The blog duldrums

It happens to all of us. We get all excited about a new blog and we post madly for a few months. Then we get busy busy busy and start posting less and less frequently. Hohum. After all, how much do I have to say?

Maybe narrowing my blog to marketing was a mistake. I still have much to say on the subject, but I'm not having nearly as much fun. So, I'm gonna loosen up.

Here's what I did this weekend: I went fly-fishing on the Manistee River in Northern Michigan (he says reverently). This is the time of year when the Hex Hatch occurs. What's that? Well, let me tell you. All summer long, mayflies hatch in various bodies of water. Most of these are tiny creatures, easily recognized by their forked tails and curved bodies. The Hex fly, however, is huge by mayfly standards. That sucker is a couple inches long. When they run into you, it feels like a sparrow that flew off course. Naturally, the big fish go nuts.

Unfortunately, this hatch occurs right around sunset, almost 10pm this time of year. So you find yourself wading a river in total darkness until the wee hours of the morning, casting toward sounds, losing flies in trees.

But when the BIG ONE hits! Boy howdy! I caught one 16" Brown Trout this time. After that, things died down a bit. Such is fly-fishing. I met a great guy, "Doc" Beemer from New York. He's retired and drags his poor wife all over the country fly-fishing. His blog is at www.beemertravels.blogspot.com. How he gets an Internet connection in a Grayling campground, I have no idea. I can't even get a cell phone signal (as God intended it).

So there's my non-serious post of the day. We'll return to a more serious nature when I darn well feel like it.

ACFW Conference is coming soon!

If you're like me, you don't have the budget to hit every writer's conference you'd like to. However, if you can only make one, I'd highly recommend the ACFW Writer's Conference in Dallas this September. My reason is this: if you can only afford one, make sure it has everything you need in one place. At ACFW you have plenty of workshops to choose from, no matter what your genre, you have agents and editors who-this is key-make themselves available throughout the weekend for you to talk to. If you're a beginner, you can talk to writers of every level. If you're an old codger with 30 published novels, you get to hang out with a lot of fun people.

The cost isn't bad, either, for an event of this magnitude.

Seeya there!