What to do? The Chicago-North RWA Spring Fling Schedule is out, and I have to make some tough calls.

I mean, seriously. Look at these choices! (Full text with times available here.) It’s times like these where I’m like to be rent asunder trying to decide my schedule.

Yes, I mean decide it now. I’m one of those freaks of nature who carefully reviews the schedule for conferences in advance and decides where I can get the most bang for my buck. Normal people arrive on site, get their schedules, and then decide to go to whatever their friends are going to or, in case of writing conferences, who their favorite author is. For the RWA Nationals last year, I printed out my personalized schedule, with all available worksheets, a week in advance.

Yes, I’m a freak. I embrace the weirdness.

This is harder for me this time, because I actually know a fair number of these people, like Blythe and Courtney, have been to presentations I loved with others, like Allie Pleiter, and am facebook friends with a whole bunch of them. Plus, I volunteered to help out and will be moderating pitch sessions in the morning and helping out with the Silent Auction Saturday night. Oh, and my agent will be there, and we’re going to chat about What Happens Next. Toss in a whole bunch of people I want to find because I haven’t seen them in a year or two, and I’m going to be running ragged. But in a good way!

Adding to the fun, I’ll be accompanied by my sister, Hannah Clampitt, of The Nanner Republic. She’s testing the authorial waters, so to speak, with me as her Sherpa guide. (I believe that was the mother of all mixed metaphors.) Normally, she’s all social-butterfly and I’m all stay-at-home-and-talk-to-imaginary-people (also known as characters, so don’t get all weird on me), but our roles will be slightly reversed. Plus, my husband and her husband are dropping us off at the conference and then seeing the Chicago/Milwaukee sights (the Cubs are playing the Brewers) so that’s an added level of crazy fun.

I find that sending your husband to a ball game with his brother-in-law while I network with my sister is the PERFECT way to spend an 8th anniversary, don’t you? I love this conference, but the timing is a little lacking, personally. Oh, don’t worry about The Kid. He’s going to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa, being spoiled rotten and having his run of the family farm.

So stay tuned for next Tuesday, when I talk about what actually happened at the conference! I’m hoping for all good things.

You know what’s fun? Fun is letting The Kid rifle around my old closet back at Mom and Dad’s house. The other day, he turned up this:

My old Fisher Price record player. Talk about a blast from the past! I hadn’t seen that thing for decades.

The Kid was fascinated. He’d never seen one of these before, much less gotten to play with one. It took a lot of digging, but finally we found records he’d really enjoy listening to.

The Aristocats soundtrack:

And the Great Muppet Caper soundtrack:

So we fired that bad boy up and cranked it on. I had to ask my mom if the records were 33 rpm or 45 rpm. And then I had to ask her what ‘rpm’ stood for again. Man, it had been a long, long time.

I think The Kid has a future in DJ-ing, because he was scratching that needle like a professional. But I’ll say this–that darned record player not only still worked after 30 years and a new Kid trying to kill it, but it still played amazingly decent sound. Who knew Fisher Price was all high-fidelity?

Then, things got hairy.

Literally. My mom’s cats, Mama Kat, Bucky, and Tucker, had never seen a round, rotating disc thingie before.

And it was playing cat music! Extra bonus!

But, just like with The Kid, the ‘new’ wore off pretty quickly. Bucky (or is it Tucker?) got bored fast. He didn’t care for singing frogs at all.

Mom offered to send the record player home with us, but I politely suggested that we make it a special treat when The Kid comes to visit his Mimi and PawPaw (i.e. Not a shot in Hell is that thing coming home with us!). Besides, we have exactly zero records in our house, whilst my parents still have every record they ever bought.

Next time, we’re going to dig up Annie and Disco Donald Duck. I wonder if I can rig up a mirrored ball?

Do you still have a record player? Do you still play records on it?

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a . . .

daffodil.

You know what this is?

To recap, I made my first professional author presentation last Saturday at the Quincy Writers Guild’s annual conference, Wordstock. My presentation was “Marketing Yourself to an Agent,” or possibly also “Marketing Your Writing to an Agent.” There was some confusion on what the darn thing was actually called, but far be it for me to let a little thing like ‘topic’ or ‘title’ to slow me down! After all, I’m a professional!


I made 20 copies of my handout, which was the query letter my agent signed me over. Then I got paranoid–after all, I am now also a famous Radio Personality–and made another 20 copies. Us famous authors can’t be too careful, you know.


