Yesterday was a blur. When I try to articulate everything we did, the only words that come out are, “panels” and “fairies.” Woke up, got out of bed and stepped into our Day-fits. From there, it was the Action Romance panel. Marianne, our Shomi editor Chris Keeslar, yours truly as panel captain, and bookseller Stacey Agdern discussed the new breed of hybrid romances. Someone asked if there was anything that Chris didn’t want to see in a submission for the Shomi action romance line and I riffed on an in-joke, suggesting that Amish Erotica might be that one thing. He took the ball and ran with it and while we couldn’t put it in the daily video, hopefully we’ll get some of that video up once we get home.
After that panel, we headed for the lobby to shoot interviews with Hank Phillippi Ryan, Gennita Low, and Kayla Perrin. It’s hard to do a great interview when you’re having too much fun! We’ll also have good clips of those up after the post-conference editing stage.
We headed back to the panels with Hank for a Media & Marketing panel. I was the hapless author in the “bad interviewer” media interview roleplay. Marianne (for those of you who don’t know, she’s a TV producer in real life!) interviewed me, asking me questions like, “What’s it like to write porn?” and “Have you met Fabio?” so that I could show how to turn bad questions into good answers. Much fun. I actually learned so much in this panel I stayed for the second half as an audience member. Hank’s amazing. Any chance you have to catch one of her workshops, I recommend it.
Anyhoo, Marianne and I had to miss the Dorchester Publisher Spotlight in order to get to our *next* panels on time. It’s too bad, because I like to think of it as sort of an annual tradition. Where all the Dorchester authors who are at the conference attend the spotlight and sit in the back together waiting to find out whose names will be mentioned and whose book covers will be featured.
Marianne was captain of the two Young Adult genre panels and she asked me to sit on one of them as an adult writer whose material skews towards a younger audience. The diversity of the panel was incredible (multicultural, Christian, vampires & werewolves, descendents of the Roman gods in high school, you name it). Best of all, Melissa Marr caught up with Marianne at some point to say how much she and her daughter had enjoyed her books. Marianne is still beaming.
The panels finally ended and we moved into Party Prep Mode for the Faery Ball. Marianne had an unbelieveable costume on, complete with shoulder-length gloves, coral reef tiara, and a literally “scalloped” bodice. I was going to go as krill in pink and white but I figured nobody would get it. I should mention that it was sort of funny to see the fairies mingling with the speakeasy girls from the midnight Speakeasy Party. I could go on and on. Party here, party there. But that’s RT, is it not? Where else can you pitch a book to an industry professional wearing a blue wig and a tulle ballgown? More later… Locked and loaded, Liz Maverick
Filed under: Events | Tagged: Romantic Times Convention
