I'm finally home after six days away. The LDStorymakers conference was wonderful, and my brain is overloaded with information. I also attended the first Whitney Award Gala and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to being in an Oscar-like setting. The whole weekend was great.
The conference felt like a family reunion for authors and it was great to put faces to all my blogging friends. I had a chance to visit with Tristi Pinkston and Julie Coulter Bellon, picking their brains for a little writing advice. I talked with James Dashner about trying to get him to come to Canada for a school visit. Autumn sat with us at the award gala, and I also got to meet Ali, Don, Shanna - and that's just the short list.
Before we left, I was seriously considering cutting about fourteen inches of hair off and going with a new shorter look. But I was so busy, I just didn't get around to it. I guess that's a good thing. So many people came up to me at the conference, greeted me by name, and introduced themselves. They all said they recognized me because I look just like the portrait I have on this blog. It was tempting to straighten my hair the second day and see how many people I could fool.
I took a great class on writing a synopses, doing research and sat in on two great presentations by editors, Kirk Shaw from Covenent, and Lisa Mangum from Deseret. There was so much information, I'm glad I wrote everything down, to study later. Of course, I bought many books at the bookstore and got them all signed. My kids love it when I bring them home signed books.
And speaking of my kids, it was sure nice to be able to leave them with my dad and my mother-in-law taking turns supervising them. The best part was coming home to find that the house was still clean, the dishes were done, they were still getting along, and when they heard me come in the door, I received the most enormous bear hug. What a great thing to come home to.
6 comments:
Welcome home and I'm glad you had a great time. Good for you to do these important things to improve your talents.
It was so nice to meet you, Stephanie. And don't you dare cut off that gorgeous hair---some of us go to great lengths trying to get curls like that!
Keep up your writing. I look forward to seeing your name in print in the near future.
It was great to meet you, Stephanie. It really did feel like a family reunion, and I look forward to going again next year.
You'd look great with short hair, but I love your long hair! You're right -- it's kind of a signature thing of yours.
It was great to see you and I'm so glad you were able to make it down. Was that your baby I held for a while in the hallway?
Honestly, I probably won't cut the hair do to the fact that I get to busy and only make hair appointments every eight to ten months. Call it laziness or I just have better things to do.
It was great to meet you as well, Don.
Thanks for the encouragement, Sheila and Michele.
And the baby in the hallway was my nephew.
It was great to meet you in person. There just was not enough time to visit with everyone. Next time, I think we need to come a day early and have a blogger get-together.
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