It's probably a good thing I took two days off and marginally unplugged prior my library's literary event (you know, the one I was doing the homework reading for?). I always seem to forget what a long, exhausting day it is. Fun, interesting and lovely - but damn, exhausting.First, let's get this out of the way right now. No, I didn't take pictures. I just didn't. I'm horrible with stuff like that. However we did have a minion running around the event snapping photos, so it should be no problem for me to steal one later.
This was our third annual event, the third year yours truly has moderated the romance panel, and the second year where I literally got all the authors on said panel. Now, I've had some good panels in the past. Lovely ladies, all of them. But this year? This year was just all kinds of awesome. Kathleen Givens, Christie Ridgway and Chris Marie Green did a fabulous job of keeping things light, keeping it moving, and just being all around awesome panel participants. Basically I just had to sit back and let them go. Made my job easy, that's for darn sure - and we even had 20 minutes for audience Q&A afterwards, which is always lovely.
I also met the equally as awesome Dorothy Howell, who was there to talk about her "debut" mystery novels. Well, Dorothy also writes for Harlequin Historical under the name Judith Stacy! Ahem, and since I'm just a teensy fan of the HH line, y'all know I literally had to dig through my keeper stash to unearth my copy of Married By Midnight so I could get it autographed.
Granted it won't be my job to wade through the evaluation forms, but I really think today went quite well. That, and I had more than one person tell me how awesome I was, and what a great moderator I am. Huh. And here I thought the committee kept giving me the romance panel because it was one less thing they had to worry about. Maybe I'm actually pretty good at this sort of thing? Who knew?
So now I have a few weeks to decompress, and then I climb right back on the hamster wheel planning for 2010. And since final attendance ended up at just over 300 bodies - it's looking like there will be a fourth annual literary event. Which is why, I am, once again going to be showing my face at the RWA conference this year. To throw myself at the feet of romance authors and beg them to come do our little event. And yes, I've already got a list going of people I want to ask. Maybe I shouldn't have admitted that publicly, on the blog. Authors might see me coming and start scurrying under tables and behind potted palms....
5 comments:
Whenever you do one of these I always wish that I didn't live so far away so that I could attend them *sigh*.
I'm glad everything went well. It's so nice to have a high profile librarian be such a crusader for the romance genre.
I suck. I'm 0 for 3. I probably would not have 'Jax' if I'd gone to your event yesterday, but maybe a little it more enlightened?
Congratulations on your success. You deserve it with all the hard work and reading you do.
BTW, you know what I always say... Wear the cape. No one can say no to a librarian in a cape.
Kristie: You should visit So. Cal. anyway because damn, we've got a lot of bloggers here. And we still have a handful of UBSes around.
Planning this panel is always a joy because CA has some really great local RWA chapters. I've mined OC RWA the last couple of years - so this year I hit San Diego to land Ridgway and Green. Givens is so local that we have a library in her town (!) and she's from the OC chapter.
Rosie: This was the first year we had it at UC Irvine, and it was a lovely venue. I was a little worried about attendance this year (it's a paid-to-attend event) and with the economy what it is right now....but we ended up with over 300 bodies in that building, so I think we can consider it a success.
I've already got a list going of authors to invite for next year (including some mystery writers). Last year at RWA San Fran only Ridgway had confirmed (and before I discovered Givens, I was still pondering who to get who wrote historicals), so I had to do quite a bit of "work" at the conference. It would be great this year to have the panel set before conference so I didn't have to do quite so much begging and pleading LOL.
I'm impressed, Wendy! And you should be proud of yourself, you little planner you! I still plan on being in D.C. during the RWA shin-dig, if only for the signing, so we need to meet up and have a drink or something. Hell, even some saltine crackers during what will be a very busy event for you, I'm sure...
Amy: Oh yes - you must at least come to the big Literacy Signing! That's free, and open to anybody - so you wouldn't have to pay the conference fee to attend. I still need to check to see if Mo and Patti are going. Mo, probably - since it's close for her. Tougher on Patti since she's out here in the west like I am. We'll all have to hook up and at least have a drink in the bar!
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