ACFW: The Final Day

The final morning, I lurched out of bed to turn off the alarm … and I was tired. (Notice that space before and after the ellipsis? Just one of my new skills developed from reading the The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style: Updated and Expanded Edition I won on Day 2!)

We were planning on grabbing a quick breakfast of tea and pasties from the coffee shop before the session at 9:30, but Rebecca called and invited us to run over to Sonic. Who can say no to Sonic? We may be from Oregon, but we’re smarter than you’d expect!

We slipped, a little bit late, into the service during a worship song. We didn’t miss much, right? WRONG! The only thing during the whole conference that we didn’t get to time on and we missed the Hairy Man song! If you’ve ever heard Jim Bell speak, then you know what I’m talking about. If not, I believe copyright laws prohibit me from telling you anything about it. However, I am allowed to inform you that Ashberry did author a second verse two years ago after Jim spoke at OCW and sent the lyrics, complete with motions, to Mr. Bell.

Hmm … I actually have a short video clip of Jim’s performance at OCW from my digital camera. But I promised him it would never make it’s way onto the internet.

After the fantastic final keynote, I manged to snag a few more people for pictures:

Me with Sharlene MacLaren

With Jenness Walker

We packed our stuff and came down to the lobby. Crowds of people were waiting for shuttles to the airport, but a few folk were hanging out, relaxing. We sat down with Brandilyn Collins, Susan Meissner, and Pamela Griffin. These folks were tired, too … tired of carting around the few books they hadn’t sold. They decided Rebecca, Mom, and I looked like we needed some more reading material and passed around free books like it was the final minute of a yard sale.

We’re ready to see if we’re members of BHCC (Big Honkin’ Chickens Club) or not. As Brandilyn recently pointed out, she is the only author who has a fan club dedicated to enthusiastically promoting her books while not reading any.

We’ve read all of Susan’s women’s fiction–now here comes the Widows & Orphans series!

And Pamela Griffin, a new-to-us author

Then these famous author types actually asked us, the unpubbed, if we wanted to dine with them. A great idea, until the whole group tried to get tables together-ish. When Rebecca, Mom, and I ended up at our own little table, we hatched a new plan.

A risky plan. A departure from this conservative’s usual pattern of behavior.

Our flight left in five hours, but we’d used the smaller airport, Dallas Love Field, which gave us a little more time to play. Rebecca knew of an artsy theater that also served meals. We said goodbye to the ACFWers and hopped in her car. The only movie we really wanted to watch was due to start in about an hour. Here’s where it gets even crazier. (If you’re thinking, “What’s the big deal?” just remember I’m a planner.)

We bought our movie tickets and dashed over to the airport to check our suitcases. That way, we’d only have to go through security and find our gate when we got back. Unfortunately, my bag was overweight. No problem. I unzipped it–in full sight of everyone!–and removed about eight books. I cracked Rebecca up when I came back out to the car carrying a stack of novels!

We went back to the theater, bought our lunches, found three seats together, and had the BEST time watching Becoming Jane. One of the first lines of dialogue is from Jane, who’s writing in the early morn as the rest of her family slumbers: “No, no! Too many adjectives!” And she scribbles out the words. All the writerly jokes would not have been half as funny if we hadn’t come from an intense writing conference.

Zipped back to the airport, almost got slammed to the ground by security when Mom tried to sneak in a water bottle, and made it to our gate. Turned out Randy Ingermanson had the same flights home so we picked his brain–ew!–for about an hour and I read all of Wanda Dyson’s Abduction (A Shefford-Johnson Case, Book 1). It was such a good read that I finished the last several pages on the airport shuttle as it took us out to the farthest lot from the terminal. And I’ve never let my kids out of sight since.

Ended up that there was an earthquake as we were on the shuttle. Just a little one, but still. And we arrived home in the wee hours of the morning. I feel into bed, alarm set to take the kids to school a few hours later.