The most interesting person we met was Christopher Rice. I spent my late teens and early twenties devouring his mother’s books. My sister gave me a copy of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire on my 17th birthday and I was hooked. Christopher is a New York Times best-selling author in his own right, in a genre different than his mother’s. He was charming, funny, intelligent and not ego bound at all. In fact, he didn’t even talk about his books until someone asked. He moderated a panel on marketing GLBT mystery books and he let the authors on the panel talk about their books and answer the questions about marketing. He let them shine and only got into his own work when asked. He’s a very good looking man who is extremely charismatic. It pretty much made my day to meet him.

But, to be honest, it was a lot for me, my arthritis and my asthma to deal with. I had a couple of moments where I thought I’d never be able to take another breath or another step. James and ZAM looked after me though and let me stop for a breather and plied me with water and Coke so I could re-hydrate and pop meds. It’s great to have good friends. They rode elevators UP with me and made sure I was okay to walk DOWN stairs. It was a great day. Only now, I’m a tad sunburnt and sore and utterly bushed.

The sunburn’s just a smidge of red on my chest below my collarbone. Early on I found a parasol with skulls on it and bought to keep the sun off. It’s a very cool wooden parasol. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I could have taken my Ellora’s Cave “Bad Girls of Romance” umbrella with me and garnered a little attention for myself. LOL

I did do an unusually not me thing though. I brought attention to myself by speaking up. Man, I have a tough time doing that in public but I did it. When Christopher Rice asked if anyone in the audience did book trailers, my hand shot right up and I said I wrote as Lex Valentine for MLR Press and I did videos from my design site winterheart.com. That was bold of me. I’m not sure what came over me. It’s more my style to just sit there dumbly and not say anything.

One other noteworthy thing: I left my car at home and let Rott drop me off to meet ZAM who drove to James’s house. (James drove into WeHo.) That means ZAM is now the only one of my author and online friends to have met the elusive Rott. At least she can attest that I really do have a handsome man in my life and that he’s not just something I made up so it doesn’t look like I’m an old spinster lady. LOL

All in all, a great day for me that I’ll be paying for today with fistfuls of Tylenols. But it was worth it.

Now, some yummeh Marcus for a Monday and I’m off to work!

Oh, baby! Sexy stuff! That’s a gorgeous photo of Marcus. Have yourselves a great Monday!

However, one of the things I re-discovered while at RT was the joy of a tweet or two or ten. I found myself constantly turning on the Seesmic app on my Android phone. If I was waiting for someone, I turned it on and checked it. If I couldn’t sleep, I checked it. Standing in the elevator, I checked it. The RT tweets were a hoot which helped reestablish the whole thing for me. Some very funny stuff happened at that convention.

Used in conjunction with Facebook (my tweets post to my FB account) I managed to gently tease author Desiree Holt. I posted that I was sitting behind her in the lobby court of the hotel, buying her 100th book. And I was. Grinning with every click of the touch pad on my netbook as I made my purchase.  When Desiree saw what I’d posted, she got up and turned around and came over to hug me. The look on her face was priceless. I got such a kick out of using social media in such a way.

The power of the tweet came into play again when I got home from the convention on Sunday. I was sitting in my recliner, glad to be home, and I decided to look at Seesmic. What I found was a tweet from Jane of Dear Author about losing her Kindle and color Nook at RT. By coincidence, the “gang” (aka Z.A. Maxfield, Lynn Lorenz, Belinda McBride, Tara Lain, Stephani Hecht and Cherise Sinclair) and I found a Kindle in a green cover and a color Nook in a gray cover at the table where we sat down in the lobby court. When we turned on the Kindle it said the owner’s name was Jane.  A name like Jane could be anybody and neither ereader gave up any other information to us. Plus, I think we felt kind of bad poking around in them for information on the owner(s). So we called the lobby court manager over and turned in the Kindle and Nook to her.

Seeing Jane’s lamenting tweets about her lost ereaders reminded me that we’d found two and that one had said it belonged to Jane. Seemed like way too much of a coincidence to me, so I tweeted to Jane about our find and where we’d turned in the two ereaders. I was happy to see them find their way back to their owner. Especially since I now know what it’s like to be ereaderless. (I gave Nikki my Nook 3G to use with etextbooks and bought a color Nook, but when we had the chance to buy a mobile home a week later, I returned the color one in order to put the money to better use. Now, I’m without an ereader and I’m so lost!)

So I’ve renewed my acquaintance with Twitter a little and I’m glad that my doing so led to a good deed.  Hopefully, I won’t go back to being a stranger because I’ve got a bunch of new followers and even *gasp* Yasmine Galenorn is following me! (Hi, Yazza!) And I do miss the tweets of my friends Marty, Dave, Karl and Hilly. I need to turn on my original Twitter account and not just the Lex Valentine one.

Not to change the subject, although I am, the house situation is nearing a close literally. The house is being inspected on Tuesday and we expect to close escrow possibly the following day.  So very soon I’ll be changing my address and will no longer have a landlord. Rott and I are both looking forward to that despite how much money (and a Nook!) it has cost us.

