Heading Back Home

Siting in the Portland airport—waiting on an 8:55 flight—and looking over all the fun I had.

In case I neglected to post up or Twitter what I’ve been doing—I’ve been in Lincoln City, Oregon helping where I could at the same Writing Workshop I attended TWICE. This class is affectionately called The Master Class, and its graduates in writing have now reached over a 100 strong. I met a lot of great people, met up with old friends, got to spend time with my editor and her adorable husband, and best of all—

I got to to spend time with Dean , Kris and the Yorks. I feel I’ve come a long way since those first days back in ’96 when I met Dean at a Southwest Writers Workshop. And then later meeting Kris at the Nebulas in Taos. From my first Kris & Dean show—to the first MasterClass experiment in 1999.

But I’m not done. I don’t know everything. And even this time while in the class—I learned again. Wow. Fuck’n awesome!

After taking the plunge to go freelance—as a full time writer—I felt a bit rudder-less. Until Dean and Kris (bless their hearts!) asked me to come to Oregon. Surrounded by writers, talking business and craft—for two weeks—damn. There is nothing better.

Well maybe a Sara Lee coconut cake….

Nothing better for getting on the right track as well. I’ve now set goals—have ideas for new books—and intend on gearing up my short stories again (I got a copy of Kris’ DIVING INTO THE WRECK!!!!). I also plan on NannoWrimo this year—hey I have the time—and powering out a full book in 1 month. Think’n I might blog on that too…. hrm….

It also showed me my total lack of time management—like not getting Grimoire finished and uploaded for reading? Or getting OUT OF THE DARK on the Kindle? Yeah, before I could blame the stress from the day job—and working for someone else. But not anymore. REVENANT will be out in June of 2010—and I no longer intend on letting things fall out of my lap for fear of failure.

Ooh…I said that out loud.

If there is one thing I’ve taken from this—or two maybe—is that more books from me are on their way, and that publishing is changing, folks. We don’t know how it’ll settle—or to what end.

But the electronic age is here—and I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.