SweetSpot: Now and Then Channeling Ray Bradbury

If you want to write, you must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books & glorious books. You must lurk in libraries & climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes & wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

-Ray Bradbury

On the eve of SweetSpot: Now and Then’s publication, writers in my Tuesday workshop asked how I was feeling.

“Nervous,” I replied. We chatted a bit more after class but the reality is, much like any kind of experience one has, it’s hard for others to relate unless they’ve walked down that road, too. It’s nerve racking; sharing your work with the world is nerve racking. I’ve done it before and it doesn’t get easier.

So I’ve been a bit of a nervous nelly.

Until I got this sign. Yesterday, one of my writer friends posted this image of Ray Bradbury along with wise words Bradbury always shared about this writing life. That post sent me down memory lane back to those ‘days gone by’ when I heard Ray Bradbury speak these words in ‘real time’ at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. From the inaugural conference held in 1972 until a year before he crossed over, Ray Bradbury delivered his annual keynote to an auditorium filled with writers at every stage of our literary development. Ray Bradbury loved talking to writers and we felt his love.

I now offer workshops at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, my ‘literary home’ that helped me find my voice back when the likes of Ray Bradbury, Charles Champlin, John Leggett and Charles Schulz held court at this conference founded by their dear friend and bestselling author, Barnaby Conrad.

Longtime SBWC workshop leader, mentor and friend Sid Stebel during those years often said, “Someone should write about this conference.” While it doesn’t take main stage, the conference takes on a supporting role that I’d like to believe all of our mentors from those ‘days gone by’ would appreciate.

I am a firm believer that for fiction to resonate with readers, its roots must live somewhere in the author’s connective tissue. Parts of SweetSpot: Now and Then live in mine. The scenes devoted to my protagonist attending her first writers conference located in a tiny town south of Santa Barbara where Ray Bradbury each year spoke to several hundred spellbound writers didn’t have to be imagined by this author. I lived it.

I’m so glad my good friend and fellow author Rick Shaw posted that image of Ray Bradbury. Timing is everything. It really is.

SweetSpot:Now and Then debut, March 21, 2025