What I did at RT!

Sorry for the delay in posting about RT, everyone. Some people had their RT wrap-up done on Monday. Me? I had deadlines and a pressing need to sleep. It's been two weeks and I'm *just* starting to feel caught up! (It helps that I turned both books in. YAH!)

So, what did I do at RT? I don't know, honestly. It was such a whirl! Luckily for everyone--including my mother, who ends every conversation with "don't forget to take pictures"--I had some help here. Author Jules Bennett and Reader Mary Dieterich (better know to you all as Lovely Mary, Grammar Goddess) were standing by to take photos! Most of Mary's photos went up on Facebook, where I shared them and my mother could see that yes, pictures were happening! Most of Jules' photos went to Twitter, where everyone else could see them.

Being oh-so-technically savvy, I managed to download them all and now will post them in convenient blog format! Yippee!

Samhain held a Safari where they gave us silly hats and had safari-like photo ops. Jules and I went joy-riding.

Harlequin provided us with posters of our books! Here's me with Maisey Yates and Jules. I'm totally in love with giant book covers. I'm thinking of wallpapering my office with them.

One of the parties was a disco party.  That's me and Jules, believe it or not. She had a 'fro wig! True story--I bought that hat at a thrift store and was concerned it wasn't 'disco' enough. Then we walk into the party and discover that Ellora's Cave--the disco party host--had provided EVERYONE with very similar hats. That's right--you read it here first--I was trend-setting in relation to 1979!

This is the day of the massive author book signing. Notice how perky I, Jules and Andrea Laurence still look? Yeah, that was before the 3 hours of awesome readers and not enough bathroom breaks!

I met author Laura Kinsale--who slapped a pair of headphones on my head and pressed play. She has the absolutely sexiest voice reading her audio books. As you can tell, I couldn't believe my ears!

There was a formal ball! And I got that dress zipped up! Here I am with Jeanette Kennedy, Jules, Lynn Raye Harris, Andrea, me, and Kira Sinclair. So much glamour! 

At that massive book fair, I worked my tail feathers off. I handed out about 600 Mystic/Masked Cowboy booklets and sold my Desires. It was a great crowd--and so many people did want to take a shirtless cowboy home with them!

There was an e-book expo, too! Here's Jules, Vivian Arend and me before the fun started! Vivian is a wonderful woman who also bought me breakfast and AND gave me homemade soap! What a wonderful woman! We had breakfast with author Leah Braemel--who gave me chocolate! There really is something to Canadians being nicer, eh?

The A authors were off to the side across a triple-wide aisle at the e-book expo. There was some down time, so what did Randi Alexander and I do? Line Dancing, of course! Jules took this sneaky picture and reported that we were 'hilarious.' I'm going to take her at her word on this one.

There was a Saloon! So the Lovely Mary and I cinched up our corsets and hit the town. That corset proved very useful--I had it on underneath both my formal gown and my disco dress!

Oh, and I won an award. You knew that, right? A Man of Privilege was the RT Best Desire of the Year for 2012! I got up in front of over 600 people--including many publishing professionals--and said the phrase "I know your butts are getting numb so I'm going to make this quick." TWICE. But I thanked my editor, Stacy Boyd, for holding my hand through the massive rewrite that led to the award and I also told how I dedicated the book to my Gram and she'd lived long enough to get her advance author copy, only to die on release day. I'm also pretty sure I scolded the audience when they all went "Awww" as I said that. I think I said "Don't be sad! She was 97 and lived a long, happy life! She got to see her book!" So, yeah--I was told I was funny. Thank God for that, right?

Harlequin had a Series Soiree, where a bunch of Series Authors got together and played a game with some lovely readers. It was a big room with no sound equipment, so I had to be loud to be heard. Luckily, I was up to the task!

Finally, I returned home, exhausted and victorious. It took my whole family the better part of a day to sort through all the swag--which my son did not mind, as it was his 8th birthday and he got to pick whatever he wanted. Gater, however, was unimpressed with my award. It wasn't bacon, so he just didn't care. Silly dog!

I have more photos and more stories--but I haven't even downloaded my pictures yet! This is just what Mary and Jules took, bless their hearts. My mother sends her thanks, ladies!