On the Road Again

I'm heading to Atlanta to see my dear friend. We'll write, we'll talk, we'll drink beertini's or wine. We'll plot and we'll have fun.

The best part of life is the people you'll meet along the way!

Who are your favorite people?

Winner of Karen Johnston's book is Diana Quincy! Woohoo!!

And just for fun, here's Willie Nelson singing one of my favorite tunes:

Wine, Women and Adventures at Arrington Vineyards

October was a month where I took some time to play and explore my world. Sure, I had to work on getting requested materials out to people. I also had to judge six contest entries for Southern Magic. And I continued working on  my WIP in discovery while I learned more about social media and critiqued my other writing friends' manuscript pages. But I also made time to play.

How could I resist playing when the skies were so blue and the weather was absolutely perfect? I couldn't! And one thing I really wanted to do was find a winery where the wine wasn't mashed out of muscadine (read sweet) grapes. I miss my Northern Virginia wineries at this time of year. It was time to venture out and find one that met my needs for good wine, excellent views, and fabulous setting.

At the entrance leading up to the winery.

I found one. A friend had recently told me about Arrington Vineyards, located in Tennessee near Nashville. I began investigating the vineyard online. The winery is owned by Kix Brooks of the Brooks & Dunn Country Duo. The website does a fabulous job of describing the history, the location, and the ideas behind starting this vineyard so I won't reiterate the details.

The website enticed me. The winery has real wines like Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays and more. Oh, be-still my wine-loving heart. The distance looked manageable from Madison, AL. Only an hour and forty minutes. So when I learned that my husband was golfing on Friday, I called up his golf buddy's spouse and asked if she'd like to head out on an adventure with me.

She said yes. I promised a yummy crock pot meal afterward at our place for all four of us when we returned from our daylong adventures. She made everyone picnic sandwiches (golfers had their lunch and we had ours) and the day unfolded just as I had hoped.

The wine-tasting building. So pretty!

No longer trusting Tom Tom completely and not wanting to introduce Garmin into the mixture, I printed off a map to the winery. I picked up my friend in Meridianville and we up to Tennessee from her house. The trees were in full color, the skies were clear and bright, and the conversation was non-stop. The time flew by and we arrived at the winery with an appetite for tasting wine and enjoying the beautiful setting.

Great view of the vineyard. 

Many wines to try and buy!

Cute house with autumn decorations.

Plenty of places to sit and visit with friends.

We tasted 7 different wines. We fell in love with four of them. After purchasing a bottle for our lunch (no we didn't finish it LOL), we sat in the sunshine and enjoyed a leisurely lunch. Again, more chatter and a walk afterward to take pictures of the beautiful scenery. We stayed over two hours. I think we could have stayed longer, but we had an hour plus drive ahead of us so off we went. But we'll be heading back again. And I will continue to look for places like Arrington to visit in the future. After all, if I don't take time to play and discover new places, I may run out of things to write about!

Want to stomp some grapes with me?

More breathtaking views

If you live near Nashville, I highly recommend going to Arrington Vineyards. Who knows? You might even run into Kix Brooks on the deck!

Book in a Week-Day Seven

I finished. I wrote over 3,000 words, shifted scenes, and got to the end. And she made me cry. she is a great heroine. And he's great, too. And I have 60,839 words to play with and revise. As I was showering today, I got more ideas for the ending, but I resisted. I will play with them over the weekend and get stuff jotted down.

BUT I AM DONE!!!

Happy Dance!!!!

And I learned a very important thing: NEVER give your first draft up to anyone till it IS WRITTEN AND COMPLETED, HOWEVER SHITTY IT IS. NEVER!!

I didn't have the teary moment when I finished number 3... I lost control over the CORE of the story before I finished it.

NEVER AGAIN!!

Any other time, yeah, read on. Critique on. Tell me how to improve it... bring it on during the revisions...

And now I am having my glass of wine and celebrating!!