I’m sitting in my rather nice hotel room in Richmond, VA, so I can make a bright and early start to the annual James River Writers Conference–#JRWC13 if you want to follow the goings-on via Twitter. This is my third year attending, and this is the second year the conference has run concurrently with the Virginia Literary Festival at the Greater Richmond Convention Center–a notch up in prestige and a larger venue.

As part of the Virginia Literary Festival, the Library of Virginia holds its literary awards dinner. One of the nominees this year is my writer friend Clifford Garstang, also the founder of my wonderful writing group, SWAG Writers. So, I’ll be at the dinner tomorrow evening with my fingers and toes crossed that his book, What the Zhang Boys Know, wins the LoV literary award.

If you follow me on Twitter @unspywriter I’ll be live-Tweeting from some of the panels I attend. Should be fun.

This morning’s drive to Richmond meant today’s Friday Fictioneers story is a bit late. I know I promised a horror theme to each of October’s stories, but this one could be stretched to portray a monster perhaps. Why don’t you read “Adaptive Trait” and see what you think? As usual, if you don’t see the link on the story title in the line above, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.