RWA 2006 Part Three (The Last)

FRIDAY NIGHT:

So you remember the whole controversy about whether or not to pack an extra dress? Turns out I spilled coffee or something on the skirt I packed, and so I couldn’t wear it to the publisher party. So, once again, I broke out the celery dress (which is getting SO MUCH use. I’ll be wearing it at the Tampa launch next.), and headed off to the Bantam Dell/Ballantine party, which was four blocks away at the Ritz Carlton, and quite the scorching four blocks indeed. They don’t call it Hotlanta for nothing.

The Random House party was fabulous. Lovely little room, flowing wine, and delicious nibbles. I was pretty hungry and kept gnoshing on these terrific crab balls. A lot of crab in Atlanta, which is weird, because I hardly ever have it here on the Chesapeake. Anyhoo, I chatted with my publicist, Shawn, and also: Allison Brennan, Angela Knight, Eden Bradley, Kristin Nelson, Roberta Brown, the Sydney Crofts (i.e., Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler) , the author of the Hindi Bindi Girls and her editor, Micahlyn Whitt, and the deputy publisher of Random House, Nita Taublib. It was so wonderful to finally meet Nita in person at last, since I’d heard so much about her from my agent and editor. I’d meant to stay at the party for an hour and a half, but had to leave earlier because Cheryl was afraid of traffic.

“Traffic?” you ask. “I thought you were only four blocks away.” Oh, yes, but Cheryl, Kelly and I were driving out of Atlanta to a Friday night performance of Oklahoma! starring Cheryl’s brother-in-law. So we joined half of Cheryl’s extended family and a whole bunch of friends and jogged out to the Big Top Theatre (not in a Surrey, fringed or otherwise). David was playing Judd Fry, and he was phenomenal! I’d never met him before, but I was a little worried what kind of person he was, since David’s portrayal of his character was so evil and thorough. In real life, of course, he’s lovely. Most of the other main characters were played by college students and everyone did a wonderful job.

Oklahoma! has never been one of my favorite musicals (note to readers, I’m a big musical theater dork) and I’ve never been able to articulate why. The songs are wonderful. Extremely catchy, as evinced by the fact that I’ve been surrey with a fringe on topping, I’m just a girl who can’t say noing, Many a new day will dawning, and Poor Judd is deading for a week now. I think it’s the characterization. I could never quite figure out what Laurey saw in Curly. He’s pretty much a smug bastard. Really, what kind of jerk goes into a man’s home and suggests he kill himself? I always feel sorry for Judd (not just when he’s played by a cutie like David) because he seems like a hard working man who has never been treated right. Who knows, maybe if Laurey had given him the time of day he wouldn’t have gone all rotten inside.

After the show we all went out to eat (again!) and I was starving (again!) so I ordered a big steak and a bigger drink. The night ended with five of us laughing our heads off in the parking lot of TGIFridays.

SATURDAY:

In the morning I went to a PAN workshop about numbers: laydown, sell-through and what they mean. I’d been to this workshop before, so there wasn’t a lot of new info for me, but if you don’t know that stuff, it’s a great workshop and I definitely recommend it. I was glad I went because it’s a refresher course. It’s good to know the business of my business. The speaker talked about how the various bestseller lists are formulated and tracked a variety of books to see how differently they work on bestseller lists. For instance, did you know that the NYT list is formulated to start based on certain titles that the newspaper CHOOSES to track? A bookseller, if they are noting titles selling that are not on the list, is asked to write them in. But then the onus is on the harried bookseller to start writing in titles that aren’t on the list. It was also interesting because without a certain minimum print run (different for hardcover and paperback), there’s no way that a given title has a prayer of hitting the list.

From there, the Bantam Dell Booksigning, where, I’m happy to report, they did have my books! A hundred copies, as a matter of fact, which I dispatched with great rapidity. So much fun! I hope everyone enjoys it… and then tells their friends!

After that, Simone Elkeles and I went to lunch. Simone’s debut, HOW TO RUIN A SUMMER VACATION, is due out in a few months, and she’s got several more in the pipeline. Simone has been a CLW bud for some time and we hung out a lot at BEA, so it was nice to see her again and catch up. I’m so excited about her debut (her heroine is also named Amy.)

After lunch, I went to a two hour workshop with Michael Hauge, who is a screenwriting teacher. It was in one of the big “double” conference rooms, but the place was only half-filled. Why? Why? People, this man is a genius! He’d apparently been trying to get a workshop at the RWA Conference for years, but this is the first time he’s come. Was the expense involved too much? Were the workshop chair biddies being silly again? (I feel your pain, Michael.) So he’s not talking about novels specifically, but rather screenplays. So what? Story is story, and one thing this man believes in is STORY. And more than that, in love stories. The lecture was all about love stories and how they are at their heart stories of transformation (ding ding ding, internal conflict people). Hauge has this fascinating concept about identity and essence, and how those concepts are expressed not only by the main character arc, but also by the personalities of the main character’s love interest or interests. It was pretty interesting to me as I am working on the character arcs for the proposed continuation of the series. The upshot is that it’s an incredible workshop and you need to listen to the tapes right away, and possibly attend one of his seminars. I hope he comes back to the conference. I hope he comes to my local chapters to give a workshop.

After that, I had a lovely dinner with a bunch of TARA people and Maureen: Cheryl, Amanda, Kelly, Erica, Carrie (our newest distance TARA member)… where we ate a lot of sushi (man, most expensive meal I’ve had in ages!) and drank many many berry mojitos. So many in fact, that when we all stood up at the end of the meal, they hit us at once. And then, back to the rooms to hurriedly dress for the RITA awards, which were about ten times shorter and fifteen times more bearable than in past years. My friend Heather Davis Koenig finally won her Golden Heart! Whoopee! It’s your year, Heather! Here’s a picture of me as close as I’m ever going to come to a RITA award (Ssecrets Vol. 15, Jane Thompson’s nominee):

After that, I had some drinks at the bar with Cheryl, her brother, a bunch of his friends and family, and a whole bunch of friends from the conference. We shut down the bar (which isn’t difficult to do, considering how late it was already and how early they close the bars in the hotel) and tried to protect our table’s chairs from Jessica Faust, who kept trying to collect them.

The next day I went to my brother’s, where I was so exhausted I spent the whole afternoon napping and watching the DVD of Rome. Cool show. Is that Colonel Wentworth playing Caesar?

On Monday, I flew home. And that was my adventure for last week. Next week, I’ll discuss this week’s adventure, which was quite the incredible one. And after that, I’ll go on blog vacation, because I’m on SERIOUS deadline.