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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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
