Quills Conference

The Quills writing conference, sponsored by the League of Utah Writers (of which Glenn and I are members), was August 24 and 25. Glenn and I volunteered but were only able to go on Friday as we had a wedding on Saturday.

Friday we got up really, really early to go to the U of U Marriott, where it was freezing in the building! As it was in the upper 90s outside, it didn’t occur to me to bring a jacket. I spent the morning in one of the conference rooms on the fourth floor. I had two mugs of hot chocolate. First was a “kaffeeklatsch” with an agent, where people came and asked her questions. I kept time for that.

Next was a session of manuscript evaluations, where people have their first page read by a volunteer (to remain anonymous) and then receive feedback from an agent, an editor, and an author. This session only had one submission, so it wasn’t exactly anonymous. My volunteer partner, who did the reading (I kept time), agreed to cover one of my volunteer shifts so I could go to Maria Snyder’s kaffeeklatsch because that was going to be EPIC. 

At lunch I saw Maria for the first time entering the lunch tent. I brought my own lunch; Glenn went ahead and paid for his. It was nice to experience some heat for a little while. After eating I sat in a chair near the elevators and read a little but ended up talking. Then Maria came by and said hello, and I said I was going to her kaffeeklatsch that was starting in a few minutes, so she invited me to ride the elevator with her. I RODE AN ELEVATOR WITH MARIA V. SNYDER, and we were talking like normal friends. 

The kaffeeklatsch was really fun. About seven of us fans were there and just talked about books and Harry Potter and writing and stuff. For the rest of the afternoon, I was assigned to timekeep for agent pitches. That left a lot of open time to chat with people around the registration desk (and Maria again!).

Glenn and I originally weren’t going to the dinner, but Maria was giving her keynote address there, and I didn’t want to miss that. We figured it could count as our anniversary dinner. 

The presenters were assigned seats throughout the banquet hall so the conference-goers could all mingle with them. Food was good. Glenn and I sat with LUW friends John and Kelly Olsen and writers James A. Hunter, Aaron Michael Ritchey, and Spanky Ward. Maria’s keynote was great fun.