{"id":651,"date":"2013-06-18T22:07:49","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T21:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/?p=651"},"modified":"2013-06-18T22:07:49","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T21:07:49","slug":"fathers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2013\/fathers-day","title":{"rendered":"Father’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

One specific advantage of marrying an American woman is that she’ll remember Father’s Day, and this time I got a whole day off to myself.\u00c2\u00a0 I got up bright and early to catch a 5:46 bus, so as to arrive in Stuttgart shortly after ten.\u00c2\u00a0 My goal: a writing workshop on historical fiction led by Tracy Barrett<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My Y chromosome set me apart from everyone else present, but that soon faded into the background (except for the occasional group “Yay”) as Tracy took us through the Ten Commandments for Historical Fiction (though I still haven’t found out which of them was condensed from originally two).\u00c2\u00a0 After lunch and a free writing exercise the workshop concluded with animated chatting and, for some of us, a manuscript critique.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the first time I’d had my manuscript critiqued, and I found Tracy’s comments encouraging and helpful, especially her suggestions on what might be painlessly cut.\u00c2\u00a0 Kirsten Carlson<\/a> organized a lovely event for her swansong as Germany\/Austria RA of SCBWI<\/a>; her successor, Maria Bogade<\/a>, has some large shoes to fill!<\/p>\n

On the way home I got to finally sink my teeth into Stephen Lawhead’s “Skin Map,” a Christmas gift.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a quick read, though everyday life has me stalled even on that.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it was the workshop, but I have some nits to pick about his research (nobody in Macao would call a foreigner “gaijin”).\u00c2\u00a0 Back in Lucerne at 21:49, I dashed into the Drinks of the World<\/a> shop to use up my point cards I’d rediscovered while decluttering.\u00c2\u00a0 I figured that with a closing time of 22:00 and my bus leaving 22:02 getting enough Newcastle Browns to total just over 5 francs would be easy, but I’d discounted that the local youths would be grabbing their last breezers and swelling the line.\u00c2\u00a0 On a whim, I checked the Scottish beer section and – Happy Father’s Day! – discovered that Drinks of the World had heeded my plea and added Innis & Gunn<\/a> to their offering.<\/p>\n

The bus driver wasn’t too happy to see me board the bus with two beer bottles in my hands a minute or two before departure, but I assured him I wouldn’t drink those lukewarm, and set to gently arranging them in my backpack.\u00c2\u00a0 I emptied one the following day to go with my Father’s Day meal, and the other’s waiting for another momentous occasion.<\/p>\n

I wonder if I can wait until July 14th…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One specific advantage of marrying an American woman is that she’ll remember Father’s Day, and this time I got a whole day off to myself.\u00c2\u00a0 I got up bright and early to catch a 5:46 bus, so as to arrive in Stuttgart shortly after ten.\u00c2\u00a0 My goal: a writing workshop on historical fiction led by Tracy Barrett. My Y chromosome set me apart from everyone else present, but that soon faded into the background (except for the occasional group “Yay”) as Tracy took us through the Ten Commandments for Historical Fiction (though I still haven’t found out which of them was condensed from originally two).\u00c2\u00a0 After lunch and a free […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}