Back to Top

Tag Archives: RWA Nationals

I’m on my way home from RWA Orlando, still on the road with my friend Julie. The conference was a delight, even if I never had even a peek of Disney World! Of course, we was robbed in the RITAs. Amanda and Carolyn did not win this time. They will be finalists again, though, mark my words.

Wednesday night’s Literacy Booksigning and the Soiree, the Beau Monde (Regency) Chapter party, seem a long time ago, but I did promise some photos.


This is Aztec Lady! I was so happy to see azteclady in person at the booksigning to thank her for commenting on Risky Regencies. You frequent commenters are like family!

At the Soiree, from left to right: Louisa Cornell (frequent commenter), Amanda, Megan, Keira (frequent commenter) and welcome guest author, Cara Elliot


Me (Diane) and Louisa


Regency dancing. They were just getting started. Janet dragged me onto the dance floor where I made an absolute cake of myself.


Janet and Amanda striking a pose.


Keira and Kris Alice Hohls, the editor of the German Romance magazine, Love Letters. Doesn’t Keira look lovely in her Regency dress and bonnet?

The Mills and Boon (UK branch of Harlquin Enterprises) editors attended the Soiree. From left to right, Amanda, Linda Fildew (senior editor of Harlequin Historicals and Mills and Boon Historicals), Kim Young (editorial manager for M&B series and Mira), and Jenny Hutton (editor for Modern Romance)

Here it is Saturday night right before the Awards Ceremony.
Amanda with the cutest dress ever, frequest guest author Michelle Willingham, and Mills and Boon editor Joanne Grant.

As I was searching my photos for this blog, I realized I do not have even one photo of Carolyn! I have no idea why, except perhaps she really is a vampire like Janet said!

I won’t be commenting much today, because I’ll be on the road or exhausted when I get home, but I’ll be more with it next week. Til then, tell us your favorite part of the RWA conference if you attended, or tell us about your favorite Disney heroine, because I think Amanda looked as if she stepped out of a Disney animation at the Awards ceremony.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 10 Replies

Greetings from the Enchanted Kingdom of the Mighty Mouse where this Risky is battling technology with a new camera and the internet of our grandfathers. Suffice it to say that we endured the worst shuttle service ever from airport to hotel as Carolyn so eloquently reported yesterday, and we had a real fun time at the Beau Monde Conference yesterday.

Here are pics of Riskies at the Literacy Signing last night. For some reason I found Carolyn extremely difficult to photograph–I think she’s a vampire–I kept missing the top of her head.

And note the blue banners denoting that both Carolyn and Amanda are RITA nominees–more to report on that later. The awards ceremony is Saturday night.

After a day of stimulating workshops–I don’t believe anyone slept through mine, and I was awake and on my feet which is always good for a presenter–we changed into Regency finery for an evening of incompetent dancing, gambling away our estates, and gossip.

If you’re attending the Conference, please join us for breakfast tomorrow morning!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Replies

I am blogging to you from Orlando Florida where all the Riskies are attending the RWA National Conference. I have already declared that IT’S TOO HOT OUTSIDE and am determined to stay inside.

Also, I am going to reimagine my journey from Oakland California to the Dolphin Resort Hotel and it will be up to you to pick out the lies from the truths, if any there are of either sort.

I ran into a charming friend from the Beau Monde at the airport and thus I was accompanied in the flying post-chaise that was to bear me to my destination. I was worried about the unseemliness of traveling alone since my maid took desperately ill the night before and passed over, leaving me quite on my own. My companion was delightful and relieved the tedium of the long journey through the skies. I had, naturally, my own correspondence to work on, I owe a lengthy missive to an associate in New York and took this opportunity to add to my opus.

We arrived in Orlando Florida only a few minutes late whereupon my companion and I discovered there were several other persons whose destination matched ours. We engaged to travel from the flying carriage hostel to the inn where we were all to stay. But can you imagine? There was no carriage or horse to be had, despite our paying for it, for nearly two hours! Tempers flared and I do confess one of our party (not I) was ready to do bodily harm. She was restrained, but barely.

Oh the tedium of waiting whilst the conveyancers dealt with the masses of people who had reserved their trip to our hotel in advance. It seems it did not occur to anyone in their employ to count the number of reservations and compare that to the number of available conveyances… I can speak of this no more as I can feel the tears of frustration arise even now. Hire a private carriage if you can.

