I met Virginia last summer in Silver City, New Mexico.

I had gone to The Curious Kumquat for dinner by myself, intending to write about it and sell the article to the New Mexico Magazine.  So, I sat alone and ordered the chef’s tasting menu.

The first course came out; the waitress described it to me and left. 10 seconds later I saw her bring that same course to someone whose table was in the next room and describe it to them.

The waitress delivered the second course to me and I had a few questions that she didn’t know how to answer. She delivered the second course to the other person and then came back to me and asked if I could do a better job describing it than she did. So I poked my head around the partition and described the course to lovely Virginia sitting by herself at a table in the next room. When the third course arrived, Virginia and I were trying to compare notes about the food while sitting at two different tables in two different rooms so I asked if she wanted to have dinner with me and she said yes.

We finally left 4 hours later after a long conversation covering every topic imaginable. Both of us are writers, both of us are working on our first books, neither of us live in Silver City and we both love food. With those topics alone, we could have talked for 4 weeks but we didn’t have that much time. As it was, we stayed for so long that we left a big tip and felt that even that wasn’t enough. So Virginia drew a picture of me:

And I wrote a thank you extravaganza about her and we left them for the chefs of the Curious Kumquat who subsequently posted them on their blog.

In the year since then, Virginia and I have kept in touch and shared our writing back and forth. This summer, almost exactly a year from when we first met, we’re both unexpectedly back in the Southwest for the month of July to focus on our writing. Virginia drove through Tucson on her way to Silver City and we had dinner tonight. It was such fun to have dinner  and know that we’ll be geographically close for the next month and be able to follow each other’s writing path.

Sometimes fate throws people into my life. Virginia is one such person for me. Greta is another. I love meeting people by accident. I love even more when those people are doing interesting things. It’s so fun to watch the evolution of creative projects and creative careers. It inspires me in my own projects and makes me feel very fortunate.

As I said before, keep an eye on Virginia and remember her name. You’ll see it in print soon enough.