Catching Up

So I just got back from the RT Booklovers Convention...

Excuse me, am I the only one who wants to stick some punctuation in there? Booklovers. That feels like it should be possessive, doesn't it? Not to mention two words. Or at least hyphenated... 

No? Nevermind then. 

In any event, I came back convention-brained, jet lagged, sleep deprived, possibly hungover, and with a body that has absolutely no idea what time zone it's supposed to be in right now. Plus, in my absence, my mother forgot I lived here (It's dementia. This occasionally happens when I go out for groceries, too.) and my husband "reorganized" half our garage. So now I have even less idea than usual where anything is. 

But I also came back MOTIVATED, as I always do. So I'm gonna count that a win, even though, as a result, this post, which should have been up here last night, wasn't.  *Ack!* *Sorry!*

The best thing I took away from this year's convention is that everywhere I went, everyone was looking for more paranormal romance. After years of "yeah, I'm not really into that," this was VERY exciting!     

Well, it was exciting for me. It was no doubt considerably less so for the contemporary author I was paired with at one reader event. We went from table to table introducing ourselves and explaining what we wrote. Yeah... Whoever imagined that contemporary romance could be such a hard sell? 

But yay team FFP! Vampires FTW! 

Speaking of teams, besides meeting some new-to-me kickass paranormal authors (I'm looking at you Juliette Cross) I also ended up hanging with quite a few hockey authors. THAT was different. I still have no idea how the sport works, but the play-off beards are interesting. OH! And the Kentucky Derby ran on Saturday--which I missed--but even more interesting, as far as I was concerned, was the Kentucky Oaks race that ran on Friday. That's a race for fillies, in case you don't know (as I did not, until last Friday--when I had to google it because I thought my eyes were going wonky) and everyone-wears pink, including all the jockeys--many of whom, it seems (or possibly all since the weight limit is 121 lbs?) are women. And instead of parading around in roses, the winning horse gets decked out in stargazer lilies. I'm telling you, I wanted to adjust the color of the TVs in the hotel's bar. It brought to mind that line from Steel Magnolias, "That sanctuary looks like it's been hosed down with Pepto-Bismol."

Is it wrong that I want to put that race in a SF/Futuristic setting? 

Anyway, since my brain has not yet settled down enough to write anything coherent (don't pretend you haven't noticed) I spent most of yesterday (a) trying to organize all the leads and business cards I brought home. (b) Researching some of the more interesting ideas I'd heard about--like Passionflix which is like something you'd get if you merged Netflix with the Hallmark Channel--if I'm getting that right. It's an online subscription service that takes romance books and turns them into movies. Or something like that.  And (c) working on reviving my online store and newsletter--both of which have been decidedly zombie-like in the past few years, but which are looking so much better now!

If you're interested to see what's happening with them now, you can check out my store HERE, or sign up for my newsletter HERE.