RWA National recap

Captain’s Log, Stardate 08.01.2006

Blog book giveaway:
My Thursday book giveaway is WEB OF LIES by Brandilyn Collins.
My Monday book giveaway is SECRETS OF THE ROSE by Lois Richer.
You can still enter both giveaways. Just post a comment on each of those blog posts. On Thursday, I'll draw the winner for WEB OF LIES and post the title for another book I'm giving away.

Romance Writers of America: The national conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia this year—my first trip to the South, actually. Because of California’s freaky heat wave last week, it was actually cooler in Atlanta than San Jose when I got off the plane.

The conference hotel was the Marriott Marquis, and boy was the service stupendously great. Almost all the hotel staff and restaurant staff were friendly, helpful, and incredibly efficient.

The Faith, Hope and Love online chapter hosted our one-day conference the Wednesday before RWA National began. It went very well, thanks to FHL Vice President Missy Tippens and Lindi Peterson, who worked hard to coordinate the event.

I missed the two workshops given by Margaret Daley and Lenora Worth because I was picking up our keynote luncheon speaker, Colleen Coble (who was also one of my roommates) from the airport, but other attendees said the workshops were good.

Luncheon was a blast. The editors and agents hosted tables so people could pitch or ask questions. We also had several great door prizes of books and goodies donated by the members of FHL and ACFW.

The worship service after luncheon went great! It was a soothing and refreshing spiritual oasis in the midst of the more secular focus of the RWA conference.

I roomed with Colleen Coble and Robin Miller and we had a great time! I learned so much just from talking with Colleen and enjoyed chatting with Robin in between sessions. The three of us even brainstormed my new manuscript, which was fun.

We attended the Daphne awards, where Dineen Miller received an Honorable Mention for her manuscript and Colleen got 3rd and Honorable mention for her Aloha Reef novels.

Robin and I manned the FHL booth at the Moonlight Madness Bazaar, where FHL raffled off an Alphasmart Neo for $1 a ticket. We raised over $300 for literacy! We also raffled off a huge bag of Christian fiction books in a free raffle.

My editor Sue Brower and I were invited to the Avon dinner since we’re also affiliated with Harper Collins. The food was fabulous!

The cool part was that Christian Dodd and Victoria Alexander (both multi-published, best-selling authors) simply came up and introduced themselves to us. It was so kind of them and exciting to meet them.

At dinner, I sat next to historical romance author Cathy Maxell, who is a perfect doll! She had the entire table laughing at her stories and got everyone involved in the table conversation.

I also met Suzanne Enoch, another historical romance author who lives in California and has a massive Star Wars collection, including a life-size Yoda.

I met Colleen’s agent Karen Solem—a very friendly and warm woman. I also saw Kelly Mortimer again, who is FHL President and Robin’s new agent.

The Golden Heart and RITA awards presentation was very cool, with humorous movie clips on the unrealistic life of a writer. The ceremony gave Robin and me good ideas for the ACFW awards ceremony in September.

I admit I did miss the Christian fellowship that’s always present at the ACFW conference. I had a great time hanging out with Angie Breidenbach and Jennifer Hudson Taylor late on Saturday night—those two are so fun!

Now I’m back home and VERY tired. I hope I can catch up on my sleep and energy this week!