September Letter from the Editor

By Debi Archibald

www.laborday-pictures.com

Happy Labor Day, Readers.

Welcome to the first day of September and the last third of 2014.  For me, this is the time of the year when it feels like someone gets hold of the remote and holds the 'Fast Forward' button. It's Labor Day, then in three weeks it's Halloween and a few days later it's Thanksgiving and then the week after that, it's Christmas.

If you experience the same syndrome, I hope you are still able to find the discipline to make your writing a priority. And to help motivate you, watch for a special blog post on Tuesday, September 2,  detailing the rules and timeline for The Zebulon, which opens on September 15. There is a great deal to be gained and virtually nothing to be lost by submitting your query, synopsis and sample chapters to the committee. Stop for a minute and close your eyes. Picture your name and your title in the list of winners. Visualize yourself moving to the top of the pitch list. Why would you not do this?

Pikes Peak Writers will continue to provide support and programming to help you reach this goal. Note that Open Critique has moved from the third Wednesday to the first Wednesday of each month beginning in September to avoid compressing all the activity into the last half of the month. Our talented team of columnists will continue to share their writerly wisdom, and you will begin to see guest posts from writers who attended PPWC this past April and share what they took away from the experience.

But for today, step away from the computer. Go outside, hike the Canon or Red Rocks, grill up something delicious with the family and enjoy the symbolic last weekend of summer. Time enough tomorrow to go buy those poppers for New Years Eve.

About the Author:  Debi Archibald is a Colorado Springs native but spent most of her life wandering both the Arizona desert and healthcare administration. She is now blissfully reestablished at the foot of Pikes Peak, with one very bad novel under her belt (and in a drawer) and a second, hopefully not so bad, underway. In addition to fiction, she ventures into humor and short memoir. A recovering foreign language geek, she is also passionate about hiking, cooking, reading and being a grandmother, the role she is sure she was born for. She shares her home with the world’s most human Siberian Husky, Sasha. You can find her at pikespeakpen.com.