I’m growing more and more excited about my trip to the Surrey International Writers’ Conference next weekend.

Partly, this is because my presentations are complete, and I can now relax a little. Before I began putting my materials together, I had this looming fear that I would have nothing to talk about. It turns out either I do know something after all, or I’ve invented an alternate universe in which my baseless opinions travel through the keyboard onto the Keynote screen and become fact.

Mostly, I’m looking forward to spending a weekend with hundreds of other writers, including some amazing presenters.

Elizabeth Lyon gave a master class for CWILL BC a couple years ago, the most practical and useful workshop I have ever attended. I’m hoping no one else knows how brilliant Elizabeth is, because one of her talks coincides with one of mine, and if there’s anything more nerve-wracking than speaking about inspiration in a hotel conference room for 90 minutes, it’s talking to yourself about inspiration in a hotel conference room for 90 minutes.

Eileen Cook is quite possibly the funniest writer I know and the only one who writes about cow vaginas. She, too, is a wonderful teacher and someone capable of providing a whole notebook’s worth of practical and motivating tools in a single workshop.

Dennis Foon is someone I’ve always wanted to meet. Years ago, I used to typeset his books for Annick Press. They always took me twice as long to arrange as any other book, because I’d get so caught up in the plots, I’d forget to insert the em dashes and ligatures. Twice the typesetting time, but excellent training in storytelling!

Would you believe that I get my own child-free hotel room for the weekend, I get to spend time with these people, and I actually get paid? Don’t tell the conference organizers… they had me at “hotel room.”

You can still sign up, until October 15th. Let me know if you do — I have some extra flapper costume components for the dress-up banquet.

A hotel room and a feather boa… squee!