So I finally made it down to one of the monthly meetings of the local crit group that Adam-Troy Castro runs down here. (Well, in Ft. Lauderdale, but "here" relatively speaking.) It's a monthly writers workshop attached to South Florida Science Fiction Society (pronounced "Sisyphus"). Class of '01 Clarion West grad Samantha Ling told me about it right after I introduced myself on the Florida Horror Writers listserv back in August.

I got in touch with Adam way back then, but a bus schedule snafu kept me away from the September meeting, so I didn't get a chance to come down and check it out until today. Today was just observation, but I'll actually have something to be critted in November.

If, of course, I ever actually finish it.

Anyway, good stuff. It's a relatively small group, with at least a couple of pros in it, and it should be a good supplement to the on-line stuff that's currently my only outlet. I did have to work to turn off the part of my brain that objected to the informality of the set-up every thirty seconds, "Wait! This format is all wrong. That's not the way we did at Clarion! He should have to give up a ticket for that!"

But...

It should be a good thing to do. Having a deadline again (even a monthly one) should definitely be a positive thing for productivity, and there is something important about the energy of face-to-face, as opposed to on-line, critiquing that I've been missing.

It was also nice because buses, for some reason that defies comprehension, stop running between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale between 3 in the afternoon and 7:30 in the evening. That meant that the last bus that would get me up there in time for the 8 o'clock crit group meeting got there around 4, so I had a lot of time to kill.

So I walked a few blocks uphill from the bookstore the meeting was at and found that the street dead-ended into Fort Lauderdale Beach. I stood there for a second, wishing I had brought some swim trunks, and remembered that I actually I had. I had stuck them in my backpack a few days ago with some vague intention of going to the pool on campus and forgotten about them.

If you've never swam in the ocean down here, you don't know what you're missing. California may "have more bounce," as the song informs us, but I tell you, them Southern California beaches ain't shit. Walking into the ocean here is like stepping into a warm bath. There's just no comparison.

So I did that for a while, then grabbed dinner at a Mexican place up the road, read a little more of "Fire Upon The Deep" and then went to the meeting.

This was, I think, officially a good day.