We're Headed to Bellingham, WA!
Yep, to Chanticleer Authors Conference CAC22
One of my favorite conferences is hosted by Chanticleer Book Reviews and is an excellent multi-genre conference for new and experienced authors. I've been going since the very first one, partly because Kiffer Brown (owner of Chanticleer) is such a hoot, and partly because of the wonderful author friends I've made there.
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| We ladies must hide our jowls. This is what happens when book people are unsupervised at a bar. |
COVID kind of knocked the socks off #CAC20 and #CAC21, but they prevailed and managed to hold virtual conferences on Zoom. But what a pain...plus, it's really hard to hug your friends on Zoom. Anyway, this year they're having an IRL (In Real Life) conference, and they're back at Hotel Bellwether at Squalicum Harbor, Bellingham, Washington. I'm presenting three workshops with my buddy Diane Garland, owner of Your WorldKeeper. So Mr R and I will hop into the car and pull our little Casita to Puget Sound, where we'll be celebrating family birthdays, visiting friends, and doing a few errands before and after going on up to Bham.
But first, we're selling books at the Owyhee Outpost Days in Murphy, Idaho. I noticed that Murphy has grown from 47 people to nearly triple digits--so you might not have heard of it, but hey, it's the county seat of Owyhee County. And there's even a parking meter in front of the courthouse.
**NOTE: This is the only parking meter in the county and there are no stoplights, thank heavens.
Owyhee Outpost Days is a ton of fun. You can see Lost Arts from days gone by, take in the museum (which is truly excellent), grab some corndogs or gourmet chocolate--or even homemade pie! The kids have pony rides and wagon rides, and the adults can ride on a John Deere B. We don't usually have a lot of authors there but I hope a few show up.
Next week, we're visiting the Owyhee Dam in Malheur County, Oregon. Why is it so interesting? Because if you go to Hoover Dam, you'll be told over and over and over that Hoover Dam was the first dam where they used refrigeration to cure concrete. Not so. Owyhee Dam was the prototype.
We'll be camping in Tillie the Tank, our Casita, from Tuesday to Thursday and our friends will be coming up for a cookout on Wednesday, so should be a lot of fun.
In the middle of all that, we'll be gardening. So far we have all the herbs and veggies planted, although one of my cantaloupe looks pretty pathetic, so might have to replace it. Mr R has the irrigation all set up. We have 16 4'x4' raised beds, 5 1'x4' raised beds, and 3 stock tanks, all full of herbs and vegetables. Then there are probably two dozen flower pots/planters, all with watering systems, so you can see the poor guy has been working his hiney off. My daughter, best known on TikTok as Hurricane Mercedes, will be house/garden/Walter sitting. Sorry, no current photos.
Speaking of Hurricane Mercedes, she has close to 50,000 followers on TikTok, and they're avid fans. I mean avid. Her goal is to spread awareness of neurofibromatosis and she's doing a mighty fine job. As a matter of fact, the Children's Tumor Foundation asked her, as an influencer, to help publicize the Make NF Visible Telethon on May 17th, which she did. The local NF group had a watch party, and Mercedes got a standing O when her videos were featured four different times! What a star. Well, she wanted to be a movie star when she was little, so I guess this is close to it.
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| From left to right: Me, Mercedes, and my sis-in-law Mary |
That's about enough yammering from me for one month. I have to get busy on the presentations, and continue working on my book. Lots to do! I hope you're happy, healthy, and have a room jammed full of unread books to keep you traveling, at least in your mind.
Much Love!
Until next month, Happy Reading!
If you're on TikTok, friend me! My handle is @jacquierogersbooks.
You can get videos of Honey Beaulieu and Sassy's latest updates there. And goofy videos of her scribe. Heck, we even do a few cooking videos.
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