Greetings from Pikes Peak

I’m at the Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference this weekend, going through a little lull between speaking commitments and decided to post a little update.

First thing you need to know: yesterday was a very challenging travel day. Things started off great when a guy in a golf cart met me at the entrance to the airport parking garage and said he’d lead me to an open slot. Hallelujah! He was my new best friend.

But then the good people at American Airlines informed me that my flight was cancelled (not my new best friends, golf cart guy’s position was totally safe.)

But American had re-booked me onto Continental. Then the good people and Continental informed me that my flight was delayed. (Golf cart guy was looking better and better at this point.)

Then, I boarded my flight and proceeded to spend the next hour and a half trying to figure out if our flight attendant was a man or a woman (the verdict: Ieither a man with a really feminine voice or a woman with a really bad haircut.) In any case, golf cart guy was still at the top of the heap.

I had a whole bunch of other things I wanted to share but since I just gave a pretty big, soap-boxxy speech on trimming and pacing, I’ve decided to omit the story of my mad dash through the Houston airport and the onboard bathroom malfunction.

Let me tell you, folks, after the travel day I had, it was soooo nice to have a wonderful, kind person meet me at the airport, shepherd me to the baggage claim area and drive me to the hotel. So nice. I had a new best friend!!

Then everyone kept running up and exclaiming, “You made it!” which was very nice and totally best friend-worthy!

I got to see Kristin-the-magnificent, and meet Margaret Marr, who is a film agent for ICM and the author of the sure-to-be amazing Hollywood Girls Club. Margaret has actually heard about Love You, Kill You and think it’s going to make a great movie, and now she IS my new best friend. We’re going to rent an RV together and drive around signing books and produce lots of super high concept Hollywood star vehicles for our other best friend, Reese Witherspoon. (To be fair, I should point out that neither Margaret nor Reese know about this yet, but I bet they’ll be game.)

After dinner, I got to hang out with the Nelson family, Kristin, her adorable husband and their cute dog (she’s going to post a picture on her blog soon, and I would here except I’m suffering from an excessive amount of chins in it.)

Also joining us for the hanging out portion of the evening was Laura Rennert, another very cool agent (totally best-friend material!), and it was one of the most interesting conversations I’ve been a part of in a long time. Two super cool lit agents talking shop—so interesting and enlightening.

This morning I did a panel session with my BFF, Margaret Marr, and Wendy French, a completely hilarious person and complete contender in the best friend race.

Then I did my session, A Movie-Lover’s Guide to Writing Novels, and it was a packed room. (I even got lots of compliments, Mom, to which I dutifully replied, “thank you, my mother is a speech teacher.”)

Then I went to the bookstore here at the conference for my “signing” only to learn that they’d sold out. Of my book.

Sold.

Out.

It’s a very good day.