Boy what a day.   I had to get up at 6AM, but that was OK and Roxie was sure glad as she had been bugging me for about an hour.

So I showered and got dressed, had a cup of coffee and got things ready for Dick's meals while I was gone.   I left at 7:15AM and returned at 5PM in time to get supper ready.   Supper was easy.   Dick said he wanted a hamburger so I went to Mc Donalds.  How easy is that?

The conference was sponsored by the Moraine Writer's Guild.   It was at the Kesaskum Elementary School.   I had been there once before when Caim was performing there a couple of years ago so that was easy to find.

It was a well thought out, well organized and very educational day.  It is the third year they have done it and really was sadly not well attended.  Because of the low numbers, Instead off breaking in to two groups for each session, we all attended them all.   They had speakers for Publishing. Zine, Poetry and Screen Writing.

The day started with a social with muffins and donuts with fruit and coffee and water.   A good way to start, I had not had a donut in a long time and that might have been to get me to come in itself.

Then there was a panel discussion featuring three published authors from the Kewaskum area.   The three panelists were:  Dan, (a pastor who writes religious political articles and books, I didn't get his last name and thought I could get it from two emails that he gave us but that is not working either.) Dawn Kunda (who has just gotten a romantic suspense novel called Court of Lies published.) and Laura Hetzol ( who has self published three books of poetry).

The first workshop was led by Philip Martin who does about everything with publishing that you can imagine.   He is located in Milwaukee and I have lots of notes.  

The second brought us two young men, Ben and Jarod spoke to us about Zines.   Zines are self made publications, generally not for profit, but meant to get your idea out.   They are usually paper but can be on CD.   They are easy to to and can be cut and pasted or typed and printed but are short and generally self made, often to the point of having the cover or some other part actually individually pasted.   They are usually stapled, or sewn or rubber banded.

  Sound like fun.

The last morning workshop was conducted by Laura, who told us how she did her self publishing and even how she had a friend do the cover design.   Lots of good stuff.

We had great pizza for lunch and a nice time for visiting.    Scott, one of the organizers has asked for any information that I had on story tellers, so I shared that with him during the lunch break.  

After lunch we had a session on Script Writing which was totally cool and I am not even particularly interested in scriptwriting.

The last hour was a talk by the featured speaker, Victoria Houston, who has written a series of mysteries centered near Rhinelander called the Loon Lake Mysteries.   All the titles start with Dead, the newest being Dead Deceiver.   She was fantastic.  

I left there a bit after three and went directly to St. John's for the 4PM Mass, so now I am home until Monday morning and am I ever tired.   A good tired though.

It is getting close to St. Patrick's Day.   Monday, I am going to stop at Sy Regan's House.   He said the Queen Maeve left a spear there in his workshop and that he is sure it is for me,

God love you

Mary