Back from RT
This was the first time I'd attended an RT convention, and it was. . .interesting. Lots of entertainment. I think there were a couple of events planned for everynight but Saturday. That's the night they have the Mr. Romance contest. By then, I was too tired to do anything but sit in the bar and talk to my friends.
The most interesting part of being there was that I'm a thriller and mystery writer while most of the other writers there are romance and erotica writers. Four of my critique partners write erotic romance and they are very good at it. Another of my critique partners edits erotic romance. Makes me wonder if I'm missing something.
I just heard that the hotel had a problem with the bookmarks for the male-male erotic romance bookmarks being displayed in promo alley. This absolutely amazes me. The bookmarks I saw had half naked men and women in suggestive poses. Why the problem with half naked torsos of two men? The whole anti-gay thing is beginning to really get on my nerves. For one thing, why are people so concerned with other people's sex life? And more importantly, when you start to take away one groups human rights, you'd better look over your should to see who's there to take away your rights.
OK, I'll take a deep breath and step down off my soapbox now.
More about RT. There were so many fantastic costumes! One woman had a white feathered outfit that was stunning. I think she won the contest, but by then I was in the bar (again).
I also participated in the Chillin' with the Thrillers morning mixer for booksellers. We got moved to a much smaller room than we really needed and ended up sitting inthe hallway stuffing giftbags for the booksellers. It was very cool to meet the other thriller authors. It seems that RT is expanding to more genres every year, which only makes sense because a lot of romance readers also read a lot of other genres.
I sold more books than I expected at the booksigning and that was a plesant surprise. I met a lot of readers and other authors and aspiring authors.
For the most part, writers work in seclusion and with little interaction. Most of us have our online critique groups, but there's very little face-to-face interaction. That was probably the best part of RT. Talking about writing with other writers is about the next best thing to writing.
I also got to meet four of my five critique partners for the first time. We've been online friends for about 5 years so meeting them was terrific. And I got to meet a some other Medallion authors and the wonderful acquisitions editor for Medallion, Kerry Estevez.
And now I have to go polish some writing.