Romantic Times 2013 recap

My original plan for this year's Romantic Times convention: stay disciplined, avoid impulse book buying, and bring home only two or three books and minimal swag. After paying a ridiculous fee to ship my promo materials to RT, the last thing I wanted was to pay another ridiculous fee to ship even more stuff back home.

Well, you can see how well that worked:

In my defense, I did stay disciplined. I bought only three books and picked up only two other free books. What I didn't plan for: winning free books!

Let me back up. :deep breath: Please excuse my rambling because I'm dealing with post-con brain and laundry right now. This was my second RT and I had even more fun than last year, probably because I had a better idea of what to expect. I attended a handful of writing workshops (the workshop Allie Pleiter and Sarah M. Anderson did on category romance careers was particularly helpful to me), signed at the E-Book/Indie Book/Graphic Novel fair (where I met two delightful authors: Lisa Watson and Liia Ann White -- I hope I get to sit next to them again in the future!), and met up with fellow Musa authors Andy Dunn and Vanessa North.

On Friday, I decided to take off my writer hat and attend Entangled's Candy & Spoons reader event as a treat. I'd heard so much about the event last year, including stories of card-playing mayhem and drawn blood, that I had to check it out.

If you're not familiar with Spoons, it's like musical chairs with cards. Spoons are placed at the center of the table, one fewer than the number of players. The first player to get four of a kind grabs a spoon, which sets off a chain reaction of everyone else grabbing a spoon. If you miss getting a spoon 5 times, you're out of the game. Entangled made the game more interesting (and faster) by reducing the number of spoons even more per round. Losing wasn't all bad, though, because that meant you could visit the candy bar and load up on Skittles, M&Ms, and other sweet treats. The winner of each table got a tower o' books (I counted 22). Free books? It's on. Did I mention I'm a wee bit competitive?

Heather McCollum was our fearless card dealer and Dee Tenorio kept score. Before long, the game was between a reader and me. The rest of the players tapped the table as we played, and when I got four of a kind I dove for the spoon, missed...and nearly fell onto the poor woman next to me. The spoon slipped away from my fingers and the other player grabbed it. Ack!

But all was not lost! As the runner-up, I got a lovely stack of 7 books, and in the raffle I won a coveted deck of cards with Entangled book covers on the back. Score!

Saturday was the Giant Book Fair. I'm glad I skipped it last year because there was no way I could've handled the sheer size and energy of it as a first-timer coming off five days of pre-conference workshops and the conference itself. Two hours before the doors opened, there was already a line forming. I found Aliza Mann and Sage Spelling from the Greater Detroit RWA chapter, who were hanging out with Flora Vesna from RWA/NYC, and we all studied the book fair guide and mapped our browsing strategies.

When the doors opened, I walked into the hall and...stopped. Just stopped. Books everywhere. Authors everywhere. You'd think the word "Giant" would've prepared me, but I'd never seen anything like it. So. Many. Books! I eventually got my bearings and meandered down each aisle with a stupid grin on my face. I don't think I blinked much because I wanted to take it all in. I picked up the latest Sherry Thomas book for a historical romance-addict friend of mine, Allie Pleiter's newest inspie romance (a genre I've never read, but the WWI sock knitting campaign is in the plot -- how could I resist?), and an intriguing historical romance by Alison Atlee. I technically stayed within my three-book limit. Granted, it was only in one day, but who's counting at this point?

After some clever suitcase Tetris, I managed to avoid shipping costs by using the RT tote bag as a second carry-on. I even packed my leftover promo swag to use at the next convention. My shoulder wasn't thrilled about the added weight, but it was worth it.

If you love romance, you have to go to RT, even if it's only for a day or two. This was my second year and I still haven't explored everything RT offers, such as Club RT, Pitch-a-palooza, the Avon party, the Harlequin party, FAN-tastic Day, etc. RT is a huge celebration of the genre, and what could be more fun than hanging out with well over 1000 other romance fans? Everywhere I went, I heard people chatting about their favorite books and authors. Fabulous energy all around.

Did I mention the costumes? As a satorially-challenged person, I was awed by the sheer creativity and craftsmanship of many of the costumes. One item that stood out: a pair of steampunk-themed shoes with gears extending down the heel. I wish I took a photo, but I didn't think crawling on the floor to get a good picture would be a smart idea.

As a bonus, it's impossible to leave RT empty-handed even if you want to (and why on earth would you want to?). Next time, I won't even try to minimize the haul. It's impossible. I now know what to add to the packing list for the next convention.

A prepaid flat rate shipping box.

