Great conference

Another great conference. Met many other dedicated, hard-working authors in and outside of my field. Most importantly, I was able to catch up with family and consume about 700,000 calories worth of food. Stay tuned for more detailed thoughts on this. Seems like people really enjoyed our presentation about travel and voice writing. They asked a lot of great questions. I even shot a YouTube video of sorts, though I recorded it when the coffee and gooey cookies were starting to wear off. Who knows what it is going to look like! When it was over, I went back and forth to panels all over the place, taking in other presentations. My favorite was the nonfiction panel, which was fascinating (a couple of the panelists seemed irritated at one another but that added to the drama). Ron Hansen did a great job with the opening keynote; he talked a lot about the origins of his art, attributing it to some unusual sources, including his brother, who shared an "imaginary language" that somehow turned into a seedling for Hansen's future books. He also shared some observations, courtesy of John Updike, about the beauty of the mundane. That resonated with me. More soon. .