Trick or Treat Friday!

I love Halloween. I don't do much to celebrate, but I'm an active observer (oxymoron anyone?). I love going to the stores where the clerks dress up, and I love the Halloween themed shows that play on television, and I love opening my door to all the kiddies dressed up in their adorable costumes. We don't get a lot of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, though we live in suburb central, but I do enjoy the few that come by. It's so festive! If I'd had the money, I would have totally decked out the front porch with ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties. Maybe next year?

What do you think of Teddy's costume? His picture is up there at the top of this post. He wasn't too happy with me for putting that hat on him, but when I saw all those cute little pet costumes at the store, I couldn't resist getting him one. The devil is perfect. They're made for little dogs, but Teddy is a huge cat and his head is just the right size.

Hey, tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo! And this is my first year doing it. I think the website will be problematic as it appears to go down a lot, but we've got plenty of NaNo action going on at Absolute Write to make up for it. It's the community aspect of the contest that has me pumped. In fact, I've even discovered writers here in Bend who are participating this year! That's amazing. It's pretty hard to dig up a novelist in this city, yet you can find a poet on every street corner. Go figure. Anyway, I'll join the three other Bendite NaNoers I met online at Townsend's Tea Room downtown tomorrow at 2:00. I can't wait to meet them.

Don't get me wrong, there are writers here in Bend, all kinds of writers. It's a very artistic community, which kind of goes with the state of Oregon as a whole. It's just that most of the writers in Bend are writers of nonfiction, memoirists, poets, and literary writers. We have only a few writers of genre fiction like moi. With the exception of Timothy Zahn, who supposedly lives here but keeps an embarrassingly low profile, I have to go to Seattle to find the folks who write what I do. I may be doing just that in April for the annual sf/f convention there. It's a very, very long drive so I'm still on the fence about it.

As for conventions and conferences in Bend, there's something here called The Nature Of Words and it's happening next weekend. It might be interesting, but it's the most expensive conference I've ever run across. One workshop, and I do mean just one 2-hour workshop, costs $45 to attend. I can attend a 3-day conference for about $325 and get the benefit of a couple dozen workshops that includes meals and a fancy banquet dinner on Saturday night. Which do you think is the better value? Plus I don't know anything about the instructors at this event. I don't think The Nature of Words is worth my time. I'd rather be home writing.