My Award-Winning Vacation

Some might call it work, but I used five of my vacation days to prepare for and attend this conference. It didn’t feel like work at all, even though I spent most of it inside on my favorite type of bright, sunny summer days. Normally that would be torture, but not last week. The conference began with my name being called to win an author photo session. The actual photo shoot was the only time I stepped outside the hotel doors all week. The high of meeting agents and editors, telling my story to rapt listeners, getting requests for my proposal to be sent via email, carried me through the weekend and into a new week. Even the so-so hotel fare for lunch and dinner and the one agent who told me I’d need to self-publish my memoir couldn’t dampen my mood.

An extra fun part of the week was when my teddy bear Calvin got to meet Ranger Bear in bearson and get his picture taken with him. Ranger Bear is the mascot for Karen Barnett’s historical fiction series centered around the National Parks. The first in the series, The Road to Paradise, came out in June. Ranger Bear and Karen were oh so gracious despite their fame.

The best part, and the most nerve-wracking part, came on Thursday evening, the last night of the Oregon Christian Writers Conference. The Cascade Awards Ceremony began with each finalist coming on stage to receive a finalist certificate. Then the announcement of the winners! Would the first line of my memoir be read? I hoped so, but couldn’t be sure. Then Susan May Warren read: “No sunny Southern California blue sky watched over me the day everything change.” I won! The perfect cap on a wonderful, award-winning vacation.

Summer sun outside
Loyal and true in darkness
Remind me of You

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It’s Haibun Monday at dVerse Poets Pub and Toni wants us to write about our summer vacation, so I decided to make the first post I wanted to write about the Oregon Christian Writers Conference into a Haibun for the occasion.