Winning is good

Winning puts me in a very good mood. Saturday I spent all day (say "all day" with some emphasis) at the Maumelle Arts Council's writer's conference. There were two key note speakers.
Darla Haas spoke about inspiration, inspiring, and inspirational writing...different things, but connected.
Laura Parker Castoro did a presentation called Postcards from the Trenches, lessons that she's learned about the writing life. Funny. It was funny.

And I had four entries in the contest, and won a first place and two third places. The first place was for a pet peeve, and as I have so many to choose from, I was a natural choice. The other two were fiction pieces, one an original for this contest because it had to be about high school lovers reuniting. And the other, in the category of "Anything Goes" was my poor mystery. Yeah, it won something! Third time's the charm. And I had just attended a breakout session with the sponsor and judge of that category. She explained a little about the whys and hows of contest judging. It was very interesting.

Anybody want to read any of it? The rant may actually be something similar to what you read here every day. I have many themes and many of them are rants.

Going to see the crowd at PW's book signing tonight so come back tomorrow for photos.
And I posted the winners to my little contest yesterday so check out that post, highlighted by a photo of the beauteous Darcy.