Varuna

Thirteen people in a room doing nothing but talk writing: such bliss, such stimulation. In the front room of Varuna House, Patti Miller took us to the edge at times, forcing us to reveal parts of our lives we'd rather not confront!

As usually happens, there was a variety of people and projects with differing rates of completion.We fed off each other like starving sharks.

Patti is the kind of instructor I like, always finding the good in what people write and very encouraging. I'm probably going to send the complete manuscript to her in January. In the meantime copy editing will continue.

Yvonne and I shared a room at the youth hostel, a bunk bed no less! Double on the bottom, single on the top. She very kindly took the top bunk. We swapped synopses and 'market potential' pages of each of our works and gave each other valuable feedback.

In the evening we met a mother/ daughter writing team (each on different projects) in the bar of the Carrington Hotel and had dinner with them, swapping life stories over beer and wine.

Ever the entrepreneur, Yvonne spruiked Better than Chocolate and we sold all the copies we had between us (eight), so more money for the WD account. Well done Yvonne!

The weather was serene and warm both days, and to top it all off, my beautiful daughter in law offered me dinner on the way home, a much better proposition than the tin of beans waiting in my cupboard. She is also going to take some BTC books to work to sell them for Christmas presents.

I have a wonderful life surrounded by wonderful people, family, old friends, writing buddies and aqua gals.

Now there's laundry and vacuuming. I'd better get going.