What I took away from MWSA

Well, home, safe, and no longer on speaking terms with Shelia (the GPS). She decided that I just had to go through Ohio to get home. Yes, it was pretty taking the scenic byway down the Ohio river, but I needed to go faster than the slowest person I was stuck behind on a one lane road. So, after some choice words, I shut her off and managed to get to Charleston WV and then west home. Warp 8.0 or better made me happy, and it took me nearly 8 hours to finally get home.

One thing I noticed when traveling to the conference: my route to get there and back took me on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway, the Korean War Veterans Highway, the Purple Heart Trail, and the Tuskegee Airmans' Memorial Highway. Fascinating. I was reminded going and coming of what this country has gone through to get where we are. I'm just wondering when (or if we already do) have a Gulf War Veterans Highway. If not, there should be one considering what they all went through.

The Military Writers Society of America annual conference was held in Pittsburgh at the Airport Marriott. Hmm, funny, I hardly saw a plane the whole time we were there. And, ouch, the prices to do anything  or even eat were beyond painful. There wasn't much close, you had to drive to go anywhere else. But the folks who put the conference on made sure we had a hospitality room with munchies- a big help, thank you!

I got the opportunity to hang around and learn things from some great authors, poets and speakers. The classes were very relevant to what we were all trying to do, and there was lots of input from everyone. I enjoyed the screenwriting seminar, the PTSD writing lecture, and promoting your books with social media. Probably the one thing that tickled me the most, was catching award winning author Jack London in the lobby, starting up a conversation, and ending up teaching him about Smashwords. He was thrilled! And I somehow ended up in the poetry class with jim greenwald and Mike Mullins, and as you will see below, was inspired to wrote a poem with what I saw on my travels home.

Saturday night was the awards banquet. My first novel, Project: Dragonslayers was up for an award in the fiction-thriller category. Although I didn't place anywhere near the top three, it was a valuable learning experience that found me thanking lead reviewer jim greenwald for his time, effort, and the personal email that he sent me, telling me my book was great, but it needed major editing help. He gave me his editor's email, and she and I have been working together ever since. I thanked him for pushing me to a higher level of writing, and to make me a better writer because of his kind, yet truthful feelings about my first book. I got to see many of my new friends win great awards, and I hope to see them next year a Dayton.-- much closer drive this next time!

I made quite a few new friends and hope I can see them all next year. Betsy Beard touched us all with her stories of her son, and why she is a Gold Star Mom. Dwight Zimmerman and Louis Intres kept us entertained with their costumes and characters; and Dick Hrebic serenaded us at the banquet. But I don't think there was a dry eye in the house when Fr. Ron Camarda read a passage from a book about a dying cancer patient and his nurse. It especially hit home for me, since I lost my mother to cancer back in '98 and really wished she could've been there to see me that night. I know she would be proud.

Next year I hope to be there in Dayton. I've even mentioned to Joyce Faulkner that I could teach a class on Book Cover Pro and maybe an intro to Smashwords. And I hope I can earn enough Buckaroos to have more fun at the auction on Sunday. I'd like to have another book nominated next year, and God willing, I hope I will. Certainly my editing will be much better, so perhaps there is a chance. I've also learned a lot about the craft of writing and hope that will apply.  In closing, I'd like to leave you with a poem that I wrote after I got home.


Raping Mother

She's hot, she's warm, she's cold
From her womb is ripped the blackness

The blackness mankind craves
The blackness keeping him alive

Into her depths man roughly intrudes
Pulling her blackness into the light

He takes it by land, by river, by sea
The blackness burns; mother is hurt

Without remorse he burns and burns
Tears from mother rain down black

She cries for help, but no one hears
Our lives too dependent on her to care

And then one day she will say no more
The blackness of her womb will vanish

She's had enough of our raping
It's just a matter of time before she dies.



Until next time my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy