With a Little Help from My Friends

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The first morning at the RWA conference saw us playing. There’s not much going on that first day, until you get to the Literacy Signing that night. (There’s a great video of the madness that is the Literacy Signing here, if you care to see.)

So, with no need to attend the business meetings, we took off on a long walk with my roommates. The lovely Tawna Fenske already did a blog post (she’s so efficient) about me and Marcella as bunk mates. The thing is, we had a great time together. I wanted to see Rockefeller Center, Tawna wanted to see Central Park.

Of course we did the carriage ride.

Our driver had a lovely Irish accent, too. Amusingly his patter consisted of him pointing out sites where movies had been filmed. Most of which we’d never seen. I finally asked him if he’s a movie buff and he admitted that, no, it was just part of the job. He seemed surprised to be carting around a carriage-full of romance writers, particularly when I told him what I write.

More and more, conference for me is about spending time with friends like this. People I usually only “see” online. Laura Bickle is one of those. She arrived later that day, with just enough time to tie a little wine on before I had to work the registration desk before the signing.
Turns out that’s a great time to work the desk, because a lot of the big authors arrive right before the signing. The best part? They’re all registered under their REAL names.

So when Eloisa James stepped up and I couldn’t find her packet, I had to ask her if she has another, legal name. At this point, they look abashed and glance around to see who’s nearby. She leaned over the desk and said, “…” See, I swore not to tell. But I learned at least five secret identities. And yes, it’s totally enough just to know that I know the secrets.

The other funny thing was that the big speakers, like Diana Gabaldon, were done the great favor of having their registration stuff put in their rooms. Only a lot of them hadn’t BEEN to their rooms yet. Ironically, they couldn’t enter the signing without a name badge. When I told Diana her stuff was in her room, she gave me the terrified puppy-dog eyes. This was half-an-hour before the signing. She was afraid that, if I sent her to check-in and go to her room, she’d never make it through all the people in the lobby.

I ranted once before about how writers will never be rock stars. But Diana Gabaldon at a huge gathering of romance writers and readers? Totally a recognizable rock star.

We printed her up a special name badge. She was charming and grateful.

As I do every year, I also attended the Secrets of the Best-Selling Sisterhood seminar with Jayne Ann Krentz and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. This time I asked how they’ve maintained their friendship over all these years – if they have strategies. They seemed taken aback by the question and I wondered if maybe it wasn’t always easy. Finally they said that they don’t live near enough to irritate each other.
See? Just another reason to value those online friendships.

But it was really lovely to spend some in-the-flesh time with them, too.

Stealing My Own Thunder

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Okay, so, yesterday I told you all about my Attack Cupcake at the Harlequin Party.

I know you’re all still waiting to hear how the big outfit went over. You know, the one I angsted about, that took the combined efforts of at least five people to figure out?

Meh.

I don’t really have any good pics of it, but I’m posting this one that I don’t like for posterity’s sake.

The outfit was fine, I think. It didn’t quite gel, I wasn’t Katy Perry in Gautier, but it was good enough.

Or it would have been, except for Cat Woman.

See, I dressed as Cat Woman for the FFP Gathering (lead pic with the ever vivacious Michelle Miles). It was a crazy evening for me. I made sure The Gathering was set up, went to the Carina Press cocktail party, then back to The Gathering. So I just brazened it out and wore the Cat Woman outfit to the Carina Press cocktail party.

It was a total hit.

I thought I’d get some funny looks and snide remarks, but no. Everyone seemed to think I was making a fabulous statement. I kept explaining I was double-booked – they didn’t care. Angela James said she had the urge to grab my ass, but thought it might be sexual harassment, even though she’s not technically my boss. Thankfully I managed to persuade her that she has ultimate power over whether Carina accepts my work and she refrained. She did, however, attempt to talk me into wearing the Cat Woman costume to the formal Black and White Ball later that night.

“Um, this is not a formal outfit by any stretch,” I said.

“Those are totally formal ears!” they assured me.

The upshot is, I put on my very fancy, extremely complicated, layered outfit, that really did look pretty close to what I’d imagined and everyone was disappointed. Over and over they stopped me saying, “Oh no, why did you take off Cat Woman??”

I would respond, “hey, I worked really hard on this outfit!” And they would say it was nice, but I could tell they didn’t care.

They only wanted Cat Woman.

One woman said to me, “you should have worn that costume – then no one here tonight would ever have forgotten the name ‘Jeffe Kennedy.'”

There’s a moral to this tale, though I’m not sure what it is. Any guesses?

Would you have worn Cat Woman to the formal ball?

The Tale of the Attack Cupcake

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Thanks to the hysterically funny Victoria Dahl for this pic of me at the Harlequin party. Yes, this was well after midnight. I still like it.

