The Writing Conference | Conneree AU || ✔

Chapter IV

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The seminar finished and they took a break for lunch. Conner had grabbed some of the breakfast for his lunch, so he sat at his desk and ate. Apparently, everyone else was fine financially, so they went out for lunch, going in newly made cliques. The only other person who stayed was Breanne, no, Bree.

Bree had cooled down from her word encounter with Connor earlier, and she was back to her normal self now. She pulled her lunch out and started eating. She looked over to Conner and saw him eating as well. All, he was typing and eating. Multitasking.

Bree rolled her chair away from her desk and rolled up next to Conner, setting her container on his desk and peering at his screen. She looked at his screen and started reading his story over his shoulder.

"Don't read this part," Conner mumbled, too engrossed in the story to speak clearly. "You'll be spoiled for the rest of the book."

"Oh," Bree said, slightly mimicking Conner's tone from earlier. "I see.  I won't read anymore,"

Conner could still feel her reading the screen and he peeked out the corner of his eye to see.  Sure enough, she was reading over his shoulder.

"I told you not to read it!" He said and quickly closed the laptop.

"Fine!" Bree said a little louder than she expected. She grabbed her container of food off his desk and rolled a little away to eat. She sat wi5 her food near her mouth, like a small, pouting child.

There was a moment of silence between them before Conner spoke.

"What do you write?" he asked.

"I'm writing a series about two kids and an abandoned graveyard.  The graveyards haunted by its residents and the kids are learning to control it." Bree said.

If Conner could give someone a medal for being concise on a story summary, he would give it to Bree.  Conner knew he could never sum up Fairytaleopia in such few words.

"What's your about?" Conner knew the question was coming but dreaded it.

"It's about these two siblings who travel into their grandma's old storybook treasury and land in the fairy-tale world where they meet all their favorite characters." Well, that went better than he expected.

"That sounds cool," Bree said. "If it's as good as it sounds, I'm sure you'll get in."

Her confidence in him made him blush.

"You mentioned you've been here before," Conner said. "Are you published?"

"No," Bree said dishearteningly. "I tried last year but they no bueno."

"That's too bad," Conner said, feeling oddly sympathetic for her.

"I hope your first year goes better than mine," Bree said, her thoughts obviously still on her failure of last year.

"I hope so-I've been working on this book series for years."

"Ah," Bree said with a twinkle in her eyes. "Someone with a well-thought-out plot.  That's what they like to see here.  They also like to see something that's been worked on over the years and not in one year,"

Bree trailed off, and Conner guessed that that was the situation with her not getting published.

"Since you've been here before," Conner began, trying to deflect the conversation. "When do we get to the judging part? I didn't know we would be having a seminar beforehand."

"Oh," Bree said, mischief clear in her eyes. "There's a seminar for the first two days of the conference to prepare the writers for the judging and the tasking assignments for that.  On the third day, we will meet the founders of Williams Press and we'll see them again on the last day when they bring the results.  A lot of people don't show up for the first two days because of that."

"Oh," Conner had been assessing the numbers and was getting hopeful because of the small numbers of his chance. Apparently, he was wrong. "I thought this was everybody,"

"Oh no," Bree said. "There are way more people than this,"

Bree saw his disheartened look take over his face.

"But, it's alright," she said. "The people who get here later aren't as seriously considered because of their lateness."

That slightly helped Conner's mood.

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