James River + Hugh

The first day of the James River Writer’s Conference went swimmingly! I posted a bunch of stuff on Facebook, but one of the great things I learned today in Hugh Howey’s class was to not consign my good stuff to the great beyond of the scroll. Anything really good that gets posted there should also be on my site. So…here we go!

Above is the group that went to eat and have a good chat after Hugh’s class. How many can you name? Well, there’s Hugh Howey, Rysa Walker, Jen Foehner Wells, David Gatewood, Patrice Fitzgerald, Kevin G. Summers and a wonderful guy named Ron Walker who has read books by Hugh, Patrice and me. It was soooo great to meet a reader! And we ate at the Tobacco Company, which is smoke free and quite yummy. I couldn’t barely eat a thing though cause my jaws were flapping.

And this is blurry, which I’m so bummed about, but this is Hugh and me. This guy absolutely changed my life…I was not a writer, didn’t dream of being a writer, had no intention of being a writer. Now I’m a writer with 6 books out and stories in three anthologies (more coming) and I’m about to go full time. Seriously…that’s amazing and I owe it to him. So, getting a picture with him is pretty awesome.

The Master class he gave was incredible. People were pretty much rapt and I know I was taking notes like nobody’s business. And I wasn’t the only one. I’ll make a long post on it when I return, but building your own platform as a writer seems easy, but most of us do it wrong (me included). People who did it smashingly good right out of the gate are Jen Foehner Wells (Fluency, great book, read it).

So, tonight it’s the Ladies going out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants, and surely one of the favorite in Richmond. It’s called Lemaire and it’s inside The Jefferson Hotel, which is my favorite here in Richmond. Go on, take a look. If you want a romantic getaway or just love staying in a place that looks like another age (or the inside of the Titanic), then you can’t go wrong there. I’ll try to get a picture, but as you tell above, my iphone is NOT very good at photos.