What do all these things have in common? They were all things that I enjoyed when I was in Maine a few weeks back. That and the good company of some dear friends. It was such a relaxing time, even though I spent a great deal of time working. But I was writing, so it doesn’t feel like work. I’d get up every morning around 6:00 and start to write. I usually kept going until about 10:00 a.m. when my friends returned from the gym. After that we would go do “Maine” things, like pick blueberries, or drive the beautiful countryside, or go to Moody’s Diner for the best pie ever. Sometimes we would go to the lobster tanks and buy fresh lobster and take it home and eat it for dinner.
Compare 
that to the time I spent in NYC. What a different world. It truly is the town that never sleeps. As you can see in the photo on the left, the streets were just as crowded at 11:00 at night as they were midday. We didn’t eat blueberries or lobster, but we did get our fill of knishes and bagels. And it’s true, I didn’t get any writing done there, but I did get a head full of experiences and characters to put in future books.
Another thing that amazed me about NYC was that ninety percent of the cars were yellow. Yeah, yellow cabs. Every single picture I took in the streets of NYC had a yellow background of cabs.
I did get to see 
a few sights outside of Time Square, like the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, and Ellis Island. And besides all the cool people I met at the conference, I also got to meet a television celebrity, Cheryl Burk
e, two-time winner of Dancing With the Stars. She was there for a charity event and I had the privilege of signing a copy of “The Advocate’s Betrayal” for her. She was very sweet, and cute as can be. It’s too bad you can’t see her cute freckles on her nose on television because they really do look good on her.