Things got busy last week with the start of school, plus roofers and medical and vet stuff, oh my. So I never did wrap up my Plein Air posts, and then last night was the reading.
So. Day two was at a gorgeous private residence near Parkdale. As I showed up, I found two horses grazing on the front lawn. Drool. Drool. This place also had a lovely, lovely arena set up not just for work but with a rudimentary kitchen clearly designed for small horse shows/clinics/parties. There was also one gentlemanly equine retiree who, after grazing on the lawn and crunching windfall apples, had decided he’d had enough and ambled over to his free choice hay pile by the arena.
I wrote one piece there, “The Stone Bowl,” a short from my Rust and Flame world and the probable climax of the Rust and Flame book I want to write someday. It’ll come out in October as part of the Plein Air anthology.
Then I went to downtown Hood River and spent several hours there wandering around, seeking inspiration. And lo, it came–and I wrote a little short piece about vampire hunters on vacation, “Masks,” which will also come out as part of the Plein Air anthology. “Masks” will get significantly reworked for an upcoming anthology call as well.
Last night was the public reading of works we’d written during the Plein Air sessions. We heard excellent stories, essays, and poems. I read “The Dahlia,” which will be out in an extended form as part of the Netwalk Foundations sequence in October, and “Masks.”
Picture (taken by my lovely husband):
And now to finishing off that damned novella. I have books to write.
