Greetings and Salutations my friends. I’m posting a bit later than normal but I find myself constantly running behind these days. On the other hand I am getting a lot done in regards to my books. Oh well. Late is the new Early, right?

Last weekend I schlepped up to Canada for the Surrey International Writers Conference. I will right a long post detailing the conference soon but for tonight I will hit the three coolest things and the three “you have got to be kidding me” things.

1. I met seriously amusing people. Just flat out amazing, holy cow people.
2. I learned some new bits about publishing, self publishing, and marketing that I did not know before.
3. And yeah a couple of agents and an editor want the first 40 of my murder mystery.

Now the cruddy parts…

1. Due to three traffic accidents and some weather straight out of Sharknado, I got to the hotel too late to eat lunch before my 3.5 hour long Masters Session. Now this might not seem like a big deal unless you know I don’t eat brekkie usually, I drink coffee. So I pull an epic bar out of my bag and power through. I can get dinner before the evening session. Tell me you know where this is going? The afternoon session runs so long I don’t have time to eat dinner. So I pull another epic bar out of my bag and settle in for 3.5 hours. An hour in I hated the presenter so much I got up and walked out. Room Service? HGTV? Yes, please.
2. I went to a panel that described as X. And then the presenter did not talk about X, he told “aren’t I great” stories. And during Q&A when I and several other people tried to ask pointed questions about X, he dithered and talked around an answer. Thanks ass, I missed a good workshop on editing for this.
3. The temperature. Seriously. I have been to conferences before I knew what to prepare for, but this was like – welcome to the Sahara during the dry season and  now Antarctica in winter.  I have never seen such epic temperature discrepancies, easily 20 degrees between rooms. All dry too. The kind of dry where your nose starts spontaneously bleeding, that dry.

All in all however I will call it a successful weekend. Look for more on the conference in the coming weeks. Also keep an eye out for Ostrich Mentality pre-sale, next week.

Hello nerves. I am currently in the middle of packing for the Surrey International Writers Convention, which I leave for tomorrow morning. It is my first BIG convention. It is also my first writing only convention. It is my first sit down with an agent.

If I could just ignore the colony of butterflies trying to escape my stomach, I could convince myself that I’m not scared witless. But alas….

On to happier notes, The Box Under The Bed, is kicking ass and taking names. We are beating Stephen King in the horror section. Yes, folks, beating the master. Woo-flippin’-hoo.

And things are almost ready for Ostrich Mentality. Editing is done, until my ARCs tell me otherwise. It’s been formatted. I have a marketing plan this time. I am essentially waiting on some quotes for my back cover about how mediocre, I mean awesome it is from best selling authors who are kindly helping me out.

How about a little cover preview? Yeah?