So, bright and early Saturday morning, I rolled out of bed and greeted my big day! And wouldn’t you know it, my big day was snowing. A wet, messy snow being blown around by a snot-nosed wind that made styling one’s hair pointless–and dangerous, if one had carelessly applied too much hairspray in an attempt to foil said wind. It was just one continual sneeze out there.


Okay. So the weather was hideous and sent me running to my closet (because there’s no way in hell I’m wearing a skirt in the snow), but hey! Let’s be positive–at least people wouldn’t be wasting their time outside getting ‘exercise’ and crap like that. Right?


I said, Right?


Um, not right. A grand total of fifteen brave souls ventured out on slick roads to come to the conference. That included seven members of the Quincy Writers Guild, me, the other presenters, and my mother. Four people, in other words. Maybe five.


Okay! No problem! Always better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, right? 


I was one of the two second sessions. So I waited for the previous presentation to end. And waited. And got hit on by a non-conference bookstore patron. I have to say, this is the first time I’ve been flirted with by someone other than my husband in . . . hell, it’s been a long time. And sadly, all I could think was, Gee, The Kid would LOVE his hat, because it had a train on it. Sad. Truly Sad.


Finally, the preceding presentation wound down, mostly due to me standing in the back and frantically pointing to my wrist. I was able to start setting up. Seven people settled in to listen to me–eight if you count my mother.





Did I mention that the whole conference was inside a bookstore–with a functional coffee bar? I will say this–Coffee Off Broadway makes a damn good cup of tea. But this did mean I occasionally had to shout over a grinder. No problem–if you’ve met me, you know I can shout down a herd of elephants, or even a herd of four year olds. Let’s Present!





Do you like the outfit? Suede jacket, white shirt, every piece of turquoise I own, blue jeans, and boots. Business Casual Cowgirl, in person!





All pictures in this blog are courtesy of My Mom. I swear, my mother was sitting in the back, taking these pictures, and repeating to herself, “My little author is all grown up now!”





Do you know what a conference hijacker is? A conference hijacker is an audience member who commandeers a presentation, taking control by verbal force. I had one. And to make it worse, she was a little old lady. Slacker teenagers? No problem. Unruly kids? Easy. Obnoxious little old ladies? Oy. It got to the point where I wished I had followed the example of my seventh-grade history teacher, a man in a wheelchair. A junior high teacher in a wheelchair needs all the help he can get, so this particular teacher wielded a yardstick with deadly accuracy. Just one crack of that thing on a desk sent the class into a still, tense silence as we all sat on our hands, just in case.


Still, my mom said I handled the hijacker well. The rest of the audience members were all lovely, and I’m not just saying that because they told me I was a wonderful presenter. Really. No, some of them–get this–took my advice and started blogs already! (Hi, Doc!) I have a heady sense of omnipotence going on over here just typing it.





Finally, I was on time and under budget, and had managed to avoid committing Audience Assault (for which I think I deserve a merit badge from Author Scouts or something). I’m already thinking of ways to make this presentation better so I can take it on the road to other conferences. And despite the weather, I had a good time at Wordstock. I’d like to do it again next year.


But you can bet your bottom dollar I’m going to have a yardstick with me.

I don’t text. At all. Ever.

Well, that’s no longer a true statement. I took The Kid to my sister Leah’s high-school production of “The Wedding Singer,” which he loved deeply (but then again, he tends to love anything with singing, dancing, and men being dropped into garbage cans in it). But then I sent The Kid home with his loving Mimi, Pawpaw, and Gigi whilst I went out on the town (St. Louis) with both my sisters and some of their friends. My sister Hannah was driving, I had no child with me, and it was Saturday night. I had two, count them, 2, glasses of wine.

Then, on the drive home (at 12:30 at night–WAY past my bedtime), in the dark and rain, Hannah’s iPhone buzzed. Her loving husband Steve was texting her. She handed me the phone and told me to text him back.

“Um . . .” I said, knowing disaster was in the air.

“It’s easy!” she insisted. “Just tell him it’s you, I’m driving, and I love him.”

Easy, I say? You judge for yourself by attempting to read this actual, real, unedited transcript of my first time texting.

