CWG Conference Day One

With much anticipation, I arrived at the airport for the first leg of the trip through Dallas. To my disappointment, my ticket had been changed and my seat assignment given to someone else. I was reassigned a window seat – a claustrophobic nightmare - thankfully, the middle seat was empty and the flight was uneventful. The second flight was quite enjoyable sitting in an aisle seat and talking to Julie, a fellow suspense writer from Texas.

We agreed to meet for registration and then dinner. At 3:30 we received our notebooks, met another writer, Genstacia, from England. The three of us headed to one of the resort’s restaurants. The meal was consumed with memorizing the schedule, narrowing down the choices of agents and editors, studying where to sit, and finally planning the order of agent/editor sign-up tables in hopes of getting one of the limited appointments.

Before the opening session began with Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages, God placed a wonderful person in the seat next to me. In rare moments, you meet someone you feel you’ve known all your life after five minutes of conversation. You go on to find out your life experiences are parallel and you instantly bond with a new friend – such was the case with Belinda from Texas.

Instead of “running with the bulls” it was “running to the sign-up tables” as soon as the session ended. I signed up for two of the three editors on my wish list and put the third on my meal table list. The meal table list was the one that evoked the “running to the lunch and dinner tables” phenomena to sit with a particular agent or editor in hopes of pitching an article, book, idea, etc.

Day one ended – energized, excited, hopeful, and optimistic. God is good.