I'm back. I guess I forgot to mention that I was gone. For the past week I was on Kelleys Island, just north of Sandusky, Ohio. Yes, we have islands in Ohio. Miracles still happen.

I spent the week with eleven other writers, all wonderful people, critiquing the novels we've been working on. It was an amazing experience. I've never written a novel before, except once I tried, but I gave up pretty quickly when it became evident that the novel wasn't really a novel. Maybe someday it'll grow up to be one, but as it stands, that past attempt was a stab in the dark. This time, I feel the shape of the book I'm writing, know the characters and what they're up to, where they're going, where they've been. I know all this even better now, after the Blue Heaven novel workshop (cast includes: ringleader, Charles Finlay, Tobias Buckell, Karin Lowachee, Nancy Proctor, Cathy Morrison, James Stevens-Arce, Ben Rosenbaum, M. Rickert, Amber Van Dyk, Paul Melko, and Roger Eichorn).

We stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast, were served wonderful breakfasts and lunches, had not so wonderful dinners at the local village diner (Go Pump), encountered possible voodoo sacrifices, discussed a wide variety of topics ranging from writing to religion, from drag names to encounters with police officers. We played mafia, the Surrealist Oracle, and critiqued for about six hours a day.

Now I'm back home. One more week of school left before I graduate. Two essays left to write.

No more tonsilitis. Yay.

But a slight cold. (Thanks Toby, Amber, Karin, Ben, whomever was passing the nasty thing around).