The Conference

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I sit at my desk this Monday morning, barefoot, in a haze. I just returned from conferencing it up in Washington D.C. at the RWA’s big shindig. My feet are still calling me names that I didn’t know my blister-worn feet knew. (Where do they learn those words? Are they reading my manuscripts?) My mind is trying to recall all the high points, all the new faces, all the bits and pieces of wisdom I learned. My stomach is still trying to digest some of the yummy food I ate, and my metabolism and I are in a battle to the death. Seriously, calories don’t count at a conference. Did my metabolism not get that memo?

As I try to come up with a subject matter for this piece, (I told you I’m still in a conference haze) I brainstormed a few topics: the people, the pain, the fashion police, my editors’ hair, and fire alarms.

The people were fabulous. I met so many amazing authors and publishing professionals. Their creative energy was contagious. I sat in the audience in awe and listened to Janet Evanovich and had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting AMEN SISTER!! Linda Howard’s talk about her nutty family had me in stitches and I’m gonna have to check and make sure that we aren’t related, because I swear our families come from the same dysfunctional Alabama DNA strain.

There were the writers and people who stopped me in the halls making me feel so important. Of course, most of them just wanted directions to the bathroom, and for some reason I looked like the person with potty knowledge. (Where do they get that idea? Have they read my books?) Ahh, but I still loved chatting with other writers. The most memorable one was when one young lady said, “I lived down the street from you years ago.” My knees started knocking. Oh, the things she could tell! I keep thinking about the time my dog escaped out the door at the crack of dawn. Yeah, I looked like a real romance author out there, running through people's yards, threatening everything including neutering, to a misbehaving Lhasa Apso, while wearing footed, snoopy pajamas. (Hey, my daughter bought them for me for Christmas.) Then there was the day the fire trucks showed up at my house one hot August afternoon because smoke was bellowing out my chimney. “Who in their right mind has a fire in the fireplace in August? Or a Christmas tree fully decorated?” asked the fireman, accompanied by the neighbor who called them.

“Uhh, a writer who had turned the air down to fifty, and was writing Christmas stories and needed the ambience.”

I had some readers come to the autographing and tell me they drove all the way from Virginia to see me. WOW! I mean, I don’t care if it’s fifteen minutes on the other side of Washington, they still drove across state lines to see me. Of course, they probably only wanted directions to the bathroom. One bookseller brought her husband to the autographing and told me she read him my book while on a road trip. And then when they stopped for the night, he watched some sports event on TV and she finished my book. The next day, back in the car, he made her reread aloud, the last of the book. I told him how honored I was, then I scolded him for choosing a game over my book. LOL. Men! You always know where you rate with them—meaning I rated before the boredom, but not before sports. I was still thrilled.

I met several of Killer Fiction’s blog followers. Waving at Terri! I got to hug and stand next to our very own Killer Fiction gal, Leslie Langtry. True, I felt just a tad scared of the woman who writes about assassins, and I also felt . . . short. Dang, girl, could you loan me an inch or two?

I got to put a face with the names of some Wisconsin writers whom I know from their chapter loop. (I joined their chapter when I entered their contest.) Howdy, ya’ll! I got to chat and even dine with some Alabama gals, who talk like me. I met with some ol’ friends, made new friends, and even got to speak to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. “Bathroom is right around the corner.” Do you think she’ll remember me? I eventually did let her leave the bathroom.

One of the hotel’s staff, who stood in the middle of the lobby offering directions, actually accused me of having too much spirit. I personally think she was just jealous that everyone was asking me about the bathroom locations instead of her.

You can’t talk about a conference without talking about the pain. This is all about the shoes, people. Now, I don’t wear those throw-your-back-out-but-boy-do-my-feet-look-hot shoes. I am, after all, the practical type of person. I wear the reasonable, non-slutty (okay boring) one to two inch get-real, blister-making, torture-inducing shoes. Could someone please tell me when did reasonable, semi-bland shoes get into the torture business? Funny thing is, I wasn’t the only person suffering from this condition. I think I saw more band-aided feet this weekend than I have in my life. Oh, and I swear you could almost tell what day it was at the conference by the shoes everyone was wearing. Shoe attire got less and less flashy and more and more comfy as the days went by. Even for us practical types. Of course, Gemma wasn’t there to set the standards.

If I’d run across the FP (fashion police) on Friday night, I would have been hauled in, arrested, and be doing ten to life.

You see, I bought this great looking brown suit. And a great-looking, non-slutty, practical pair of brown shoes. However, my earlier stint in the brown pumps proved that shoes don’t have to be sexy to be painful. I swear my toes were having muscles spasms. My roommate convinced me that happy feet were more important than making a fashion faux pas. So I did it. I wore my non-slutty (yes, boring) black shoes with my brown suit. I know, I know, it’s unforgivable. Never the less, I think the brown shoes had a powwow with their black buddies because even they got into the whole torture game. At one point I plopped down beside Publishers Weekly’s blogger extraordinaire, Barbara Vey, and said, “Can I pretend to sit here and visit with you so people won’t know that my non-matching black shoes have gone past the pinching-the-toes-numb stage and arrived at the toothache-throb-kind-of-pain stage?”


You know, when you are a speaker at a conference you have a lot of knowledge-seeking people come up and ask questions. This year was no different. (And I’m not talking about the directions to the bathroom either.) If I was asked once, I was asked a dozen times, “Christie, what’s up with Chris Keeslar cutting his hair? Where’s his pony tail?”

Yes, I’m lucky to have one of the few male romance editors. Some go so far to call him the God of romance. And while I like to think of Chris and I as having a good working relationship, I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t get the memo about his hair change. Nor did the man feel the need to get my permission to cut his hair. But don’t worry, Chris and I discussed this problem at length.

Then there was this young, happy blonde who came up to me at the autographing and hugged me and said she was so excited to see me, and I looked at said blonde and replied. “I’m thrilled to see you, too. And who are you?”

Her answer, “Your new editor at St. Martins.” Oh, yes, I had chatted with Rose over dinner not too long ago, had even visited with her during cocktail parties, but in my defense she changed her hair. Hence, I’ve spoken with my agent to have a memo-of-hair clause put into all my future contracts.

Now, the last subject to be covered is fire alarms. Yup, it happened again. The alarm went off and people were ushered out of the building. I wasn’t even in the building when it went off. Much to my dismay, I was still accused by several folks, my agent included, of being responsible for this little problem.

Yes, I know it seems to happen a lot when I go to conferences, but I’m innocent, I tell you, innocent. I don’t care what my own fire department says in my old neighborhood. And believe me, I wouldn’t have pulled any alarm that would have caused me to have walk one more step than needed.

So what’s up in your world? Any conference, bad shoes, good shoes, hair, or fire alarm stories to share?

Come on, let’s share a bit.

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