Fancy dinner – I am on the far right in the very colorful dress! Also pictured from left are: Lucy Tempest, Jasmine Walt, and Lucy Smoke. 
A haunted cathedral 
An absinthe bar in pirate alley 
A haunted building where a wife chained up her husband’s mistress and starved her to death 
Fried alligator…really does taste like chicken! 
beignets 
Crawfish boil! 
Paddle steamer 
Fancy drink 
Vampire Cafe, lol. 
Oysters Rockefeller – eaten and delicious!
I’ve been on a writer’s retreat in NOLA for a week! On the one hand, lots of words written. On the other, still plenty of time to experience New Orleans and all it has to offer. Particular favorites have been the French Quarter, the crawfish boil, and our fancy dinner out. I usually hate oysters, but Oysters Rockefeller were somehow excellent. I was also pleasantly surprised by the alligator tail – if someone had told me I was eating fried chicken, I would have believed them!
This was my first trip to Nola, and it was a lot of fun. Today is the last day, and I’m all about getting more words written today. I tried everything my Lyft driver recommended on the trip to the B&B from the airport: Gumbo (excellent), alligator, oysters (which he insisted I try and that I would love them even though I have always disliked them; he was not wrong), crawfish boil (it is crawfish season here, and I could eat a million of these little mini-lobsters), a local award winning Bloody Mary (it was okay), beignets (good fried donut with powdered sugar, but I’m not entirely sure they’re any better than any other fried donut with powdered sugar…), and a local eggs benedict at brunch, which is apparently a big thing here in NOLA. The food has largely been awesome, but I’m ready to go home and back to home cooked meals, lol.
The best part of this trip has been the people. I loved meeting everyone, some of whom I already knew online, and some I had never before met. It was fantastic spending a week with other authors, talking shop, talking business, empathizing over story problems and helping each other meet our word count goals. Lucy Smoke and I reconnected regarding our *cough* co-authoring project we began a couple of years ago and got sidetracked from, and have a renewed determination to finish and publish, so those of you who have emailed me about this…just know it’s happening, but probably won’t be out until sometime in 2022. My priority right now has to be finished Pirate War, for obvious reasons.
This is exactly what I needed to jump start myself after the trials of 2020, and I’m so happy I came.
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