Report from RT! Gal Pals, Games, and Earrings!

Hi —

Report from RT! You may know that i’m at the RT Booklovers Convention in Dallas right now. These events are overwhelming and fun and a great chance to catch up on what’s new in the profession. I get new ideas, inspiration, a kick in the pants, new visions of what’s possible — and most of all, i get to see friends. Author are spread out across the globe living  solitary days filled with writing. Not a very social existence. Now true, many authors aren’t real extroverted. I’m more outgoing than most. But we only get to see each other at conferences and workshops. RT is a great one because it’s huge, packed with hundreds of authors from every corner of romance as well as hundreds and hundreds of readers. In these photos, you see me with Eli Easton, a great friend and one of my favorite authors. Also pictured are the amazing Elizabeth North who heads up my publisher, Dreamspinner Press, and delightful Clare London– who lives in London — who i met after attending an event hosted by All Romance eBooks.

The days are full of workshops, more than you can manage. At every hour, authors have six or seven great workshop choices, while readers have fun-filled events. When i haven’t been invlved in giving parties and events, i’ve attended some great sessions. I went to one on marketing — coals to Newcastle some would say — and a particularly fun panel on How to Write Fast. Now i’m already a pretty productive writer, but i loved hearing what Laura Kaye and Jennifer Armentrout had to say on the subject. I also got to go to a workshop on writing gay characters which was very enjoyable.

Then we had games! Today, Dreamspinner hosted an event for readers featuring all its authors where we played Apples to Apples, a word matching game. As readers moved from table to table, we mixed up nouns and adjectives in the most outrageous combinations and the winners got to choose from swag on the tables and bigger prizes for the big winners. Following that event came Wheel of Romance where readers had to find certain clues n pieces of swag they had collected. Here you see Tessa Dre leading one of the rowdy groups.

It’s been a great conference so far. Tomorrow is the Giant Book Fair open to the public and in the afternoon is the Fantastic Day Party, also sponsored by Dreamspinner Press. We’ll meet a lot of readers there and my huge swag suitcase and box will go home empty.

Of course, i had to celebrate today with one of my usual pair of outrageous earrings. (see above) Like them? I’ll be heading home on Sunday after a fun week to happily settle back in to some quiet writing. : )