IWL Conference recap and great news: Part 1.

I belong to the Idaho Writer's League, an awesome organization that just celebrated its 70th anniversary and has been a wonderful support to me since 2003. This year it was Coeur d'Alene's turn to host the annual conference. Unfortunately, due to budget issues, I had resigned myself to not being able to go. But then, the day before the conference, a miracle occurred that allowed me to attend.

We had an astounding variety of speakers and workshops this year. First up was "Eddit yourrselv" by Chris Moore , author of "Writing: a Crash Course. Then I attended  Patrice Lewis's fabulous workshop on freelance writing.
Lunch was next, but I had to run errands and came back to discover that my short story had won 1st place in the "assigned theme" writing contest. The theme was "Strange Places" and my story was about a haunted church. I received a certificate to hang on my wall and a check for $35. So now I'm officially a paid and award-winning author!

I had 10 minutes for hugs and congratulations before it was on to the next workshop. I elected to go to Chris Moore's talk on setting, since I sometimes have a problem with "talking heads." Then I got to hear a wonderful talk on public speaking (an author's dread) by the awesome Dr. Mark William Cochran.
Then there was the most interesting workshop of the day. Ed Santos gave a talk on some freaky criminal statistics and simple self defense. He also had some great tips on simple weapons.

Then everyone got to go to Center Target Sports so they could get a chance to shoot the guns they write about. Alas, I missed the fun since I had to work that night.

After work, I was too excited to go to bed like a good writer, so I went out to celebrate and didn't get to bed until midnight.

I'll cover day 2 tomorrow.