BACK FROM RWA

Sorry for the lack of posting, but I just returned from a writers' conference...Romance Writers of America...in Dallas, Texas.

I'm happy to report I only embarrassed myself a few times. Like when I kept shoving my key in the slot at my hotel room door and knocking for my roommate because the key wouldn't work....only to discover I had the correct room location....but the wrong floor.

EEEK. Woke the person inside. I nearly died of embarrassment.

Some guy with no shirt and disheveled hair stumbles to the door.

Annoyed look crosses his face. "I WAS trying to sleep."

And I see that it is NOT my room. I wish the floor would now swallow me up. I apologize profusely and can hear him laughing as I flee to the elevators.

I think fatigue took its toll on me or something....I'm not usually that ditzy.

Can it in the peanut gallery.

Then another time I boarded the elevator and got so busy talking that I forgot to push the button. I rode up and down the entire vertical length of the hotel (something like 29 floors) TWICE before realizing I missed my floor for the second time.

Oh, and I nearly died in a luxurious Limo. No kidding. They were cheaper than the Taxis and I think I know why. You take your life into your hands. Our driver went SO fast around curves, our tires screeched. Three of the ladies tumbled either face first to the floor, or head over bottom. The rest of us slid across the long (stretch Limo) seat, and tumbled in a heap on top of one another in the floorboard of the car. The driver would NOT slow down or turn the music down.

So picture us SCREAMING along with speakers grinding out what was supposed to be music but sounded like a horror show soundtrack because all you could really hear was the speakers vibrating precariously with the warning, **STATIC***"I'm about to blow!"***STATIC*** We asked...okay we yelled for him to turn the music down but he would NOT turn the music down. And he closed the divider window to drown out our pleas for help. Gee whiz. But later, after we made it (intact) to the Harlequin party, it became funny.

The next day, in a workshop, I was discussing this wild ride and Krista (Steeple Hill editor) said she thought she may have had the same driver because he went the wrong way TWICE down a one way street.

EEEEE.

And did you know author Lisa Jackson rode the glass elevator with her skirt hem accidentally tucked in her panty hose with her backside to the glass facing the entire hotel? She joked about it though...gotta love a gal who can laugh at herself. The rest of the conference, after Lisa told that story during her talk, you saw women in that elevator tugging and fussing with the backs of their skirts. LOL! Probably paranoid. I said we all should have tucked our skirts in our undies just to tribute her. But I think the Herbal Life people would have been severely traumatized. Or, actually, since they would have seen the "real" us...they may have tried harder to drum up business. (they all wore these pins that said, "Lose weight. Ask me how.")


I'll report more on the conference later, and post some pics such as the bullet car in question...our reckless and death-defying "Ride."

Later,

Squirl