Yarn diet and stashdown

When I started my new job in October, I picked up knitting after a 7-year hiatus as a way to de-stress after work. I started with a modest yarn stash that looked like this:

Then I learned how to knit socks. And discovered sock yarn. Have you ever seen sock yarn? It's the most gorgeous, colorful yarn you can imagine, and one skein is enough to make a pair of socks or a small shawl. You can even make an amazing quilt or scarf with the leftover scraps. Simply Sock Yarn, my favorite store, sells nothing but sock yarn (click on the link to see all the yummy yarn goodness).

So between job stress and a renewed knitting obsession, my stash has grown to this:

I have enough sock yarn to make 48 pairs of socks (yikes, that was embarrassing to type). And I still have other types of yarn to use up as well. It's fun having a stash, but for me this is just too much. I'm fine with one bin that I can close. I'm not fine with two muffin-topping bins and three bags. So to get things back under control, I'm publicly announcing my stashdown goal: 

NO new yarn purchases until I've knitted down my stash back to one bin.

It'll be challenging, but my budget and my sanity need this. Since I don't knit enough to have a dedicated knitting blog (not that I want one), I'll be posting my progress from time to time here on this blog. Heck, since I'm so sporadic about posting anyway, it'll give the blog some much-needed activity and help me loosen up on this whole blogging thing.

Here's what I'm working on now: Spring Forward socks for my Mom in Manos Del Uruguay Alegria yarn, Botanico colorway. The colors remind me of my Mom's favorite park where she takes her daily walks. This is my first attempt at lace knitting, and I like the results so far.

With a little help from my friends: I joined RWA!

After years of hemming and hawing, I finally took the plunge and joined RWA! I have some great online writing friends, but at this stage of my writing journey, I want contact with real-life writers as well as more genre-specific information. RWA fits the bill for both.

I went to my first local chapter meeting (Greater Detroit RWA) on Tuesday and was definitely intimidated at first, especially as we all introduced ourselves and shared writing news. Several members are multi-published with Harlequin and Berkley (one brought her gorgeous new Japanese editions to show us), and many of them are prolific enough to write for multiple houses. I hope the peer pressure spurs me on to greater productivity!

Since I'm more of a mainstream/women's fiction writer than a romance writer, I also joined RWA's Women's Fiction chapter and am already drowning in educational info. Workshops, articles, blog posts, interactions with other writers in my genre -- ack! So much to read! So much to learn! It's all rather overwhelming right now, but it's wonderful having access to so much fantastic genre-specific information.

Do you belong to a writing group? How has it helped your writing?

There are no words

Because the world needs more cat videos

I finally got around to learning how to upload videos onto YouTube (never had a reason to before). So, here's my contribution to the cat video universe: Zoey stealing a makeup puff.

Going back to my roots to jump-start my writing

My first fiction pieces were stories for confession magazines. I loved the genre so much I wrote two confession novellas and a stand-alone short story. I stopped writing for the magazines for a while because of late payment issues, but now that they're with new owners and appear to be stable (and more importantly, paying on time), I might write one or two confession stories as a jump-start. I've been having a lot of trouble the past six months writing anything, and honestly I'm tired of it. How can I call myself a writer when I don't write? Or a storyteller when I have no stories to tell?

I spent last week playing with some story ideas and character sketches. I was so relieved to finally have ideas again, even if they were crappy ones. But I don't feel ready to tackle a book-length project just yet. After spending months taxing my brain with technical research and spreadsheets (no wonder all I got was mental static when I brainstormed story ideas), I don't want to pile a big fiction project on top of all that right now. There are other life changes going on in the background that will likely go on for the next six months, but at least I feel like I have a direction for my writing again. I need to remind myself that storytelling is important and worth pursuing. I've always had a hard time taking my dreams seriously, and that must change.

Have you dealt with a prolonged writing drought? If so, how did you handle it?

I'm still here

:looks around the blog:

Dang, it's been a while since I've visited here. Yes, I'm still alive!

I'm closing in on four months in my new day job/career. I haven't been writing much during that time. As you can tell from my earlier blog posts, I replaced writing with knitting. Over the past few months, I taught myself how to use double pointed needles so I can make hats and socks (I LOVE making socks!). I also learned how to make cables without a cable needle (which is probably meaningless if you don't knit, but believe me, I feel like a knitting ninja now!). Some lovely writer friends keep reminding me that it's okay to have dry spells and take time to refill the creative well, something I haven't done in years. I guess I have to believe that the writing mojo will come back. I have some new story ideas brewing, which is a good sign.