Kansas City, here we come.

That title—a stolen line from a classic song—isn’t true, but it is more melodious than the factual “Kansas City, there we’ve been.” Last week was the annual Western Writers of America convention, held, as you have probably guessed, in Kansas City. 

Always a high point in the year, the WWA convention gives me the chance to learn a few new things, meet a few new writers, and, best of all, spend some time with writers I’ve met at earlier conventions and who have become friends. I find that hanging around with people who are smarter than I am (they are not hard to find) is always stimulating.

The only downside to the convention is that the family members who travel with me get to spend their days seeing all manner of interesting places and things while I am at meetings. But I do get to tuck in a few such visits now and then and see things I’ve never seen before—like the Arabia Steamboat Museum, home to 200 tons of artifacts recovered from a steamboat that sank in 1856 and was recovered 132 years later from deep under a cornfield. More about that another day.

Next summer, WWA convenes in Billings, Montana. I’ve been there for one reason or another several times over the years, and am already looking forward to returning to Big Sky Country.