Canada, Nightmares and a Writers Conference

Hello!  I realized that I have not written in my blog for quite some time, so here I go.
I just went and returned from Canada, via four plane rides!  I had a layover in New York to fly to New York, yes the first stop was NYC and the second stop was Buffalo, way up state, but it did seem strange and unnecessary to have a layover in the same state to go only a total of a few hours by fight.  Anyway, I made it and slept most of the time.  Good news because after I had my children I put myself in the column of not just afraid to fly, but full on panic, get the barf bag afraid to fly.  But I did it all by myself with a heathy does of Dramamine!

I had an interesting time at the writers conference!  I met a lot of great people with some great story ideas.  Thanks to Francis I got my pitch down to what I wanted it to be for almost a year and I was lucky and got an agent and an pretty well known editor interested in my book!  Very exciting!!  I really need to work hard to finish it now, and make it great!

The nightmares came from a place in Canada that is called Nightmares.  It is a Haunted House in basically a strip mall.  It's tag line is "Over 100,000 people asked to be let out."  They give you a safe word incase you are so scared you can't go on.  My new friend John and I decided to take that challenge.
We waited in line for about a half an hour and when the green light flashes it is your groups turn to go in.
We did make it through, but as soon as I walked in to the dark tunnel in which it is so dark that you only have a pin prick of a red light to follow as things jump out at your and a car tries to run you over (it is a fake car, but it still comes out of nowhere and you have to jump out of it's way) that I told John that he has to hold my hand or I am saying, no yelling, the safe word.  Holding hands quickly turned in to me becoming one with his back and not putting my head up at all, even when the ceiling gets so low that you had to crawl on your knees!!
They take a picture of you at a really scary part and you can buy them when you get out, but I didn't let John buy one because all you could see of me is my face buried into his back and my fat arm.  So those pictures were enough to cause nightmares all over again and were never going to see the light of day!!

Anyway, if anyone ever reads this blog and wants some help on the writing process, I would love to help as I seem to be a veteran of writer conference's now.
More later...

My Battle with Scrivener and my new MacBook Pro

I am the first to admit that I am the worst organizer in my family and possibly the entire state of Maryland.  There are many times during my day when my seven year old daughter stops me from adding to yet another pile of undefined papers by saying "No, mommy, those are bills, and Daddy says they belong in the bill basket.  If you remember your organizational bins you won't lose any more bills and our water won't get shut off again."  Okay, I'm not that bad, but I have lost many important items.

This is where the Scrivener app comes in.  It is basically a bulletin board on your computer screen that organizes your novel into manageable sections, chapters and scenes.  Great idea for me who has her entire book on pieces of scrap paper, 5 composition notebooks and various flash drives lying around the kitchen.  I love the idea and I am determined to make this app work for me and get all of my scattered pieces entered into Scrivener.  My first attempt, very sad.  I couldn't figure out how to import or is export my docs into Scrivener.  I couldn't even get them to drag in there, which I thought dragging anything anywhere was a guarantee with all Mac software.

My wonderful children just left for the beach for three days with my in-laws, so I realized that this is the best time to try the One on One service offered (it is about $100 for a year) and signed up to go to a workshop.

More later...