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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

RWA Nationals--Always a Trip

I'm baaack.

I returned from San Francisco with relics from China Town, Fisherman's Wharf and, yes, Ghiradelli Square (!!!) late Sunday night...my body exhausted from getting less sleep than the mother of a newborn, my arms achy from lugging around boxes of books, my head spinning from the malicious rearrangement of plot elements in my next novel (thanks to a few excellent workshops I attended and to the insights of my friend Eliza on the flight home :) and my eyes still unfocused from so much visual stimulation in so few days.

While it's great to be home again wearing shorts and drinking cheap sodas, I had--as usual--a truly wonderful trip. My roomie and RITA finalist, Simone Elkeles, looked beautiful in her bright pink gown (stop by Books, Boys, Buzz for some photos) and it was pure delight to finally meet Pam from Pam Writes Romance and Caryn The Book Lady (who are both as kind and funny in person as they are in their blogs--and they're always in my blog roll, so you can see for yourself!), friends of friends (Hi to Sherry, Mary and Terri!!), a bunch of fun Kensington authors from our Z-loop (including Kris Kennedy--at last!) and my amazing editor John--all for the first time at this conference.

Plus, I got to see again some of my Cherry friends, my Knight Agency "sistahs," several fellow finalists from last year's Golden Heart (soon to be part of a new group blog: "007 Nobody Writes It Better"), other pals from The Golden Network, a few RT staff buddies, friends Heather Davis, Dona Sarkar-Mishra and Nadine Dajani (who all need to visit Chicago because seeing them once a year just isn't enough), my sweet agent Nephele and her lovely colleague Elaine (with thanks to the bartender who created those delicious Raspberry Lemon Drop Martinis at one memorable event...) and, of course, good friends from my local RWA chapter.

Now it's back to work. Revising, revising one project. Drafting, drafting, drafting another. And making plans for next year's Nationals in D.C., where I intend to drag friends old and new with me to the zoo to see the giant pandas, drink Icee coolers and daydream about the near future when we're all on the NYT bestseller lists...

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Marilyn! It was so nice meeting you in San Fran! I'm sorry it was so brief, but even from that quick hello I knew you were wonderful. You looked beautiful up on stage at the RITA's and it sounds like you had a fabulous few days! Yay!

Marilyn Brant said...

Robin,
Thanks for stopping by! The Awards Ceremony was really fun but nerve-racking...and I don't know how beautiful I looked, but I DO know I was sparkly!! (I'm still finding little bits of gold glitter from my dress everywhere. :) Already looking forward to chatting more in D.C.!

Anonymous said...

It was a wonderful trip, wasn't it? After our RWA version of Where's Waldo, Marilyn and I got to meet and let me assure all of her readers that she's as fabulous in real life as she is on her blog. And you can count me in on the Panda trip--wouldn't miss it for the world! :)

Marilyn Brant said...

Pam~Where's Waldo!!!! LOL. I love your sense of humor and felt so fortunate to finally meet you in person :).

Sherry A Davis said...

Hi Marilyn,
It was great meeting you in person in SF. You are just as nice in person as you are in the cyberworld :)
Thanks for the nice comments on my blog. Looking forward to D.C. I'm in for the Pandas :p

L.A. Mitchell said...

Where's the picture of you in your presentation dress? I wanna see the bling ;) I'm SO happy my favorite people found each other. Can't wait to hear more in the coming weeks.

Anonymous said...

Hi Marilyn!

In case you never got back to my blog, yes, I wasn't under P OR K. I was under S. :)

When I sign as Cindy, I should be under P. I'm very slowly training the world in the ways of alphabetizing hyphenated surnames. However, the one time I signed as Cindy, they put with the Mc's. Hmm...

Anonymous said...

I just realized I spelled PORK.

Marilyn Brant said...

Sherry~It was wonderful to meet you, too! (Next year, we'll drag L.A. with us to see the pandas. ;)

L.A.~You have lovely friends :). As for the bling, I'm waiting for my CPs with digital cameras to HURRY UP and send me some pictures!! I'm back in the Stone Age with my 35mm film, which I haven't gotten developed yet. I'll post one soon...

Cindy~PORK!! Ha! I knew what you meant, though, and next time I'll go to the right location :).

Nadine said...

Ha ha! Chiming in late here - I always need a couple of days to recover from the nationals- but I had a blast again this year, and my only complaint is that I never get enough time to see everyone I want to : ( And your dress totally ricked, sparkles and all!

Marilyn Brant said...

Thanks, Nadine! You looked gorgeous as always, and I'm so glad I got to see you at your signing, but I'm looking forward to an in-depth conversation next time...

Hugs to you and huge thank yous for the autographed copies of Cutting Loose (my cousin and friends will be as thrilled as I was to get one :).

Anonymous said...

Hi Marilyn! I loved meeting you in San Francisco. Here's hoping we can meet up in D.C. next summer. And Simone wasn't the only one who looked great on RITAs night. You looked wonderful, and you did such a great job up on stage.

Marilyn Brant said...

Caryn~How sweet you are! Meeting you and Pam in SF was one of the trip's highlights for me :). Keeping my fingers crossed we'll see each other in D.C., too!!