I talked a little bit about the RWA Conference on Word Whores on Sunday. I’ll keep filling in with the stories this week. But since I already started with the Harlequin party on Word Whores, I’ll finish telling you all about that.

So, I headed over to the Harlequin party late. This is because I was at The Gathering through the PRISM ceremony. (Petals and Thorns took second place – alas no trophy for me! It was still a way fun party.) I dashed out of there, changed clothes, and went down to the taxi stand. The bell captain was loading another group of gals into a cab, so I waited. This pretty young woman walked up to me and asked if I was going to the Harlequin party and would I like to share a cab. We laugh, because we’re both dressed in black and white, so the “going to the HQ Black & White Ball” is such an obvious flag. I am, of course, delighted to share the taxi ride.

She introduces herself: Nalini Singh.

Yeah – way famous, mega selling author Nailini. And, it turns out, nicest person in the world.

We chat on the ride. When we get to the Waldorf-Astoria, she sticks with me and introduces me to people. I got pulled away at one point and lost her. Later I ran into her again and I apologized for poofing. She laughs and says that’s how these parties are. Then she asks if everyone is being nice to me.

Everyone was so great to me.

This party was AMAZING. The DJ played every girl power song you can think of while everyone danced barefoot or in our party-favor Harlequin footy socks. I had a mini-chocolate eclair with gold leaf on it. The coffee stations had bottles of liqueur lined up to be added to your cup at will. I drank flute after flute of champagne. There were stations manned by handsome young men where you could build your own ice cream cone or cupcake.

After lots of dancing, I decided I deserved a cupcake. I chose a red velvet cupcake and the handsome young man swirled cream cheese frosting on it with a pastry bag, then added my choice of chocolate shavings. It was a thing of beauty.

Proudly I carried it, and my champagne up to this balcony area. There I see Candy Havens. We hug. We chat. I feel my plate wobble. We both watch my special cupcake tumble from the plate and splat, icing-down, on the carpet.

We start to giggle. Yeah, who invited us to the fancy party?

I recover and reach to pick it up, but even as I do, this woman facing away from us, taking a photograph, takes a step back to position herself. Candy and I watch in impotent horror as her stiletto heel impales the crumpled cupcake, then rides off with her as she strides away.

We totally lost it. Gasping with laughter, we are unable to stop her, to tell her. She disappears into the crowd.

And, of course, because we were laughing so hard, I hadn’t picked up the frosting splat before another bare-footed guest stepped squarely in it.

Alas.

Oh, and I did get another cupcake. After I cleaned up the first.

I sat down to eat it.

I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Rain

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A new fire started yesterday, just south of Los Almos and this morning is a mile away from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Amazing how the smoke plume casts a shadow across the sunlit clouds.

After night fell, we could see the flames along the ridge. From our porch 35 miles away, we could see the flares rise and fall.

Just incredible.
I’m frivolously off to the RWA convention now. So I might not be posting much this week. Internet charges are rumored to be $17/day. We’ll see.

The good news is, the weather might be turning. Pray for rain for us, and less for those getting flooded!

Antisocial or No?

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Here we are, at that place when we realize the 4th of July is next week and we feel like summer is already half over. It’s a false perception. We still have all of July and August. Really September, too, though emotionally that feels like fall, not summer.

Anne Lamott, a writer I’ve liked for some years, wrote an essay recently on finding time. I’m usually a huge proponent of making time for the important stuff and I often agree with Anne’s take on things. However this time I found myself disagreeing.

Oh, yeah – don’t watch the news. It just makes you sad. House-cleaning isn’t important in the grand scheme, sure. But she makes a basic assumption that meeting with a “close friend” for a couple of hours is more meaningful and nurturing than all the Twitter and social media “noise.”

Frankly, I’m getting tired of hearing this.

If you read this blog at all regularly – and I know many of you do, which means a great deal to me – then you know I greatly value my online community. I believe these online contacts are indeed real, actual friends who play meaningful and nurturing roles in my life.

And *now* I have data to back my opinions up!

I know – we should mark this date on the calendar.

A recent study of Facebook users shows that they “are more trusting, have more close friends, and are more politically-engaged.”

So there!

I absolutely see this. Social is social and the idea that one on one physically present interaction is the only “real” kind is just splitting hairs. Would it be nice to spend one or two hours a week with my close friends? Sure it would! But with KAK and Laura off in icky Ohio, Kerry and Tawna up in the Pacific Northwest with Marcella sailing around god knows where, that gets a little difficult. That only scratches the surface. I went to Memphis last weekend partly to see my friend Karen, who was my sorority sister in college and is one of my oldest friends. When I can’t do that, I talk to her on Twitter and Facebook. I talk to Kev, another lifetime friend, on IM.

I won’t even try to list all the people on Twitter I chat with day in and day out, whose insights and feedback form the watercooler of my days.

Please don’t tell me that’s not meaningful or nurturing, that communications with these people is noise to be eliminated. How poor and silent my life would be without them.

One of my college friends, Felicia, commented on Facebook that she doesn’t know how she would have coped for the last year, facing breast cancer, without her Facebook community. This is someone I would have long fallen out of touch with, if it wasn’t for the online interaction.

Yes, make time for what’s important, but make it wisely. One person’s noise is another person’s lifeline.

Good Business – Please Don’t Be Difficult

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The longest day of the year comes to a close. The sun is now at its most northern point, shining into the Secret Garden. The pendulum hits the end of its arc, hesitates, and swings back.

So, I’ve been talking to people about redoing my website. Yeah, it’s old. I’ve bastardized it over the years. I *ahem* rarely update the thing. I kind of hate even looking at it and the prospect of dealing fills me with this formless sense of dread. Nevertheless: the site needs help and it’s time to do it.

Always an interesting thing, when you step out into the world with your fistful of money and say “hey, I’d like to purchase this service.” You’d think, especially with the economy as it’s been, that people would love to have your money and provide that service. Odd that it doesn’t exactly work that way.

I’m totally not counting all the people that suddenly followed me on Twitter the second I mentioned web design.

The first guy I talked to didn’t get my first email. Then, when he got my follow-up email, gave me a lot of complex feedback. As the astute Laura Bickle says, “I don’t want to know how sausage is made.” Don’t tell me about code, please. If I cared about that stuff, I’d be doing, um, web design. He charges by the hour, wasn’t sure how many hours it would take, and seemed to be going in directions that confused me. I expressed my confusion and he never replied.

Guess I was difficult.

After a week, I asked for other recommendations yesterday. KAK gave me one, and a Facebook friend gave me another. I filled out the form requesting proposals on both sites. One of those I still have not heard back from, which I wouldn’t think too much of, except that the other called me within about 1/2 hour. This gal chatted with me about what I wanted, didn’t treat me like I was crazy and explained in exact dollars what it would cost me and what I’d get for that.

THANK YOU.

Later in the day, the company owner emailed to tell me they were enthusiastic at the prospect of my business. She will be at RWA National next week and wants to meet with me. The fact that she runs her business this well makes me think that she will represent *my* business well, also.

My feeling of formless dread has transformed into enthusiastic hope.

Which is exactly what I’m hiring someone to do. Handle this for me, please.

I think it’s good to pay attention to how people handle their businesses, both good and bad. As writers, we are necessarily business owners, whether we want to be or not. More and more I think the key to running a good business is to make it easy for people to do business with you.

In short: Don’t Be Difficult.

I could wax on with specifics, but I’m sure you all know what I mean. Be easy to communicate with. Be clear. Know your price points.

Oh – and have a good website.

Ahem.

How to Get Everything Done

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Yes – it’s the moment you’ve anxiously awaited. The beaked yucca bloomed!

Isn’t she pretty? Or he. We’re not sure how to tell.

If you haven’t been following the slow progress of the yucca bloom, you can see it here, here and here. Yeah, it’s been a long, slow process. Delightful result.

I mentioned last week that I went to Memphis this weekend to talk to the River City Romance Writers. It’s always a real treat to talk to other authors about the industry and process and writing time. They asked me to talk about writing novellas, then we worked into epublishing, do you need an agent and which epubs are the best these days and why I think so. We talked for two hours.

One thing that struck me was they wanted to know how I get it all done. This is always the hard question. It’s an easy answer, but no one really likes to hear it. I’ve talked about prioritizing before, so I won’t wax on about it right now. However, one thing that occurs to me is this old adage:

The more you do, the more you can do.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how the writing fuels us, rather than the reverse. I think it’s a fallacy to say “oh, I’ll write when I have more time.” Or “I’ll start exercising when I have more energy.” The thing is, time and energy don’t just appear on their own. It’s kind of a “if you build it, they will come” proposition. If you insist on having the time to write, the time will be there. If you exercise, you’ll feel better and more energized. Just talk to anyone who’s retired or has been laid off from their jobs – they’ll tell you they don’t know where the time goes. I’ve been this soldier many, many times. When I have plenty of time to do something, I fritter 90% of it away. If I have only a short space of time? Boy, do I pile on the effort and get it done.

When I was in college, the president of the sorority was awarded most improved GPA. The former president leaned over and whispered in my ear, “that proves it right there: the more you do, the more you can do.”

The best thing about getting all those things done?

The rush of energy, baby!

Now git ‘er done.