I had a great time last week at the RWA conference in Orlando. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet other authors, readers, and to catch up with my editor and others from Berkley. And I love going to the workshops! Julia Quinn’s workshop on dialogue contains tons of good advice, and Anne Stuart’s workshop titled “Shitty First Drafts” is both hysterical and informative.
Here are a few photos from the conference:
Me and Andrea Williamson of the Romance Dish at the literacy book signing
Me and author Beth Kery (far left) with the Romance Dish ladies after dinner Tuesday night
Me and Buffie Johnson of the Romance Dish
Dinner Thursday night-- (clockwise) myself, Lisa Childs, Pamela Palmer, Kelly Young, Holli Bertram, and Colleen Gleason
My spot at the literacy signing. Sold out all my copies of Something About You!
Me at the Literacy Signing
A surprise guest who joined myself, Beth Kery, and the Romance Dish ladies for dinner
The view from my hotel room. Not bad, huh?
Speaking of the literacy signing, if you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check out the music video that Sarah over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books put together. Of course, I’m one of the “blooper” authors and apparently can’t lip synch worth a darn, but the video is fabulous.
Beyond that, the RITA awards were great (man, the Golden Heart winners made me teary-eyed), and Sherry Thomas cracked me up with her RITA acceptance speech for thanking her husband for taking their two children out of the house for twelve days while she did a frantic rewrite of her award-winning book, Not Quite a Husband. Nora Roberts, not surprisingly, gave a very motivating key note speech where she said that while writing can be hard, romance writers “eat the hard for breakfast”. I think I’m going to slap that on a post-it note and stick it to my laptop.
So that’s my (admittedly very brief) summary!
Thanks for the pictures and post. I’ve enjoyed reading the various blogs about RWA. It sounds like everyone had a great time. I wish there were some blog postings like the blind items in the NY Post Page 5. Imagine all the material & gossip that can’t be written about. (LOL) That would make some interesting reading.
BTW, congratulations on the new baby. You and your husband must be so excited. Hopefully the Little Guy is too. The next few months is going to be a busy time for you.
I learned so much from Julia’s dialogue workshop and I’ve been madly editing since I returned home! I, too, loved Nora’s speech, and bought one of those ribbons that said, “Move over, Nora!” I heard from another author that she got a kick out of those ribbons. Her speech was motivating and I was so inspired after hearing it. After hearing Jayne Anne Krentz speak, I figured out what my theme is. I’d never thought about it before, so that was kind of cool.
Glad you had fun at conference, too, Julie. It was nice to meet you.
Thanks for posting all these awesome pics – Looks like y’all had some great times!
Hi Julie
Thanks for sharing. Love the pics. You look awesome. Hope you feel as good as you look.
Loved that you ran out of SAY. Nice to see Beth there too.
I’m so glad we were able to spend some time with you at the conference. I had a blast!
Looks like a great time. You looked like I did in Dallas! I think I was about 6 months along – used the belly to hold more books. 🙂