One from the far side

Mario here,

Spent an awesome weekend in Grand Junction for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' June educational workshop. Saw old friends and made plenty of new ones. My stay on the Western Slope was bookended by a wickedly fun road trip wi th author pals, Chris Goff (L) and Robin D Owens (here with host Vicki Law in the middle). We traded jokes and gossip, and if your ears were burning, then we were definitely gabbing about you.

Big Thanks to Marne Kirstatter and Vicki for their wonderful job making sure the workshop ran smooth as top shelf vodka.






As the headline instructor, Charlotte Cook dished tons of valuable writer know-how. Chris, Robin, and I were brought along to critique and offer our humble advice. Over all, we were mightily impressed with our fellow scribes on the far side of our home state.


We toured the remodeled downtown, which was decorated with statues ranging from the whimsical to the provocative to the commemorative, like this one of Grand Junction homie Dalton Trumbo--the acclaimed novelist (of the horrific Johnny Got His Gun) and screenwriter (Spartacus)--depicting the blacklisted writer scribbling in his bathtub.


<--Photo by Andrew Gulliford




The one nit this weekend was not having the time to plow through Robert Crais's newest mystery, The Sentry, which so far (at page 83) earns 100 Mario points. When I grow up, I want to write like Crais.