Next Saturday’s Austin SCBWI conference is only a one-day affair, but you sure couldn’t tell from my calendar between now and then.

On Tuesday, I’ve got to go pick up the P.A. system, which I’ll be setting up bright and early on Saturday. On Friday I’ll be picking up one of the conference guests at the airport and showing him around town a bit, which means that I spent part of this weekend studying up on maps and museums and restaurants so that it’s not quite so obvious that it’s been more than 14 years since I lived anywhere remotely close to downtown Austin.

I’ve also been boning up on Bloomsbury and Dutton‘s recent catalogs, so that the visiting editors from those houses will be dazzled (read: scared) by my detailed knowledge of obscure little corners of their backlists. Overkill? But of course.

Also in the past week, I’ve re-read my critique submission for the first time since I mailed it off in July. It was not easy to restrain myself from rewriting it until after I’ve gotten my critique. Gosh, it reads almost as if my main objective was to stuff as much exposition and as many attempts at humor as I possibly could into the allotted 10 pages. Now, does that sound like the sort of thing I would do?