2011 RT, It's Not Your Momma's RT Anymore….

I would like to formally apologize for being less than present last week. I was left-coasting it at the Romantic Times 2011 Convention. Now, since we are all romance lovers at the Whine, we are all familiar with the Romantic Times Book Reviews Magazine, which is pretty much the only print publication dedicated to reviewing romance (and other genres now).

Several years ago, I attended the RT booksigning in NY, but I didn't do much else, because, OK, the RT conferences have always made me nervous. There were whispers and rumors, male strippers running wild, readers screaming, real people dressed up as vampires; it sounded like mayhem, romance induced mayhem, and I am very much mayhem adverse. Actually, I wasn't mayhem adverse in college, but you know, I've grown up a lot (or at least that's what I tell my children). So, I was nervous but I felt like I was being petty by letting my preconceptions get in the way, so this year, I signed up to go and talk.

A good friend (WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS, JK) ditched out on our yin/yang character/plot talk, so I thought, OK, I can do my character talk solo and I can do plotting Q&A, and maybe come up with some cool quotes. So, all was well, but then RT says, we have a guy who would like to do your talk with you. He's an author who lives in LA. I thought, OK, fine. Then RT says that they have another guy who would like to your talk with you. He's an author, too. I thought, OK, cool. That makes it even easier.

So, on Tuesday night, I jetted off to LA. I was supposed to leave at 4 in the afternoon, but that flight got cancelled, so I took the 9pm flight instead. Which gets into LA at 1:20, which is roughly 4:20am Eastern Standard Time. When I made this decision, I had assumed I would sleep on the plane. Aha! First mistake. I think I did snooze a bit, but there was a LOT of talking for a late-night flight, and I could never get comfortable because I don't want to be a seat-hogger, and my legs kept on wanting to stretch more. To all the tall people in the world, I feel your airplane pain, because I am SHORT and my legs wanted to stretch more. Someday they will bring back those little foot rest things they used to have. Remember those? I loved those little metal bars.

ANYWAY, so I get to LA, take a cab from LAX to the hotel (second mistake, cabs in LA are CRAZY EXPENSIVE), and ended up crawling into bed at 3:40 AM PST (7:40 EST). And that was on Wednesday, the day of my talk. Yes, I did make it to my talk. I met Stephen Jay Schwartz (with long, flowing LA hair that looked so much better than mine). And Joshua Crain, who is a great guy from Atlanta who writes for Mira and God bless, we did have some people in our talk, even though Michael Hauge was doing his character/plot/love story talk in the other room. And the people seemed to enjoy our talk. YAY!

So, Wednesday was mostly over and I went back into my hotel room, brought out my basket for Club RT and my promo stuff and schlepped it back downstairs. That night, I had dinner with the lovely Jane from Dear Author and we talked romance. I forget how much I enjoy just talking about romance novels with someone else who loves the romance genre. We compared and contrasted Lisa Kleypas with Susan Elizabeth Phillips. We talked old favs and new favs. She gave me a reading list for Elle Kennedy (who I intend to read) and then after that, we walked back to the hotel, and I saw no wild strippers or men wearing fangs, or women wearing fangs. No, RT seemed really really cool. After that, I crawled back into bed, and this time, I truly died.

Thursday was an easier day. I had the series romance soiree with a lot of other Harlequin authors. Julie Miller coordinated the whole event and there were free books, free food, and romance bingo for all.

Julie Miller and Carol Ericson Setting Up

Friday was actually pretty fun. I snuck in late to the Harlequin Spotlight, but got to hear about some of the upcoming titles. Harlequin is aggressively moving into the digital space, and I think they are actually ahead of quite a few publishers in this area. It will be interesting to see how everything shapes out.

I missed the Friday night parties (WRITING!), but I heard they were all a lot of fun, and everybody had a good time, and no police were called. By this time, I realized that the RT was completely NOT what was I expecting. It had a lot of great energy, the conference organizers had worked very hard to bring in a lot of film/screenwriting workshops, and oh, did I mention the soap opera stars! Bobbie from General Hospital was there. As was some people from Days. I never watched Days, only the ABC soaps, so it was Bobbie whose name caught my eye.

The booksigning was Saturday and I had some people stop by the table and get books signed, but I had a plane to catch at 4:00, so I had to duck out early, and then it was off to LAX. I finally arrived at JFK at 12:20 AM (thankfully 9:20PM EST), and I think my body-clock is FINALLY starting to get back to normal.

Next year, the conference will be in Chicago, and I gotta say, I'm thinking about going.

So, that's the wrap-up. If anybody has any questions, I'll try and answer. Do y'all like traveling, hotels and such? There was a lady at the booksigning who had traveled by train because she didn't fly, so she had spent the last 2 days on a train. Now THERE'S dedication.