June is awesome in the South

I was looking forward to going to Maine to the annual Maine Romance Writers retreat. I wasn’t sure who was going to be there. I’d lost the list of speakers, but the main thing was to see my writer friends in person. Last year, I hurt my knee and had to stay home. The last time I saw them was in 2018. I missed getting together with other writers to share stories, ideas and motivation.

My husband and I drove to Maine in our RV. Two and a half days up and the same back. While I attended the retreat my husband stayed in the RV and visited with his mom.

The speakers we had were Jennifer Probst, Jamie Schmidt and Ellen Joy. All of them are successful authors in their own right. I learned so much from them. The biggest takeaway was to have a newsletter. I know I keep talking about starting one. These successful authors said that they have very robust newsletters. I don’t know how exciting mine will be, but I’ll add it to my calendar. Maybe I’ll send it every two weeks. My life’s not that exciting for you to hear from me more than that.

I’m back in South Carolina and now I’m helping with the election polls. I have never done anything like this before. I had to take training, two times, once for Election Day and the other for Early Voting, which I also signed up to help with. After those two classes, I have no idea how anyone could cheat in a South Carolina election…definitely not Pickens County.

There are so many checks and balances on every piece of paper that passes through a polling area that the whole center would have to be crooked in order to cheat.

Early voting has been slow, so I plotted out a new book and will continue to work on my cozy mystery, now that I know what’s going to happen.

The last thing I’ll mention is that I’m involved in a red hat challenge for the military. It’s a nation-wide challenge to see who can make the most red hats to put into care packages for deployed service members. I’ve been cranking them out. There’s only a week left to produce, so I’m trying to do a little bit of everything, writing, crocheting and planning three more books in my weather series.

June Updates: Early voting is the way to go. No lines, no waiting in most locations. The red hat challenge is complete and my family made 29 hats and two scarves. Thanks to Josh and Anne for helping with that fun and worthwhile project. 

Early voting has been great for catching up on projects. Our precinct wasn't super busy, so I crocheted a few items as well as added words to the cozy mystery. 

I head to camp in Maine at the end of June with my mom. It should be interesting since camp had a huge makeover this winter. I'll be sure to share some pictures. 
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