Well, it's Friday evening and here I am in Blue Ridge, Georgia -- just a little ways from the SW corner of North Carolina. I'm the keynote speaker at a Writers Conference Saturday morning ("An hour?" said my husband," You're talking for an hour?"
Well, yeah. No doubt there'll be an introduction and I'll save time for Q and A and the hour will be more like forty minutes or thereabouts. And if I see the audience beginning to nod off, I'll condense my remarks.Or tell a joke. Or something . . .
I'm pretty sure I was invited because this is a conference mostly for writers and would-be writers and my late entry into the world of publishing gives hope to other so-called late bloomers. An inspiration to middle-aged women everywhere, that's me.
So I'll share the story of my journey from mild-mannered farmwife to mild-mannered Random House author and try to encourage these writers to give it their best shot. Then I'll meet with a couple of writers for whom I did critiques in advance, then I'll do a session about querying agents, and then I'll head home.
My motel overlooks a lot of roofs and parking lots but out back, I found a sunset -- something I don't see at home.