What a whirlwind year! Coming up, I’ll be a panelist at the 2023 Central Coast Writers Conference next weekend. Going back to September, I was interviewed by Editor Sangeeta Mehta for her quarterly newsletter…

How do you like our mugs? My writing group (the BookShelf Writers) got these at our annual writing retreat. Each year, we book a vacation rental in a lovely spot in California, and spend a week together writing.

Every writer is well-served by having some helpful peeps. Mine are the Bookshelf Writers—my critique group of five years.

This week I attended a five-day national writers conference with over 4500 other attendees. I sat a mere two feet from every one of the twenty presenters. I wore my comfortable clothes, sipped coffee in the morning and red wine during the late afternoon sessions, getting up to stretch when I needed to.

For many years, there was a cat who lived at the Cayucos Cemetery. A gray and white cat. The two County maintenance workers, who had taken him in as a stray, called him Tom.

I went shoe shopping yesterday. For me, it’s more demoralizing than shopping for jeans or swim suits. I just needed a simple pair of short black boots for the San Francisco Writers Conference—shouldn’t have been too hard.

I think I’m the last of my writing group to finally put down the pen long enough to start a blog! And in my opinion, there’s no better place to do that than while camping. So here I am at El Capitan State Beach with my husband, Garth, and our exuberant golden retriever puppy, Chase. Our little 24’ motorhome (named Trac) is tucked into our favorite campsite #5.