An Evening with Dave Barry-- Sept 25th 2008

An Evening with Dave Barry was held at the Wildlife Experience and was hosted by the Douglas County Library Foundation. Dave Barry is an humor writer who has written over thirty books including the Starcatcher series, a young adult series that explores the history of Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Neverland. Amazingly enough Barry has also won the Pulitzer Prize and formed a ban with Stephen King and Amy Tan. Overall, Barry was delightful and interesting to listen to (even if I couldn't see him since we were in the back of the room) His 'stand-up' act entertained and he pretty much saved the Q&A session that wasn't nearly as fun since the questioner didn't have interesting questions.

Rock Solid Writer’s Conference-- Sept 20th

The last couple of years the PSM library in Castle Rock has hosted the Rock Solid Writer's Conference. It's an all day experience with key speakers, classes taught by published authors and the opportunity for people to pitch their books to agents. this year my mom was kind enough to get me a spot in the conference. Overall, a wonderful experience. The speakers Margaret Coel and Jim Sheeler. Coel used humor and charmed to win over the group talking about her Native American mystery novels and her non-fiction book on Chief Left-Hand. Sheeler moved the audience with his powerful slide show on his new book Final Salute which takes a close look of the morning families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Everyone signed up for four sessions of classes; mine were:

• "Make Your Poetry Come a Live" taught by Gail Waldstein
• "The Care and Feeding of Editors" taught by Marni Jameson, Sally Stich and Carol McAdoo Rehme
• "Structuring the Screenplay" taught by Ryan Kelly
• Dialogue and Setting in Fiction" taught by Todd Mitchell

Overall the first and last one fall flat. Waldstein was unfocused and used the time to talk about personal manners which wasn't helpful or professional. and ended the class with an exercise that she got from the second worse writing conference she attended plus an exercise she didn't even try herself. The last class taught by Mitchell just didn't add anything to my knowledge and felt like it was geared towards a young/less experience audience. The only interesting thought he presented was using dialogue to hide the truth.

The other two classes were fantastic. I singed up for 'The Care and Feeding of Editors' because of the name. What a creative name-- how couldn't I reward these ladies for such wit!?! Two of ladies (Jameson and Stich) come from a freelance writing for magazine background and spent they're 20 minutes on what editors want/don't want, your relationship is always going to be one sided, and fresh is important to any sells pitch. McAdoo Rehme's background deals with editing collection of short story books such as Chicken Soup for the Soul. The one piece of information that really stuck out to me was that the writers sometime shape the collection. A wonderful punctual, precise, and focused presentation. Finally, Ryan Kelly's 'Structure for Screen Plays' blew me way. Kelly's enthusiasm propelled the whole class and carried our awkward answer to a new heights that added to the discussion. Kelly focused on the plot structure of a good screen play and gave helpful advice as when key events are suppose to happen and what moves a screen play is a characters desire/need and the bigger the consequences the better the movie. Both classes was worth the entry fee for the event.

Burgundy vs. White Scrimmage

So in an attempt to be more social (and to avoid another chest hurting belly dance class) I went with friend Michelle and her friend Dee to the Avalanche pre-season scrimmage in Colorado Springs. Where we had a great time making silly eyes at our favorite picks. since it's been years, and I do mean years, since I've gone to a game I had a great time scooping out all the guys and picking my favorites (#16 Darcy Tucker). The White team totally beat the Burgundy team during the actually game, even though Burgundy had Captain (and Michelle's future husband) Joe Sokic on it. The shoot out at the end was a different story. All and all a great time and I'm glad I missed out on a Belly Dancing class to experience it.

Kansas Trip

So friend Labecca was in need of a computer, and it turns out that my job gave us great deals on our old computers. So we did a friendly exchange in Hays, Kansas. I wish I could say we had a great night on the town but really we just got to the hotel, drank at the bar, and then drank again in our room later. I tried a new beer called Shock (very similar to Blue Moon) and played what can we order that the kitchen actually has (apparently it was off season to visit Kansas). I also enjoyed the amazing bill board signs that advertised six legged cows and over 20 pound prairie dogs. On the boarder of Colorado and Kansas there is a McDonald's with video games for the kids (looked like Mario go-cart) and although everyone says the drive to Kansas is boring (which it did drain me more than driving to GJ which is the same distance) I did find many thing that were beautiful and photograph worthy-- unfortunately I was driving and couldn't pull over to take shots of everything that I wanted to. How can someone say that sunflower fields, black birds, old rusty trucks, grain elevators are anything but beautiful?