Retreat!

I spent Saturday curled up in front of a blazing fire and counting my blessings as my husband and I watched the snow mount on our deck. In the ten years I've lived in Ohio, this had to be the heaviest snowfall I've seen. Thankfully, we had no place we had to be. (Church was cancelled on Sunday as well.) For over an hour, we tried a team approach to shoveling the drive, but the effort proved futile. We finally gave up and called our neighbor's son to bring in his snow plow. The mountain of white stuff at the base of our drive will likely be there till June!

I'm hoping for dry and sunny skies this coming weekend as, on Thursday, I don my writer-hat and board a plane, headed south to Hardy, Arkansas. There I'll join my critique group buds for a writers' retreat followed, on Saturday, by a group booksigning at the local bookstore/coffeeshop, Words and Afterwords. Since all five of us (moi, Susan Warren, Rachel Hauck, Tracey Bateman, and Christine Lynxwiler) have Barbour books on the market right now, I think the mayor should proclaim Saturday as Barbour Day in Hardy, don't you? If you're in the area, please stop by and visit. We begin the day with a Writer Q&A session at 10 a.m., followed by the booksigning at 11. You can learn more by going to the "Events" tab on the Word bookstore's Web site: http://www.wordsafterwords.com/events.html

Susan Downs