reminiscing with old friends about conferences past, and making new ones, including my roommate, fellow Wild Rose Press author Sharon Donovan. The hotel we were at was the same one we’ve been going to in Pittsburgh for years, despite many name changes, and there never fails to be a wedding or a prom night full of elegantly-dressed attendees to entertain us and fuel our writers’ imaginations as we sit in the lobby schmoozing.

My only regret from the weekend is that I didn’t get enough one-on-one time with some of my favorite people, fellow writers I only get to see once a year at the conference. It was like my high school reunion. Never an idle moment, and much too short to fit everyone in. But I did my best to catch up with everyone I could, despite attending more workshops than ever before, because the line up was just too good to pass up. In years past, I was on the board, and so busy attending meetings and dealing with moment-to-moment glitches, that I missed the entire conference. Nobody realizes how much goes on behind the scenes at these things until you’ve been in the trenches, volunteering your heart out for the good of the organization. There were other conferences where I was so busy kibbutzing in the halls or hospitality suite, that I didn’t make it to a single workshop.

Not so this year. But I’m afraid I’ll have to tell you more about that next time, because to refresh my menopausal memory, I have to find my conference program, which isn’t happening this morning. Apparently a thorough office cleaning is in order :). I even checked the Pennwriters website, but all the information has been taken down in preparation for next year’s conference.

So more on the workshops, and the inspiration of banquet keynote speaker Lisa Scottoline and awards luncheon keynote and fellow (albeit currently former) Pennwriter Tim Esaias next time. (Tim seems to think he was thrown out of the organization—all in good fun, mind you--during the conference). Since I’ll be contacting him this week on another matter, I’ll see if I can get the scoop :))

Until then, consider attending a writer’s conference near you. You never know what will come out of it, and you’ll be making memories to last a lifetime.

Cruise With Your Muse - The Final Hours

Okay, Cruise With Your Muse, day two and more…I left you hanging at The Dungeon. Well, not really, but I’ve been so busy working on Justice is a Lady (85 pages this weekend!!) that I haven’t gotten around to blogging. If I’m writing this, I’m not writing books, and if I’m writing books, I don’t have time to blog. Funny how that works.

A good thing I paused, though, because I forgot to mention Christina Dodd’s speech on The Sidewalk of Success, and how we all fall off of it now and then, but the important thing is to get back on it. And we can step back on it at any time. Success is relative. It can mean finishing a manuscript, querying an editor, getting an agent, that first sale, a multiple book sale, or hitting the NYT bestsellers list…you decide what success is to you and go for it.

Christina also told us about her first sale, Candle in the Window, which she was told would never sell because it has a blind heroine. Now, 16 years later, it’s still in print, and around her house they call it, “The book that won’t die.” Don't know about you, but I'd love to have a book that sells for sixteen years:) I read it way back when it came out, and it’s on my keeper shelf to this day. Precisely because the heroine was different.

So after that very inspirational talk, they had a drawing for a full ride to (oh, darn…I can’t remember now) someone’s very nice conference in the fall—plane fare, lodging and conference fee—about a $1000 prize, tickets were $10 each--donated by Heather Graham, which was won by M.A. Ellis, that dynamo of promotion I told you about earlier. I’m telling you, positive energy attracts positive things and I couldn’t have been more thrilled for her when she won. She was just glowing.

You can bet she will be selling her books left and right at that conference, too. M.A. actually lives about 45 minutes down the road from me and maybe we’ll get together for lunch or something to talk writing and marketing. It’s on my list of summer activities to consider. Maybe we’ll even have a beer. You know I’m all about multi-tasking. Why else would I attend a conference on a cruise ship?

Okay, so off I went to change for dinner and attend the FRW cocktail party in The Dungeon, a cavernous bar with low ceilings, and very low blue, almost black lighting. Lots of gothic-looking statues in alcoves. I spent the time sitting in a dark corner catching up with Maggie Toussaint and enjoying a very tasty rum punch. Then it was time to toddle off to for dinner, for our singing wait staff and another fabulous meal. I’d held back on dessert the night before, but this time I was going all out.

The first night I had pork medallions with mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes. I went for the mushrooms every chance I got on this trip, since nobody at home likes them. Tonight it was these little steak tenderloins with vegetables grilled to perfection, and this awesome pumpkin-apple soup. The group at the table ordered multiple appetizers and we shared. In addition to the soup offerings we had some kind of toasted ravioli and cool shrimp cocktail. We did the same for dessert—key lime cheesecake and strawberry shortcake were the ones I tasted. (Yes, I did gain three pounds on the trip, which took me two weeks to work off at the Y but it’s all gone now and only the memories remain :).

Afterward, I went back to my room and set my luggage outside the room in preparation for leaving the next day, then trekked through the casino and to the other end of the ship (one...more…time) to catch a stage show of hits from the 40s, 50s, 60’s etc., ending with this weird tribute to ABBA. The costumes were very white and space-cadet like. But I enjoyed it, and then headed back across the length of the rocking ship to sleep like a baby once again.

Breakfast was in the buffet lounge, and I sat with Rhonda Penders, Sandra Kay and Tina Gayle from TWRP as we loaded up our plates one last time before disembarking. We were already in port, and had all been assigned different departure times, based on cabin location. Finally I caught up with Rhonda outside of customs, where Mona Risk and her husband gave us a ride back to the motel, and we met up with Dayana Knight and went to---what else—a bookstore!

We noshed on some quiche and chocolate in the café before heading off to Dayana’s for the afternoon and using her computers to check our emails. Then we did some driving around sightseeing before we headed out to The Olive Garden for more good food. Afterward, we spotted a shiny new pink car and I took Rhonda's picture next to it so she could tell RJ, “Look what I bought!” on the TWRP company credit card :).

We then drove up the coast and took Rhonda to meet a friend she was staying with for a few days of well-deserved down time. Back at Dayana’s, nirvana awaited. Florida might have been balmy to me, coming from the sub-zero north, but Dayana thought it was cool out, so we turned down the lights, had some tea and visited while watching the fire.

I think it was the best moment of the trip for me. Comfortable clothes, a full belly, a cup of tea and good company in front of a cozy fire. My idea of what life is all about. As Dayana and I talked (we’d never met before), we decided we had to be twins separated at birth. We uncovered similarity after similarity…and we even had the same shower curtain and rug, both purchased around the same time, many years before. It was a hoot.

More next time on Millionaire’s Row and alligator wrestling….