I returned yesterday from the balmy 80s of Florida to the chilly 40s of home, and on my way back from the airport stopped at Sandy and Risa Stewart’s house for this year’s Writers Group From Hell annual holiday party (which included the traditional groan-inducing white elephant swap).

I’m no longer an active member of this monthly critiquing group, but I was one of its founding members back in 1989, and so get grandfathered in for the party, along with a number of other lapsed workshoppers.

The WGFH was born in Logan Airport on the way back from that year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Boston. I overheard someone utter the word “Clarion” as I waited to board the plane, and ended up wandering the gate in search of the speaker. I eventually connected with Sue Ellen Sloca, who was either a fellow graduate of that writing program, or just trying to get advice on whether or not to go in the future. We decided to try to pull others from the Maryland/Virginia/District of Columbia area into our orbit and begin a critiquing group, which started a couple of months later.

(If I’m misremembering the details, I hope that one of the other members will leap in to correct me.)

I had to abandon regular workshopping back in 1992 or 1993, when editing Science Fiction Age started to eat my life, but I still think back fondly on those several years of monthly meetings, back before anyone had thought to give our workshop a name.

It never felt like Hell to me.