Willamette Writer's Convention

First, the Other World's Book Club is now the first Tuesday of every month.

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OK, the Willamette Writer's Con. Overall, it was a very good con, with mostly solid writing workshops.
Mary Rosenblum's workshops were great, as usual. I almost didn't go to any, as she's my on-line teacher through the Longridge Writer's Group, but she always has the best workshops, and it was good to see her in person. Longridge is an email course. It was fun just chatting in the bar, and I can't wait for her next book. NOW she tells me she has a novel course that comes after the short story class I'm taking with her.


There was Lee Lofland, an ex-cop, doing a police procedures lecture with slide show that was very interesting. Then, he showed a man robbing a bank, and said "this is the first man I killed." He followed that with more slides and story about the man, and how he put five bullets into him. The next day the chief made him go to the morgue and take pictures. Yikes. No wonder he left the force to be a consultant on Monk.

Elizabeth Engstrom gave a workshop on How to Write a Sizzling Sex Scene. Not only entertaining, but a lot of fun. We had to write an afterglow scene and then read it in class. From the other gender's point of view. I did the only post-human wet-spot scene. :)

Besides the classes, I got to hang out with some great writers. Anne Paris writes children's books and is an illustrator, but loves reading science fiction. Susan Watkins is in my critique group and I got hear her pitch her book. She had to pitch to an editor, and I let her practice on me outside.