Quick Blog About RWA Nationals

I have a blog for almost every day I was at the National Romance Writers of America Conference in Reno from this past week, sitting around waiting to be edited, but I ran into my agent in the airport and was treated to a stern, "where in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks is that book you owe me" speech. So instead of blogging, I've been doing that writing thing that will, in theory, bring me some income sometime down the road.

Some of the blogs include:

• Why is it I always end up taking hours longer to fly any place than the itinerary the airline books me with? With a short rant included about one of my best friends, Bad Luck.
• The talk I gave on Friday with Senior Red Sage Editor Judith Pich and Author Angela Knight on how to write novellas - the pitfalls Judith sees and the ways Angela and I write around them.
• My Prism Award win for IN ICE, including what happens when you're flying so damn high, you negotiate with the bartender, getting shots for 20 people half price.
• My first book signing at Nationals, including throwing candy at other authors for fun and profit.
• And why I cannot sleep in the same bed with people I'm not married to.

But I just have to take 10 minutes right now from writing (it's almost 2pm and I've written 22 double spaced pages - I'm starting to go brain dead anyway) to talk about this whole thing that went down Saturday night at the Rita Awards Ceremony.

Now I was there and I'll admit, it wasn't the greatest. But I just ate a can of soup and read my email box (I'll reply later - I promise!) and see that we're all going down Hysterical Street again.

Okay, so it wasn't tasteful (re: Monica Lewinsky - Lorena Bobbit), it was positive to the Republicans (uh oh), it showed a lot of meaningless history and not a lot of women making history, it had goofy people jaunting down a runway in goofy outfits, and Nora Roberts, in an effort to advert disaster (or at least save herself from participating in it) bailed out as the MC at the last minute.

Do I think any of this is good? Hell no.

But before we press the pedal to the metal and waste precious writing hours getting all worked up again, perhaps we can remember back to that time long ago when we were readers and had never even *heard* of RWA. Friends, fellow writers, et al, nobody but us even knows who the heck we are, let alone cares what happened at our awards ceremony.

I was there and what *I* thought (since all of you really want to know, I'm sure) was, “Thank God this bottle of wine isn’t empty and really White Zin isn’t as terrible as I last remembered, further I’m going to resist the urge to eat the head off my Rita Award chocolate so I can take it back to the kids, and gee the lining on this dress is KILLING me – I need to get out of this dress RIGHT NOW.”

There is something to be said about being clueless….