In September (2007) I went to the Southern California Writer's Conference in LA-Irvine with my 45 pages of murder and intrigue. I had submitted the first 20 pages to Jean Jenkins for an advance read. In addition to listening to all of the experts and taking large quantities of notes, I attended many read & critiques, reading the first five pages to the groups and listening to their feedback. They were mostly positive; the one group that didn't care for my work was a late night session with Matt Pallamary. Part of the problem was that I read it poorly. Part of the problem was that I was too tired to hear what they were actually saying, so it turned out to be a waste of time.

But Jean Jenkins wasn't. She's a professional editor and loved my story.

"Have you finished this book?" she asked. "There wasn't a lot wrong with it, and if it's done, you need to be shopping this around to the agents and publishers."

"It's halfway finished," I lied.

When the conference was over, I began a whirlwind of writing. After a few distractions, I finished the book before Christmas. Then I did what they had told me to do at the conference - I set it aside for six weeks.