the party's over

I'm beyond exhausted - today was a v. long day, since I left my room at 9:30am and didn't come back until after 11pm. The first half of the day was mostly an exercise in frustration; I met a friend for coffee, but then had to do the signing from 11 to 2, and it was kind of a joke. The lines were way too long and my area of the signing didn't get a lot of foot traffic. I actually didn't mind this, since I sold a couple of books and had quite a few other people come by and say they'd read all my stuff and wanted a signed postcard or something. So that was all lovely. But the two people on either side of me bitched incessantly about the lack of traffic, which was kind of wearing on my nerves.

So at two p.m., I didn't even try to take my stuff back to my room - I went down to the lobby, checked two grocery bags full of stuff with the bell desk, and immediately left the hotel for some restorative ginger juleps with some historical romance writers. I only knew them vaguely from Twitter but I took them up on their public mention of going to get drinks, and I'm so so glad I did. My friend Grace came too, but there were a couple of ladies there whom I've chatted up a lot on Twitter and had hoped to spend quality time with at this conference. And I also met another historical writer who's basically exactly my age, with my height and haircut, and we really hit it off (even if she's into Soulcycle, which I still maintain is a cult). So I had two drinks there, then got on a streetcar with two of the ladies and rode it all the way down St. Charles and back. It was great to get out of the hotel and out of the French Quarter, and I had a really great time talking to them.

But as soon as I got back to the lobby, I immediately had to go out to dinner - I had invited three people to go with me (a reader I have befriended over several different conferences + two bloggers/writers I've also befriended), but one of the bloggers showed up with an extra six people, and it was going to be impossible to get a table for ten anywhere nearby during the weekend of Tulane's graduation. So I did a v. hard thing and told them that we were abandoning them, so the three of us who were left walked down to Jackson Square and ended up having a really awesome dinner at this place called Muriel's - the wait for the dining room was two hours, but we went into the bar and I used my mad swooping skills to score a table in the patio area within fifteen minutes. I had this really perfect pork chop, and the cocktails were great, and it was all perfectly lovely.

Then I came back to the hotel and immediately left it again to have a drink with my friend Vivi. And now I'm totally wiped out and must get up at 6:30 so that I can have [censored] with [censored], so I should sleep - goodnight!