i'm staring right at the other half of me

The conference continues to be a perfectly hot mess. Today was lovely, and I learned a lot even if I didn't make it to a single workshop. I woke up in time to meet with my freelance editor, who gave me some v. good career advice, and, more importantly, told me that my book is due August 23, which is about twenty days later than I thought it was, which is a good thing since I'm so not done. Then I had dim sum with some writer friends, which was a carryover tradition from Kansas City - one writer friend in particular is a freaking genius at self-publishing, so that was a v. useful endeavor. Then I came back to the hotel, listened to some soothing music, and pitched an editor at Avon for the idea for my next Regency series (which I think I'm only considering publishing with a NYC publishing house because I want the prestige; I doubt I would make more money doing it, which is such an oddly liberating thing to say). But the pitch went really well, so if I do decide to go that route, at least I have something of an in.

After that, I grabbed some free books, grabbed a Snickers to recover from my rapidly dropping blood sugar, and met with someone for the day job. Then I had dinner with my friend Grace, which was perhaps the highlight of my conference - we joined the San Francisco writing chapter around the same time, and she finaled in the Golden Heart in between my 2009 and 2011 finals, and she self-publishes, so we have a lot in common. We had food and margaritas at a steakhouse down the street, then came back to my room with the intention of making a list for a crash-course book club we're going to force each other to do (in which we read a whole bunch of currently-successful selfpub stuff to see what's working with it so we can try to replicate it), but we started laughing at awful covers and even awfuler samples and had to take a break. So we went to the bar, where I had six times as much to drink as she had (since she had half a mojito and I had three), and then we dragged our mutual friend Tina back upstairs, where we plotted world domination for a couple of hours.

And now that I'm thoroughly energized by writing and publishing and the industry and life, and now that I'm destined for a join alcohol/gluten hangover tomorrow, it's time for bed. Goodnight!