This Saturday Sandra and I fly to Florida, and from there embark upon a Caribbean cruise with our friends from Writing Excuses, and about a hundred fellow writers.
The event is the 2015 Out of Excuses Writing Workshop and Retreat. We’ve done this twice before, but this is our first time taking it to the seas with a larger crowd. I’m excited, and a little anxious.
I need to finish scripting, penciling, and inking a week of comics before I depart, and I must also read some things that require critiquing, and front-load myself with materials for Planet Mercenary so I can get some work done.
I’ve been led to understand that internet connectivity aboard ship is something that is paid for in dollars-per-byte, in much the same way that my 1977 Buick Electra 225 (link: a photo of one that was not mine) measured its fuel economy in dollars-per-mile. For this reason I’m going to be disconnected most of the time.
(Note: I got rid of the Buick in 1986, long before its value as a “classic car” could be cited as a justification to offset the incredible expense of driving something that seemed to be about as long as a cruise ship. Parallel parking that thing required two tug boats and a call to the USCG.)
Which brings me to the title of the article. Whatever it is that you might be asking, my stock answer is “I’m sorry. That will have to wait until I’m back from the Caribbean.”
I’ll be getting as much mileage from that line in the next five days as I got from the Buick for the entire time it was mine.
(UPDATE: No, I will NOT be present at Salt Lake Comic Con. Given the choice between setting up a table and camping in a giant concrete box full of 100,000 people, or a Caribbean cruise, I opted for the cruise.)