My wife, Jan, is a “ScrapGirl” (see ScrapGirls.com) and they’re having their annual convention in Salt Lake City. I’ve never been to Salt Lake before, and it sounded like a great way to get away from my day job for a while and do some writing to move In Her Name: Legend of the Sword (my current work in progress) a bit further along.

The flight in last weekend was great, with some awesome views out the window of our Southwest 737 as we left Baltimore, climbing above the clouds, and when we came in for landing at Salt Lake.

We stayed the weekend with Jan’s cousin, who’s really cool. But she has a 1947 Piper Cub, which in my book makes her way cooler! We couldn’t get a ride last weekend, though, because the weather was totally crappy: it poured rain and was really gusty. So we just stayed inside and chilled out, reading, writing, and playing with her Abyssinian cat, Martini.

We did manage to get out and have some excellent Indian food at the Himalayan restaurant downtown. Then we took a quick tour of the Mormon Temple square in the evening drizzle. I have to say, the Temple is pretty spectacular at night!

After we left Jan’s cousin’s place on Monday, we headed to the University of Utah where the ScrapGirls convention is being held this year. It’s a beautiful campus, which incorporates Fort Douglas, which was established in the late 1800s. The convention itself is actually in the old officer’s club, so that’s kinda cool. The view from the Guest House hotel isn’t bad, either!

We’ve been exercising every morning since we got to the Guest House, running and/or doing the stationary bike. Well, I had to do the stationary bike this morning, because I strained my right calf at Jan’s cousin’s place and it’s still not very happy. Jan also went down and demonstrated Beachbody’s Insanity workout to some of her fellow ScrapGirls. Lotsa sweat there!

While the girls were going bonkers greeting each other (you haven’t heard a racket until you’ve been to an almost-all-female convention like this!), I staked out a corner in the hotel lobby and got to work on In Her Name: Legend of the Sword. I’m up to chapter 7 now, and while it hasn’t come together quite as readily as First Contact, it’s starting to weave together. A lot of this story focuses on the character of Tesh-Dar, the warrior high priestess who’s appeared in all the In Her Name novels so far. In fact, the name of the novel – Legend of the Sword – is a term of endearment, for lack of a better term, given her by the Kreelan Empress. I haven’t made a ton of progress since we’ve been here, simply because there’ve been a lot of pleasant distractions. But tomorrow the ScrapGirls convention will be in full swing, so while the girls are scrapping, I plan to be hammering out some serious wordage. I’d like to get the draft of this novel done by the end of the year, which doesn’t leave me a lot of time. Faster, fingers, faster!!

So, I’ll post more pics and information as we go…

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