Writers' Retreat

The closest we came to a crime scene

A few Texas mystery writers, all women, decided to go away for a weekend in Salado, cute little touristy town south of Dallas and north of Austin. Since we all knew about the Stagecoach Inn, we decided to stay there.

Here's how it went.

High Tea--yum!

I guess I'm the one who started this ball rolling, and my thinking was that I needed a getaway and I needed to concentrate on nothing but writing, as I'm working on some time-crunch projects. They're not actually crunching right now, but will be if I don't get to setting some major sets of words down. We went with a laissez-faire structure, which means no structure. Meals happen, of course, and one member, Gale Albright, booked us for High Tea at Adelea's.

Those of us who could, Kathy Waller, Gale, and me, gathered Friday for lunch in the Coffee Shop (really, it was breakfast for me), then went to our rooms to write. Kathy and Gale roomed together, but I got a single since I'm so easily distracted. Except for the weird noise, which I later figured out was caused by big semis going over a stretch of bad pavement on the bridge over Salado Creek, my room was peaceful and comfy. I got a good bunch of words down--1602!

Midafternoon we took a break for fudge shopping and I got some Christmas shopping done.

We met for dinner and walked to the dining room at the Inn. The serving staff keeps their old tradition of reciting the menu. It's impressive, but does make it hard to order. Our waitress may remember everything she said, but I didn't. Gale and I picked ham slice out of her list. She shortly returned to say that it was all gone. We had no choice but to order prime rib, all three of us. It came with everything, shrimp cocktail, baked potato, veggies, bread, dessert--all but the wine. As usual, I order rare and got medium rare, but I've gotten used to that. We rolled back to sit out on the nice patio overlooking the pool at Kathy and Gale's room, then to bed. I think I wrote a little more that night.

Saturday morning, the other two writers arrived, Laura Oles and Nancy G. West. We had breakfast at the Coffee Shop, then had writerly discussion in the double room. I worked on FAT CAT until it was time for tea. I've never had such good scones in my life!

Outside Hemingway's Bar at Adelea's

I went to my room and looked through some emails, but then the wifi connection went down for most of the rest of the day. I got some more FAT CAT work done, a total of 948 words that day, then we had another session in the big bedroom.

We decided that there were a couple of drawbacks to our venue. One was the lack of microwaves and refrigerators in the rooms. The other was the lack of a good meeting place for our group. If this gathering happens again, I'll recommend we look around to see what else is in the area.

Sunday morning it turned suddenly cold. The Good ones, Laura and Nancy, went for a brisk walk while I slept in. We had breakfast and broke up soon after.

I loved getting to know Nancy better and meeting Laura for the first time. This is something I would recommend to any bunch of writers!

All pictures by Kathy Waller