Yesterday I wore my first tall fall boots of the season! This is a big deal, since a lot of my summertime activity involves subconsciously counting down to boots, jackets, and pumpkin spice lattes. And since I live in Texas, legitimate boot wearing opportunities can often push far into autumn, weather-wise (although that doesn’t necessarily stop me).
But the Lord blessed this transplanted Pacific Northwestern girl with travel opportunities this summer, allowing me to escape to some cooler temperatures during a particularly scorching summer! Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to 🙂
I’ve already shared about my Missouri trip that I took with my mum. This was a wonderful excuse to avoid the 115 plus temperatures which Texas experienced this summer. But I actually missed the second half of August when I flew to Portland to take part in my first-ever writer’s conference! Although I did attend the award ceremony last year at the Oregon Christian Writers Cascade Awards, this was my first ever full conference.
What a wonderful treat it was to be there with quite a few of my fellow Mountain Brook Ink authors, as well as our fearless leader, Miralee Ferrell! It was great to get to know these talented authors and do some promo videos for our lovely publishing house. In fact, here’s a little video I made about my publishing journey.
Every morning was spent in a fabulous class led by the wise and witty Jim Rubart who taught us much about how to shape our stories with an eye toward publishing success.
The afternoons gave attendees a variety of workshops to choose from. I enjoyed fellow fantasy author Jill Williamson’s class on where to find and how to cultivate story ideas. And a big congrats to this amazing woman for winning the speculative fiction category with King’s Blood, her 20th published book 😀 I really enjoyed getting to know her better…so down to earth!
And though The Genesis Tree didn’t win an award this year, I’m so honored and thrilled that it was a finalist in three of the four contests in which it was entered. I hope a few more people will learn about The Tethered World Chronicles thanks to the exposure!
The evenings allowed us to recharge our spiritual batteries and refocus our purpose as Christian authors. Our keynote speaker the first evening was Kim Meeder, author and founder of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. What a testimony she has of God’s grace after the murder/suicide of her parents as a child. She oozes hope and healing!
The next two evenings we experienced the bright smile and creative story telling prowess of Robin Jones Gunn, author of the Christy Miller series. She helped us to renew our purpose as writers and reminded us that God gives good gifts to His children–and writing is one of those gifts.
There’s no way to convey all that I learned in this post, but what a rewarding experience it was. I’m already looking forward to next year with the legendary Francine Rivers! In fact, I haven’t had much of a chance to assimilate any of the info (or organize my notes) since I spent another 6 days visiting my daughter who lives in Vancouver, then came home with a 24 hour turnover to head to our family reunion in Mississippi.
I’m home now and trying to get caught up on everything from mail to laundry! The reunion (every Labor Day weekend) marks a mental hurdle that I carry around internally, starting Memorial Day–the reunion is the official end of the sizzling heat of summer! Though, as I mentioned, the weather doesn’t always reflect that very well, usually there isn’t more than a day or two here and there that reaches 100 degrees. But this year we came home to rain, rain, and more rain…for which this pluviophile is grateful!
Now it’s on to new writing ideas and getting serious about blocking out intentional project time. Not always something I’ve done well, but I see the importance for it since my time at the conference. I’ll be sharing some of those projects with you in the weeks to come, too!
So…boots, jackets, pumpkins spice everything, and cool autumn weather are what I’m looking forward to now! How about you? What are your favorite things about fall? What season is your favorite and why?
