We’re Leaving on a Jet Plane

Photo by Justin Vidamo

As my friend Pat Shipman says, there’s a writer under every bush in North Carolina. And four of us are crawling out from under our respective shrubs and heading for the San Miguel Writers Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico today! Check it out at sanmiguelwritersconference.org.

We're writing buddies who’ve been meeting every two weeks for a long while now to critique each other’s work: Tom Dow is a published poet, a teacher, and a world-class traveler who’s lived in Germany and Japan, among other places. He’s writing a book set in Berlin and a murder mystery set in Tokyo. Sharon Bader has reinvented herself more times than most (geologist, college instructor, software developer and instructional designer). She’s writing a collection of short stories with quilts and fabrics as the connecting thread as well as a murder mystery set in an archaeological dig in Florida. Carol Phillips has published short stories and haiku and is in the final drafts of a memoir: Hit in the Head: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and One Woman’s Solitary Journey through Loss and Betrayal to a Place of Hope and Healing. 

And me? I’ve just finished a 68,700 word thriller/police procedural set in a fictional county in western North Carolina, Maybe, It's Murder, and am working on the next one in the series. Also working on a collection of short stories, Guns Don’t Kill People…. More about both later!

We’re all bringing different expectations and hopes to this conference. It should be great.

Keynote speakers: Gloria Steinem, Tracy Chavalier, Angeles Mestretta, Alice Walker, Scott Turow, Jane Urquhart and Richard Blanco.

Sixty daily workshops – we each get to choose seven as well as two of the 13 three-hour “intensives.” And panels and roundtables – I get to be in an eight-person roundtable with Scott Turow. How cool is that? Agent pitches and one-on-one conferences. 

All this plus meeting other writers in a magical place like San Miguel de Allende. 

I CAN’T WAIT!!