Bound by desire...

Before I begin today's adventures, I forgot to tell you about the Hospitality Suite here at the convention. EC has a table staffed by authors and I was there yesterday from 4-5:00. What fun! I got to meet so many readers...and I finally met Renee -- a long-time member of my group~ Hi, Renee! I sat with Denise Agnew and Patrice Michelle and we had a great time.

Today's activities got started with a breakfast mixer given by Avon Publishing. We made it down late (sleepyheads!), so most people were already gone, I'm afraid. Workshops again this morning...I went to listen to our very own Raelene Gorlinsky on a panel with Anna Genoese from TOR/Forge, Susan Grant, Sue Kearney and Linnea Sinclair discussing Plausibility Problems and Solutions in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Now, does that mean I might have an SF or Fantasy up my sleeve? You bet! It's a fantasy, but not a romance. Probably will come out via Cerriwidden under another name...but that's a different discussion. Hmmm...have I teased enough?

I also went to listen to Anna's presentaion with Melissa Ann Singer to hear about the happenings at TOR/Forge...I've been reading fantasy since fantasy was only one set of books ... JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It was great to get a chance to sit there as a reader instead of an author and listen to all the wonderful things coming our way in the next year.

RT gave a Salute to the Buyers luncheon where we heard Sue Grimshaw, Waldenbooks Romance Fiction buyer, speak about some of the trends in publishing. You won't be surprised to to know that, although book buying is slightly down this year, two genre are selling off the shelves: paranormal and romanterotica! In fact, she mentioned EC by name in her speech as the premier publisher of romanterotica in the market today. All other publishers are scrambling to get where EC already is!

Cheyenne McCray and Eden Robbins gave a great mixer in the afternoon, but I was late 'cause I was IMing with my husband. We got to chatting and...well, you know how it goes! Tonight's Vampire Ball is still going on, but I'm beat. I love the life of an author, but these parties are doing me in! LOL

Tomorrow is the big booksigning. I'm tremendously excited about that. I can't wait to meet more readers! Besides which, tomorrow is also the Mr. Romance pagent...and we all know that's the real reason we're all here! I'll have a full report tomorrow night on all the gorgeous, hunky guys that are here.

Play safe!
Diana