The Cheetos in this hotel don’t taste remotely the same as the Cheetos I buy at home. The truth is, I have a soft spot for them, particularly when I’m writing. It’s like coffee in the daytime, wine or whisky in the afternoon, and Cheetos. I know how that sounds. Honestly it’s not that often because I only want a few at a time and they tend to stale quickly. However, I might NEVER buy them the way this bag crunches. Does anybody know if the flavor of something is changed regionally? I know that advertising can be, and even labels, packaging, but what about the recipe for a famous cheetah’s chips?

I’ve officially been on this trip for a week as of today. We left at 0’dark 30 last Tuesday for the Las Vegas Writer’s Conference. I’d like to give a big shout out to each person who attended the conference, a thank you to the authors, agents, and editors who were in attendance. To all the writers who follow my blog, I can’t recommend enough attending a conference near you. It’s the opportunity to share your craft, learn from others in the business, and network, network, network.

At LVWC they offer a 1st page read during lunch and dinner on Friday of the conference. It works much like a lottery system.  They have a panel of agent’s and editors who raise a red-X when they would stop reading. After the page has been read aloud to the room, the panel gives feedback to the anonymous writer. It’s an opportunity for every attendee to learn from some of the ‘gatekeepers’ as we so fondly call them. We were lucky enough to have ours pulled and read aloud. I feel about 100 times more confident in our writing than I ever did before. This is largely due to this one moment. Putting ourselves out there was hard, but the payout was oh so worth it.

Other highlights from the conference included classes on every topic within the industry, taught by such a great group of people including, Phillippa Burgess, Diana Carlile, Michael Carr, Christine Fairchild, Melissa Golebiowski, Elena Hartwell, Larry Brooks, Steve Hutson, Wendi Kelly, Brady McReynolds, Sam Morgan, Randall Platt, Frances Sevilla, Paul Sinor, Maria Vicente, and John Darryl Winston.

Above all other things, I think I’ll take away the friendships I made this past weekend. Thank god social media makes staying in contact with people so easy! Okay, I’m going to throw out the Cheetos and get back to work. I have a lot to get done in the next week before the Woman’s National Bowling Tournament. *Not to mention I still have a couple of books to review. Be on the look out for those in the coming days*