I'm Back!

After being gone for over two weeks, I can’t tell you how great it is to be home—my bed, my pillow, my shower. Email access whenever I want it. The sounds of crickets in the evening instead of sirens (cities are noisy!). The piles of laundry. The empty cupboards. The mail that’s been stacking up.

Hello, my life.

Yes, I had a fabulous trip with the Darling Geek and the Amazing Child—saw great things, ate good food, had quality bonding time. AC even lost a tooth in San Francisco. (The Tooth Fairy brings extra money for ones lost on vacation—after all, cost of living in SF is much higher!)

But the conference, of course, is what you want to hear about. And let me say it was FABULOUS. I’m exhausted, my voice is gone, and I attended very few workshops, but it was the bestest RWA conference I’ve ever been to. I think the cause was this:



Yep, there’s my name tag with the lovely PAN notation across the bottom and the even lovelier pink First Sale ribbon beneath. I got to revisit that feeling I had back in May when I announced I’d sold and all the congratulatory emails came in. Strangers stopped me in the elevator to say congratulations, and that warm, glowy feeling came back. The occasional “squee” escaped.

That ribbon also means that conference is a totally different animal than it was before. My schedule filled up quickly with meetings, lunches, drinks and the like. And while it meant I didn’t go to many workshops (and there were some very interesting ones on the schedule), the only ones I got to be at from beginning to end were the one I moderated and the one where I was on the panel.

But it was a GREAT time! And since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll save the ones I need for my book and just post some pictures.

My wonderful (and just disgustingly young and beautiful) editor, Lucy Gilmor

Smarty Pants, me, and my Fabu CP with some pomegranate margaritas.

Lynn Raye Harris and us dancing at the Harlequin party

My beautiful, fabulous (but slightly uncomfortable) First Sale Shoes

The whole HOD gang at the RITA ceremony

I'm sure once everyone else gets home there will be more pictures to come. I know I need copies of the ones on other folks' cameras (like our workshop, our breakfast with Barbara Vey, and so many more.)

PC

And I'd like to thank everyone for keeping Angel company so wonderfully last week. All the comments were great! I think she still missed us though!