I sat next to a charming young lady (very young!) who had just flown in from London, but her baggage was damaged and the flying-carriage employees four times misdirected her as to where she might put in a claim. They were, alas, quite rude and uncouth and I confess I heard such tales from more than one person.  My charming new friend had been on this large post-chaise for an hour with no explanation for why they weren’t traveling anywhere but in circles around the hotel. She was tearfully considering returning home to London as she had by then been at the flying carriage hostel for four hours.  I gave her my cell phone number and my email and told her if she had any further problems or needed help at anytime during her stay to please get in touch, as she will be here for a year.

Three hours after alighting from our flying coach, we arrived at our inn. The poor staff appeared overwhelmed as there were fifty travelers awaiting assignment to a room and but two servants to make the arrangements.

We were, all of us, tired, hungry and, well, peeved, but being ladies nearly all of us, we maintained our cheer as best we could under such circumstances.

But now I am in my rooms with my delightful companion and fellow Risky, Mrs. Megan Frampton and I have showed her my new tattoo. She was in transports! It’s quite fetching. Tomorrow, of course, I will meet the duke of Orlando and we shall see if he suits me.

Yours ever so,

Carolyn

Lies? Truths? Opine in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Replies

Oh, for the romantic days of coach travel!

Today I am on the road with my friend Julie. We’re driving to Orlando for the Romance Writers of America Annual Conference and it will take us two days. Should be fun, especially since we’ll spend our overnight at our friend, Maggie Toussaint‘s house.

But what if this were Regency England and we were traveling by carriage?

For one thing, we’d be hard-pressed to find a journey from one end of the UK to the other that would as long. Mapquest says our journey will be 852 miles; from Plymouth, England to Kirkwall, Scotland is only 798 miles.

If we were taking such a journey in Regency times, we would undoubtedly be traveling by coach, and at our middle class income levels, we would probably be passengers on a stage coach, like these.

On the other hand, Julie does drive a convertible, so maybe we’d be in a more sporting vehicle, and not public transportation at all.

Mapquest says our trip will take a total of 13 hours 19 minutes.

The trip from Plymouth to Kirkwall by coach, assuming there wouldn’t be the problem of mountain roads and bad weather, would be a great deal longer.

When figuring travel time in the Regency, I always rely on Shannon Donnelly who is such a great horse and carriage expert! Shannon says that a coach in the Regency could travel 4 to 12 miles per hour. (For my books, I usually estimate travel time by using 9 mph), but horses have to be rested or changed every 10-11 miles. A crack group of stable workers at a coaching inn could change a team in two minutes. Most would have taken longer, I’d guess.

So using the 9 mph estimate, our Regency trip of 798 miles would take 89 hours. That’s a whole lot more than Julie’s and my 14 hours.

I figure Julie and I will travel about 10 or 11 hours before we stop at Maggie’s house, then the next day we should only have to travel 4 or 5 hours. If our Regency selves also travel for 10 to 11 hours, we’ll go a distance of 99 miles in a day. That means our trip to Kirkwall would take us about 8 days.

And I’m not even discussing the differences of spending the night in inns, getting meals and…….BATHROOM BREAKS.

Are you traveling this summer? If you are coming to Orlando for RWA, how are you getting there? If you are coming to RWA, join us for breakfast on Friday. We’ll find a table at the free breakfast and try to make it easy to find us. If you are not coming to RWA, where are you traveling and how?

Julie is coordinating the Literacy Booksigning and I’ll be helping her all day Weds. If you have some time to spare, come and we’ll put you to work!

Thursday I’ll be blogging at Diane’s Blog and I hope to post some Conference photos. Next Monday Julie and I will be on the road again, but I’ll try to post some photos of friends in their Beau Monde Soiree Regency finery. Or SOME photos from Orlando! Maybe we’ll even get all the Riskies together for a photo!

Til then, Bon Voyage!!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 7 Replies

My fellow Risky Amanda and I have a lot in common. To help you out with telling the difference, I’ve made this handy chart.

Trait A C
Both Riskies Y Y
Write Historical Romance Y Y
Is Under 5 Feet 6 inches Y Y
Unpacked from RomCon Y Y
Packed for RWA a freaking week in advance Y N
Owns lots of cute clothes Y N
Member of Cucumber Club Y Y
Loves Alexander Skarsgard Y Y
Bringing a box of protein bars to RWA in order to save on meals N Y
Wears cute shoes Y N
Spiffy platinum hair N Y
Lives in a villa in Tuscany N N
Has proof of second third career as a Romance Cover model N Y

Hopefully if you see us at RWA, you’ll be able to tell us apart. But if you can’t, squint at our badges or just say hi.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 8 Replies
Follow
Get every new post delivered to your inbox
Join millions of other followers
Powered By WPFruits.com