Writers retreat.

No, I didn't forget the apostrophe; it was a sentence.  Sometimes writers need to retreat, to retire from the world and do two things.  Here is the award-winning and generally fabulous Spring Warren doing one of them:


And the best-selling and also generally fabulous Eileen Rendahl doing the other:


I've never been a retreating writer, mind you.  I'm all alone in a house, looking out at the fields and hills every day.  My whole life is a retirement from the world.  What I need to do sometimes is advance into it, to coffee shops and libraries and book groups.  But I'm open to persuasion and when Eileen and Spring asked me to join them on their latest retreat, I got right into the spirit of the enterprise:

   And something about it was oddly familiar.

I'd never been to Petaluma before.

I don't think I'd ever stayed in a Sheraton before - Hilton Garden, Radisson, Hyatt, Holiday Inn - yes.  Somehow, Sheratons had eluded me.

I know I'd never been asked what would happen if someone was being chased through a desert by haunted oxen.

But something about being in a room with other females, eating sweeties and helping each other with our homewo- 


Aha!  That's it.  It's been a long time since I lived with Sheila, Audrey and Wendy but a big bunch of girls still feels like home.  Sheila, Audrey, Wendy and me were a slightly bigger bunch, but we were considerably smaller girls.  We could all have sat on the end of a hotel bed without it collapsing:

(No writers were harmed on this retreat and many words were were written.)