‘Twas a beautiful day in Portland, sunny with a playful breeze. I headed downtown on the train to meet some book friends, because what better way to spend a birthday day than hanging out with book friends?
We started out at Powell’s City of Books (because what better way to spend a birthday day than hanging out with book friends at Powell’s?) and found most of a shelf devoted to writer friend Delilah Marvelle, including her new release. Since Delilah like most of our writer friends are at the Romance Writers of America national conference — and we are NOT there — we decided to drown our sorrows at Cacao.
We ordered a flight of drinking chocolates: dark chocolate, cinnamon chocolate and spicy chocolate. (Because what better way to spend a birthday day than hanging out with book friends drinking melted chocolate bars?)
If you haven’t had a drinking chocolate, be very, very careful. You have to build up your strength for such an endeavor. Novice chocolate consumers might be knocked into permanent loopiness. Luckily, we romance writers/readers are experienced chocolate consumers so we just got giggly and made the Cacao pusherman take our pix. We look a little flushed, don’t we?
Pictured from left:
The Birthday Girl!
To walk off our chocolate, we headed over to Cargo, an import shop that is a sensual delight perfect for loopy romance writers. There is incense, wild colors, pretty fans, and gorgeous fabrics. I bought myself a birthday present of old Lebanese newspapers. I’m going to rip them up and make decoupage beads, I think. I like the decorative font and frayed, yellowed paper.
I also got my hair cut, but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, so I’ll wait to post pix of that part of my birthday adventure.
Tonight, I will eat birthday cake and contemplate the next year. Who do I want to be at my next birthday?
Since I was at Powell’s, I of course had to buy some books (because what better way etc?) and I figured, hey, I’ll do a giveaway from my birthday. I’ll be pulling a name from my mailing list, so sign up in you haven’t yet. I’ll pull at winner after I get back from Authors After Dark and maybe there’ll be some New Orleans goodies too!
Happy Birthday to me!
Jessa Slade 
It’s always the first day of the rest of your life. The back story is huge, but we have to filter it in action scenes in the present story.
There are decades to go before you sleep, and maybe decades to go yet before you reach your midpoint.
Birthdays are celebrations of being born. Life is a whole ‘nother story and you’re good with a supply of chocolate and books in your arsenal.
Wise woman 🙂 I need more “and then the heroine fell asleep” scenes in my own personal story.
Great picture of my three favorites from Portland. Happy Birthday Jessa!
We are happy writers. Walls of books and walls of chocolate tend to have that effect.
It was an amazing afternoon of book stories (ok gossip) and brainstorming thematic ideas (ok not really) but really – there was Powells and there certainly was a decadent cholocate drink that was so thick and indulgent, I’m still trying to polish it off my front tooth two days later. Happy Birthday Jessa!
I let my XY try the leftover drinking chocolate. He admitted he was not up to the task of finishing. So I took it upon myself as a challenge 😉