Steve: I’m heading to bed. Don’t forget to spring forward. Love You. Good Night.
Me: Sarah hereo
      Driving home
      Manna says she loves youo
Steve: Sarah is your hero? And you’re driving home?
Me: Ive never texted before
      Sorry
Steve: Who is Manna? Do I know her.
Me: Hannahpp
      Arggh
Steve: Hannah has to pee?
Me: Also. Had two glassed ofbeinnw
      Two gladses of wine
Steve: What the hell is ofbeinnw?
Me: I dint know
Steve: Ohhhh. Gladses of wine. Right right.
Me: Hannah is sorry she handedme the phone
Steve: I’m glad that Manna is driving then.
Me: So is she
Steve: Well this has been a hoot. But I’m tired. Gonna hit the hay. Tell Manna goodnight for me.
Me: Anyway she says night too
Steve: and remind her to spring forward!
Me: K
Steve: tell her “LYB” please. Thank You.
Me: Lyn backpack
      Lyn
      Lyn bbackp
Steve: I laffed at the Lyn backpack.
Me: Sorry
Steve: Dear Sarah, You can never get an iPhone.
          NEVER
Me: Jo


Yup. It made no sense to anyone, least of all me. I failed “Typing on a virtual mini-keyboard” in the first ten seconds. I kept hitting ‘send’ because the send button was in the same general location as the backspace button on my laptop. The phone kept suggesting ‘better’ spellings, but in trying to select those, I instead just deleted the option. Then Steve began to make fun of me, and Hannah began giggling as I read her the transcript, then I began giggling, which lead to even worse typing. “Lyn backpack” was supposed to be “LYB back,” but I couldn’t even get that right after three tries. And then Steve banned me from all texting, and rightfully so. I couldn’t even manage to type one stinking letter in agreement. “K” came out “Jo.” And then I gave up.


You can text me if you want. But don’t expect an answer. 

We’ve been home from San Francisco for three weeks now. The weather has warmed the heck up out here in the Greater Midwest. Yesterday, it hit 68 degrees, which set off some impressive storms. It’s now warmer here in Illinois than it was in San Francisco.


Still, I miss it. I miss the blistered toes jammed into cowboy boots. I miss the all-day burn on the calf muscles. I miss the food. No, really, I miss the food. You can’t get food like that in Western Illinois. I even almost miss the fog.


Luckily, I brought back enough of San Francisco to keep me going through lightning and hail.





A mural from Alcatraz, now in convenient postcard form!





Perhaps I mentioned that Chinese New Year was going on? These are “red cards,” which are absolutely beautiful little envelopes that people put gift money in. Red, if you didn’t know, is the lucky color.





So, here’s the story about the lantern. When I was a wee lass, my father had his own fishing lure business. I must have been about five when we ‘negotiated’ my terms of pay for packing boxes of lures to ship. I apparently refused to settle for less than $0.05 per box. I drove a hard bargain. So, I saved up my nickels, carefully waiting to find something that was worth my hard-earned silver. One day, we took my Mema out for Chinese, and there, in the display case, was a little lantern. I want to say that it was $3.75 or something like that. I bought it, and it was all mine.


I have no idea what ever happened to it–I’m tempted to blame the house fire a few years later, but may very well have just played with it until it ‘disappeared’ on day. I forgot about it–until I was wandering around San Francisco with my family on a lovely spring day. Happiness is not just a nifty cool trinket. Happiness is finding something that brings a long-forgotten memories of my first paycheck, my first independent-of-Mommy purchase, and, most importantly, of dinner with my Mema, God bless her soul. 


Moving on.





Oooh, pretty. 





I used to buy touristy t-shirts on vacations, but those unisex shirts are never good on me, so I decided some time ago that I was going to buy souvenirs that I would love. Enter jewelry!! I got both of these pieces from street vendors. The copper disks were hand-hammered by a shy guy, and the necklace was strung by a lovely Chinese woman. Souvenirs: $18. Fashionability: Priceless.


We bought a LOT of delicious souvenirs. Cowgirl Creamery cheese, Boudin Bakery sourdough bread, XOX truffles, Ghiradelli (in which we ate squares in a Square), and fresh fortune cookies. But the only one of all those delicious souviners that we have a reminder of is this:





Charles Chocolates. Man, oh, man, those were some good chocolates. We personally met Charles in his store, where he generously gave The Kid chocolate-covered Oreos and us some of these chocolate-covered almonds, which is why we had to get our own to come home with us. Divine, really. And any man who hands out chocolate samples is a friend of mine.


But above all this, my favorite keepsake is this:





I didn’t leave my heart in San Francisco! It’s only about an inch across, so it’s perfect in and amongst all the other good luck charms that habitat my desk. And that’s a whole ‘nother blog.


I bought other things, but I doubt most of you loyal readers would be interested in a never-ending parade of book covers (correct me if I’m wrong). And of course, The Husband and The Kid each got their own memories-to-go. But these are mine. 


Ah, the memories.