At the start of this run of posts about moving and jury duty, I mentioned that October had been a super busy month. It started with a writers conference.
At the start of the year when I made my reservations for the conference, I had no plans to move. When I bought my airplane ticket, we were looking at homes, but hadn't found anything and what were the odds that we'd be moving at the same time as the conference? I bought a non-refundable ticket.
As it turned out, the odds of moving at the same time as the conference were 100%.
Yeah.
My writing buddy was supposed to attend with me, but she had to cancel because of deadlines for her next book. I understood because I'd cancelled out of a conference for the same reason while I was working on IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR. It would be fine. I'd meet new people and make some more writing friends.
Sadly, that's not what happened. I've never been to a conference that felt so cliquish before in my life. I didn't make any friends and no one really wanted to talk to me. It wasn't until the last night of the conference that that changed, but by then... Anyway, I think I spent more time talking to hotel employees than I did to other writers. The hotel people were friendly and welcoming and seemed to enjoy our conversations.
There were a lot of good workshops at the conference, though, and that made up for the cliques. I came back fired up to get some writing done, but immediately had to start in on the move. I came home on a Monday and we started moving stuff to the new house that evening. From there on out, it was non-stop move, move, move. And you've heard a lot of stories about that for the past couple of months, so I'll leave it there.
