One of my favorite things to do when I’m in a new city is visit an old graveyard. The Seattle trip in early September was no different. Thank goodness my friend, Sasha White, was down with that. In fact, as soon as she found out who their most famous resident was, she was all over a trip to the graveyard. She studied martial arts and Bruce was one of her idols.

I have several reasons I love to go. You get a feel for who established a city, what nationalities, what their interests were. I always come away with images that will inspire a story. And face it, I love the creep factor.
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I’m here in Huntington, West Virginia, a day ahead of the official start of the conference. The flight was uneventful and a helluva lot shorter than the one to Seattle earlier this month.

I almost didn’t make the trip. Restless me decided yesterday would be my “girlie” day. There was my first mistake. I don’t do girlie very well. Still, I suffered through a pedicure where I nearly kicked the “nail technician” into impotency (I’m very ticklish). I was so thrilled with my pretty toes (he painted flowers on both big hammers), that when I got home, I decided to give myself a facial.

I’m still wondering what the hell got into me. I found an ancient tube of a natural masque, applied it to my face then settled down to watch TV while it dried. I didn’t last a minute. My skin burned and itched and I ran to the bathroom to wash it off—but the damage was already done. At midnight last night, my face looked like a dimpled purplish raspberry.

When I got up to start getting ready, most of the welts had deflated. I still have bumps that look like a normal-ish skin rash and my face burns, but dammit, I’m gonna have a good time.

When I deplaned in Huntington, I met paranormal mystery author, Shirley Damsgard in the airport. We shared the shuttle ride to the hotel, then decided to go to lunch together. She’s lovely, funny and smart. I hope we keep in touch.

Since I have Internet access, I’ll try to let you guys know what’s happening here at Lora Leigh’s RAW!

Later! Need to head back down and see if I recognize anyone.

A winner has been selected, but I’m gonna show off my good time first! read to the bottom.

I know most of you have watched Grey’s Anatomy a couple of times at least, right? And you’ve seen the opening credits and probably wondered what dreary city they filmed. Well, it was Seattle. Not that I think Seattle is dreary, but the crew must have given up on seeing a sunny day.

Did I get pics of the road and the port or even of the lovely green mountains? Ha! I went underground. If you’re reading this in Facebook, you’ll have to go to my blog to see it.

For those of you who don’t know, Seattle was originally built at sea level. When the town started to grow, they built a public sewer system. When the tides rolled in, people had to be wary about flushing, because they’d get geysers erupting from the their toilets. So when much of Seattle was destroyed by fire, they built the roads high, encouraging people to build their shops and houses with deep basements so that their upper floors were accessible from the street. As a result, there were shops and walkways underneath the streets and sidewalks that you either had to access by ladder or through the shop’s stairways.

Today, much of the Underground is walled up. This is one entrance and where the official tour begins. I trekked down into the bowels with Sasha White, my cousin David and his partner, Greg.
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I’m not the greatest photographer, and some of my subjects are reluctant, but here are a few pics from my time at the lake house. If you are viewing this blog from Facebook, then you will probably have to come to the blog to see the pics: My Blog

This was taken my first night there. I couldnt’ wait to get out on the balcony and see something. I saw more than I hoped and snapped this pic. Isn’t it romantic? What a shame that view was shared with five other travel-tired writers. 😉

The next morning, I took a cup of coffee outside and was blown away with this view. That’s Mount Rainier in the distance.
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It’s past noon here. I stayed up until after three last night, couldn’t sleep, kept going through my gazillion emails to see what all I’d missed and owed. Woke up around 10:30 AM, and about had a heart attack, because I was supposed to go to the 5-year-old’s school to eat lunch with her today. That started at 10:50, and I live a good 45 minutes from her.

So, did I blow it off? Could you? I dressed, washed my face, teeth, brushed my hair and was out the door in three minutes. Then I flew like a bat out of hell. Got there ten minutes late, and broke a dozen laws to do it, but it was all worth it.

Now I’m back home and going through my pictures. Wanted to post something quick just to get it up and thought I’d share this.

As always, there’s a story that goes along with this. This was our first day at the lake house. Only Sasha and I were excited about the water. The rest thought it was too cold, but Sasha’s from Canada, and I’m just a plain ole crazy water baby. We took out the paddle boat, although neither of us had ever been in one. We laughed our asses off just dragging it into the water and trying to board. But we made it in and started pedalling.

What we didn’t know, that the girls hanging off the balcony knew, was that there were two fishermen in a motor boat watching us. We started pedalling, but couldn’t figure out how to steer, so we were going in circles and laughing like crazy. One guy elbowed the other and pointed at us, and they started laughing. When I finally figured out there was this little lever I could push forward and back to steer with, we didn’t care so much that I couldn’t seem to steer in a straight line, so we kept making circles until our stomachs hurt.

After that day, the ladies always headed to the balcony whenever we started walking toward the beach.

I promise I have some very nice pictures of the lake and the ladies to share, but I haven’t downloaded them yet to my PC, so I’m sharing something Sasha sent me from our first night there. If you don’t recognize it, that’s the moon, looking very like a space ship. And if you look down and to the right, you’ll see a little green orb. Now, if you remember my blog from a really long time ago when I went on a ghost-hunting expedition, that’s a ghost “orb”—only swear to god, I’ve only seen them white. I’m thinking…moon-ship…that has to be an alien’s ghost!

I’ll be back tomorrow, and I promise I’ll have those winners announcements and more pics!

Calling Eva Sikka…you have one week to send me your snail mail address or I will pick another winner for the multicultural box of books!

Did you notice I skipped yesterday? I blew off all work and played hookie with a 4-year-old. She called early AM to say, “Nina, whatcha doin’?”—and that’s all it took to convince me. I’m such a marshmallow.

But back to the Romantic Times Convention. I suppose this view doesn’t look like much fun—unless you’re one of the authors waiting for the throng outside the doors to rush through.

This was the line outside the Urban Street Party that Kimberly Kaye Terry captained.
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I promised I’d share, so here are the first few. My sister and I traveled together from Little Rock to Orlando. Our trip started on a sour note when we found out our flight was cancelled, but we were placed on a Delta plane and made it by evening. We missed the first of many parties with our Allure Author buddies, but them’s the breaks. Six of seven of our AA buddies made it. Meet the crew!

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