Tag Archive for: Magellan

And Off We Went

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A very good friend of mine who now lives in Arizona (and is 80 plus) planned her next book tour for California. She had it all worked out, mainly hitting all the California Writers Clubs in the middle of the state beginning with Ridgewriters who are located in the high desert town of Ridgecrest. Inyokern and Trona are the only two other town anywhere around–bet you never heard of them either.

Ridgecrest is the home of the China Lake Naval Air Station–the home of many jet fighters, a battalion of Seabees along with all the Navy pilots and everyone who is there to maintain the base and the operations including many engineers. Oh, and as my husband always reminds me, a contingent of Marines for security.

Besides the families of all these people, a lot of retirees make their home in Ridgecrest, including those who retired from jobs on the NAS.

Somehow while my friend and the program chair of Ridgewriters were making their plans for the appearance, the dates got messed up. Ridgewriters expected my friend last Wednesday and she thought she was supposed to come this Wednesday.

At the last minute my friend asked if I could possible step in for her–and I said yes. (As it turned out, she’ll be going tomorrow anyway–they are going to have two meetings this month, but they’d already publicized this first meeting.)

The drive to Ridgecrest takes about 3 plus hours (we always make a couple of stops on the way) but it’s an easy drive with good roads and not much traffic–and great scenery. To get there we first must drive through the Tehachapi mountains (the home of the wonderfully engineered Tehachapi Loop where freight trains go round and round a large hill and the front end passes the back end–really fun to watch) and then we head out over the desert. There are abandoned houses, lots of Joshua trees and sage brush, sandy vistas that go on and on ending at mountains on either sides, and for a short while, a gorgeous vista of colorful cliffs.

Once we arrived in Ridgecrest, Mrs. Magellan guided us to our hotel which was a bit off the main road. Called Heritage Inn it had the grandeur of hotels from an earlier age with a huge lobby with comfortable chairs and couches and a wide, sweeping staircase to the second floor. Our room was large, nicely appointed and clean.

Next we asked Mrs. Magellan to take us to the restaurant where we were to meet some of the members of Ridgewriters for dinner. (We rely on Mrs. Magellan a lot–we no longer use Mapquest or even maps and we no longer argue about which way we should go.)

This is my fourth visit with this group which now meets in a retirement home, an upscale and extremely nice one. Only about 12 people showed up (obviously the word had gotten out that I was the replacement) and a couple of those were people who lived in the facility. My talk was about blogging and blog tours and those who came were quite interested in the topic and asked great questions.

Two of the attendees were young people (the rest were not) and I think they knew most of what I had to say, though the young man took lots of notes. Afterwards he told me that the last time I’d come had given him the incentive to keep on writing and he’s since been published. That made the whole trip worthwhile.

And yes, I sold books–only 6, but that’s pretty good when you think about how few people were there.

I truly like this group, the drive is enjoyable and I was happy to help out.

The hotel was the quietest I’ve ever slept in. Breakfast was free and you ordered off the menu in the restaurant of the hotel.

So all in all, it was a good time all around. I’ll go there again if they ask.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Booksignings and Other Stuff

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Frankly, I thought I’d already done a post for today but couldn’t find it. So here I go.

We just returned home from a weekend trip to Vegas to celebrate our 57th wedding anniversary. Yep, 57 years together–can you imagine? Frankly, I lived it and I can’t.

No, we didn’t go to a show or hit the casinos. We went to my sister’s, she and her hubby took us out to a nice dinner. Afterwards we watched the latest Indiana Jones movie on TV and screamed out in all the exciting parts like we used to when we were kids. We spent the whole weekend with them and did a lot of reminiscing, watched home movies of when we were little, and ate a lot of good meals.

Sis and her hubby along with mine, accompanied me to a book signing at Cheesecake and Crime in Henderson. Though we didn’t have a lot of people, the quality was great. Two of my cop friends from the Public Safety Writers Association came along with one of the wives, who is a fan of my Tempe series and the president of Epic came. These are two writers groups that I’m very active with. We had a great time talking writing and just talking. Oh, and I did sell a couple of books. And yes, I bought some cheesecake for our dessert that night.

While we were driving to Vegas I read David Morrell’s book, Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing, one of the best books I’ve read on the craft of writing.

We also had some white knuckle driving excitement. We took one of our grown grandsons with us who had never been to Vegas to a friend’s for the weekend. (He did do all the things people usually do when visiting Vegas.) This friend lives right off the strip which meant we had to drive in all that traffic to both drop him off and pick him up. Thank goodness for our Magellan or we’d never have made it. The offramp we were supposed to get off on was closed–and people in Vegas are dare devil drivers.

We managed to get there and back unscathed–but it was pretty scary at times. Scarier than ghosts and haunted houses.

That’s it–I’m going to watch Dancing with the Stars and go to bed!

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Plans Often Go Astray

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My plan for the weekend was to leave early Friday morning with hubby and all the paraphenalia to have a booth at a Flea Market in Temecula CA–about a 4 plus hour drive from our home. We were to meet at our eldest daughter at our granddaughter’s home for lunch. We left in plenty of time, just a bit after 6 a.m.

When we drew close to the bottom of the road over the mountains (I-5, the main connections from the San Joaquin Valley to Southern CA) all the cars slowed to a stop. Accident, we thought. We expected to eventually be guided around it. Instead we were detoured off the highway, around a big loop and back to the main highway going back the way we came. Like sheep, we followed all the trucks and cars figuring they, like us, needed to find an alternate route.

We had a pretty good idea of where we needed to go, up to Tehacapi and down to Mojave, and then we hoped our Magellan would guide us the best way to get to Temecula. By this time we learned via the radio that the problem was a hazardous waste spill on I-5 and no one was going through for a long, long while. Our Magellan wanted to take us back to I-5 through Palmdale but since we had no idea where the spill was we didn’t want to take a chance.

Finally, the mysterious voice on the GPS led us to San Bernardino and on to Genie’s. Of course daughter had already left for home as they had other plans. Genie and Mark are always gracious overnight hosts and we had a great time visiting them and their two little kids.

Before our hosts were awake the next morning, hubby and I headed off for the Flea Market. We thought we left plenty early, but the park where it was being held was already packed. We found a place to leave the car and began hauling the Easy-Up tent, tables, chairs and the pull-alongs with all my books.

I was the only author–something I’ve found to be a good thing–and began attracting attention from the other vendors. Though I didn’t sell a ton of books–I made my fee for the spot back, plus quite a bit more. I also handed out lots of cards and bookmarks and talked to lots of people. By three o’clock the wind came up and vendors began packing up–so we did too.

We programmed in grandson Patrick’s address and followed the voice to his house. There we visited with his wife and three kids. We took them out to dinner, then Patrick, hubby and grandson all went to the motorcycle races. I stayed home with the girls and we watched a chick flick and did a lot of talking.

Once again we left before our hosts were up and about. Left a thank you note and headed for home. Told the mysterious Magellan “best use of freeways” and ended up driving through downtown LA. Not too bad since it was Sunday–however next time I’ll put in “shortest distance” which would have taken us a better way. This time, the drive was uneventful and we arrived home just in time for a barbecue cooked by our son for Father’s Day.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com