Celebrations!

Dear Nikki/Dear Sarah--Day 415 of our daily drawing exchange

Hi Nikki,

I really, really wish we were in the same place so we could celebrate sending All She Wrote to our beta readers today. It feels great but also strange to have reached this stage, and to think about sending it out to agents next. Can you believe that we went from jotting down ideas in Starbuck’s in Sidney—was it two years ago?—to our “writing retreat” on Dani’s boat, to getting together in Canmore, to a finished book!!! Well, finished until we revise based on readers’ comments.

To celebrate, I bought myself some red tulips which I am going to draw using a different medium every day until they expire. Today I used water-soluble oil pastels and tried not to be fussy.

Here’s to friendship, writing and art!

XO S

Hi Sarah -
Yes! Today is a day to celebrate - and, yes - I sure wish you were closer so we could have gone out for scones - or dinner - or whatever! We can celebrate when I’m in Victoria next month - perhaps by then we will have received and digested the comments from our beta readers.

Whew. It feels like today we passed a significant milestone!

This evening, Fabio and I went to a talk about hiking in the Italian Alps and Slovakia. Very inspiring.

The trekking guide (a friend of an Italian friend, actually, the Italian mountain guide friend was someone we met up with in Greece not so long ago) included a couple of great photos of Alpine Ibexes (not sure that’s the correct plural), which inspired this evening’s quick pen and ink. He told a lovely story about keeping a very young hiker entertained by spinning stories of how the ibex paint the regional rocks with paint stored in their magnificent horns. Apparently, they never shed their horns (unlike elk or deer), so you can estimate the animal’s age by the number of ‘rings’ or segments in the horns.

It would be a fabulous place to go and visit - fingers crossed Fabio’s knee is repairable enough that we can plan a trip before too long…

For now -
Nikki