I’m baaaaaaaack!
Okay kiddies, forgive the punch-drunk nature of this post. I’ve got this killer head cold and I’m hopped up on over-the-counters and antibiotics. These are the wages of jet-setting sins, I’m telling you!
Anyway, here’s my fave pic from the weekend (me on the left, my editor Kerri Buckley at right). Folks, you just can’t fake smiles like these. They are 100% pure — the kind of smiles you only see on the cusp of a grand new adventure when the parties involved have spent the afternoon eating tapas and drinking Spanish wine.
Only in New York…
The publisher’s lunch was so much fun! I met Deidre Knight and her fellow agent, Pamela Harty, uptown and we taxi-cabbed down to 17th and Irving, home of Casa Mono, our super-tiny, super-chic lunch spot. Anyone who watches the Food Network will recognize the restaurant’s owner, red-ponytailed Italian chef Mario Battali. We’d no sooner stepped out of the cab than we ran into the Bantam folks, Kerri Buckley and Tracy Devine. Kerri was wearing this fabulous pair of black stilettos that would probably have spelled certain doom for me, but she totally worked the look. Always get an editor with great taste in shoes, I say.
Oh, the food! I think my favorite of the dishes were the sharp-and-sweet goat cheese and punmpkin croquettes, though those of you who know of my love affair with mussels can probably guess I had a weakness for those as well (luckily, the other people at the table pretended not to notice how much I hogged them!). We also had soft-shelled crabs (does anyone else know how you go about eating those things?), artichoke hearts basted with dressing and grilled until almost crispy on the outside, and some lovely roasted duck breast slices with plum and grilled onions. I saved room for dessert, which was a tart lemon sorbet swimming in a sweet desert wine with fresh strawberries.
We talked about everything from plans for my book to the season finale of Lost (Charlie: No you din’nt!) to Deidre’s new shoe obsession. Picture Little Orphan Annie breaking into “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here” and you’ll get a good idea of my take on the meal. (BTW, for those of you who don’t yet know that Diana’s brain is hardwired to a musical theater soundtrack, here’s your intro. You should have heard the inside of my head after the Maggie Awards. It was all My Fair Lady‘s “I Could Have Danced All Night.”) Afterwards, Kerri took me back to Random House and showed me into the belly of the beast, and I left with my arms full of Bantam’s latest releases. Woo hoo! Free books!
I called a friend and agreed to meet her downtown for drinks. As I stepped on the subway, someone grabbed my arm in a crushing, clawlike grip. I was ready to pull my krav maga moves on this subterranean Manhattan mugger and whirled around, only to see this cute Asian girl staring at me with her mouth open. Now, this girl was maybe 100 pouinds (including her waist length hair) so I thought maybe she wasn’t trying to attack me as much as get my attention. Plus, after I blinked through the shock, I realized she was my brother’s girlfriend (hereafter X) of three years, and she was in the city for a summer internship. X didn’t know I was in town, and she was heading home from work to study for her LSATs (which she took today). So, like any kinda sorta almost sister not-really-in-law, I decided to take X out and get her boozed up. After all, if she can’t answer problem-solving questions by know, she’s never going to learn, right? Plus, my friend is a lawyer and I suspected would try to talk X out of heading down this dark path before it was too late and she started slaughtering younglings (I was right).
We had dinner. I felt that it was a perfect end to the evening, since X, who is a junior at an Ivy League U., served as my college girl fact-checker while I was writing my proposal, and my lawyer friend was my first fan and one of my most steadfast supporters.
Fast Forward to Tampa
A short itinerary for Saturday:
7-8 a.m.: rise, dress
8-9 a.m.: drive to TARA meeting
9 a.m.- 5 p.m.: Story Magic (very enlightening, and the TARA girls gave me a bottle of Godiva liqueur to congratulate my sale!)
5 p.m.-7 p.m.: Julie Leto’s launch party for Dirty Little Secrets, complete with cuban food, mojitos and booksignings. Man, this book is fab. Seriously folks, bookstore, now. Go. It’s just that good. Even Mrs. Giggles liked it.
7-8 p.m.: drinks and quickie brainstorming with CP Cheryl while waiting for dinner seating.
8-8:50 p.m.: Super-rushed dinner. Favorite quote (as Japanese chef was playing games with shrimp tails at the hibachi): “Look, if he doesn’t stop fooling around with the food and cook it, I’m leaving!”
8:50-9 p.m.: drove like a madwoman to Brandon.
9-11 p.m.: Secrets cover shoot with Hottie McHotHot curly, raven-haired cover model. With nipple ring. Sigh.
11 p.m.-1 a.m.: begin to realize that my “allergies” are not in fact “allergies,” but wretched debilitating disease that I’ve probably just given to Mr. McHotHot, and that if I want these author photos done, I’d better do them before my glands swell up and I look like a pumpkin. Photog promises to Photoshop the worst of it out.
1 a.m.-rest of trip: decide I want to die/cut out my sinuses with a penknife/buy stock in sudafed/die
And now I’m back, on the aforementioned antibiotics.
And the winner is…
Natalie, for making me snort Vitamin-C and Echinacia Wellness shake up my nose. Unfortuantely, the promo items will be not exactly ready until July, but if you’re patient, I’ll make it worth your while.
Now, about those graphical standards…
Anyone hear the old George Carlin bit about the seven words you can’t say on radio? Interesting that RWA is using a slightly different list than George’s, so that while you can say cock on the radio, you can’t in RWA, and while piss is verboten on the airwaves, splash it all over a romance novel cover.
And I can’t help but feel bad about my friend’s manuscript that takes place on a chicken stud farm. ::vbg:: Can’t wait for the AGM, personally! What a riothouse that place will be!
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