Winner and Lori Foster Get Together

First things first, the winner of an ecopy of Knight of Glory is.... Janice! Congrats, Janice, I'll email you.

To refresh your memory here is my list:

1. I've never broken a bone. TRUE
2. I married the only man I've ever kissed. TRUE
3. Wintertime is my least favorite time of the year. TRUE
4. At one time, I wanted to be an actress. TRUE
5. I love to fly. FALSE
6. I planned my wedding. TRUE
7. I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century. TRUE (You get a virtual cookie if you know which century I think I should have been a part of!)

It's not that I hate flying, it's more that flying scares me. Hubby always says you're more likely to get in a car crash than a plane crash to which I reply, you're more likely to survive a car crash than a plane crash.

Now about the Get Together:

I got in Friday afternoon, took a shuttle to the hotel, checked-in and met my roommate, Michelle Levigne. Registered (the bags were awesome, full of goodies) and proudly wore my heart bead author necklace.

If I give you a detailed account of everything, it'll just bore you so I'll just move on to the highlights. I didn't go to any of the workshops as they were going on while other things were too so it just didn't work out. I had signed up for an editor appointment and was able to stand by and get in with an agent as well.

The editor, Margo from HQN, was such a great person, easy to talk to. I didn't feel intimidated at all and she set me at ease. I pitched her Torn Between Murder and Love. She asked for the 1st 3 chapters and the synopsis. Yay! She also did mention that I should probably change my title, that the cover art department had been asking for titles shorter than 5 words. She also said she could see that (torn between murder and love) on the back of the book.

The agent, Laura Bradford, had already rejected my fantasy YA so I pitched her my assassin story as well. And she asked for the 1st 50 pages. So two appointments, two partial requests! I was extremely happy about that.

I met a bunch of wonderful people at the conference: besides Michelle, there was Diane Craver (the three of us were the representatives of Desert Breeze), DeNita Tuttle, Jennifer Allison, Sara Reyes, among others. I also briefly met Faith Bicknell-Brown and Trinity Blacio from a bunch of the yahoo groups that I belong to.

Faith's Avoid Writers Hell yahoo group (AWH) contributed two huge baskets and a small trunk. There were about 150 raffle baskets, some with huge prizes including a Nook, a Kobo, an iPad, and DBP authors pitched in to get a Jet ereader. I bought a lot of raffle tickets and dumped most into the Nook basket but won zero baskets. Several people won multiple baskets, and I was so envious. The proceeds went to One Way Farm, for abused kids. We ended up raising over 5,500 for the charity.

I also want to mention the fun and games at the pirate party courtesy of DeNita Tuttle and Author Island. It was a lot of fun and some of the people went all out with their costumes, it was crazy!

Hubby and I are going to take our boy to the park now so I better wrap this up. Any one have any ideas for a new title for my assassin story? I would appreciate any input!