Now, it’s time for my Monday Marcus. I can’t believe I’ve been posting this beautiful man for years now. Ah, well. It’s a good thing he’s so good looking or I’d tire of him, wouldn’t I? LOL

Before I go, if you don’t follow me on Twitter, I invite you to in the hopes that you’ll all encourage me to use it more than I have in the past two years. My author Twitter name is lexvalentine and my original account is winterheart. See you there!

Have a great Monday!

I didn’t have to fly to the conference because it was in L.A. at the Bonaventure Hotel. Rott drove me there and picked me up and I roomed with Cat Grant. Here’s some conference moments that were the highlights for me.

Kate Douglas taking me under her wing

Faye Hughes’ stories of southern ladies over margaritas.

Jesse who manned the goody bag room remembering my name (amongst all those attendees), coming up to me in the Lobby Court and showing me a photo of himself shirtless in the snow.

Z.A. Maxfield and her wardrobe malfunction.

Belinda McBride talking about hot sex and the fire alarm going off.

Cherise Sinclair and her thing for mashed potatoes.

Lynn Lorenz teaching her son to lie.

Stephani Hecht and her ugly, bald pussy(cat.)

The Olvera Street Adventure.

Realizing C.J. Hollenbach’s hair was just as long as Rott’s.

Hugging Jimmy Thomas who really is a big man and seeing Brooks Johnson who isn’t nearly as big as I imagined.

Reassuring Pepper Espinoza that she wasn’t a sloppy drunk at the MLR Press cocktail party.

Sitting with stinky cheese and Tales fan Carol Brown at the ARe cocktail party.

Getting hot coffee tipped down my shirt at the Kensington morning mixer.

Discovering on Twitter that the Kindle and Nook we’d found in the lobby court belonged to Jane of Dear Author.

Amaretto Sours and Creme Brulee Cheesecake with the girls.

Finding more corn than there is in Iowa at the Mr. Romance competition.

Having my boobs poked by wings at the Faery Ball.

Being hugged by Desiree Holt at the EC party.

Finally meeting Dee Carney and her sniffles.

Getting teeth from James Buchanan.

Carnival barker self-published authors.

Taking photos of Jessica Trapp with handsome men.

Finding myself directly across from Kerrilyn Sparks at the book fair signing.

Tessa Dare telling me that she used me and ZAM to pimp out the OCC chapter.

Finding half the restaurants and stores in the hotel closed when we wanted something.

Laura Baumbach’s son the marketing genius.

Learning so much about the industry, the publishers, agents, and being an author from sitting around talking to everyone.

There’s more. Oh so much more but I’m still on overload so you’ll have to forgive me for not listing about a thousand other memories of this conference.

I have a Marcus for you and then I’m off to the office.

Oh,  hello! Aren’t  you lovely? HEH.

Many thanks to all of you who commented on my snapshots from the convention over on Facebook. I’ll try to turn on Twitter a bit more often now to keep all my new followers entertained. Hopefully, I’ll recover quickly from the con and not end up with conference crud either.

Have a great Monday!

Good thing this convention is deductable for me. Still, please don’t tell Rott how much I spent…

Actually, he has a fair idea. He already ix-nayed on the parking for 5 days at $35 a day.  “Oh, no. You can pay ME half that and I’ll drop you off Tuesday and pick you up on Sunday!”

Yeah, right. I’ll buy gas which means he better drive me in the Infiniti and NOT the little Honda. If I gotta be chauffeured, I want to be seen arriving in the luxury SUV. Never mind that it’s 8 years old. It’s still an Infiniti.

And idiot that I am…I have to be ME. I can’t just get a black suitcase. I have to get a giraffe print one. I can’t just get a black sleeve for my netbook (I’m not taking the full giraffe print laptop case I already have because I’m not taking all the accessories.) I have to get the giraffe print one. I can’t just carry my giraffe wallet by its leash. I have to get a new Dooney letter carrier bag that I can sling across my shoulders. Giraffe print, of course.

I didn’t get new pajamas. They didn’t have giraffe print ones. *grumble, grumble*

Damn it. People are gonna remember me. Even if it’s to laugh at my giraffe crap.

And did I tell you that I get to sign books? The print ones and cover flats for the ebooks? I DO! Two days in a row! OMG! I will totally feel like a real author then. But I think I need to figure out how to sign my pen name…

This is like a new world for me. I’m excited and scared to freaking death. And the money…*moans* What was I thinking? Do you know what I could do with the money? I could buy a new washing machine and a new battery for the Infiniti, both of which died last week. But no. I had to indulge myself. My ego. Well, my author ego really. Not that I have much of one to indulge but by the time this convention is through I’ll either have a little bit bigger one or what I do have will be reduced to rubble.

Have I mentioned I’m a complete wallflower who is terrified of meeting new people? Hilly remembers how I am. I would never have faced Dave Diego without her. But here I am willingly facing the firing squad of hundreds of people on my own.

Someone told me I would be okay once they slapped that name tag on me that says, “LEX VALENTINE, AUTHOR.” And maybe that is the crutch I need to lean on to make it through. I need to remember that even though I am pretty much low on the totem pole of authorship and pretty much unknown, there are SOME people out there who will recognize my name. I just have to keep remembering that I had the balls to walk up to New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan at the Orange County RWA meeting and she made my year by looking at my name tag and saying, “I know who you are.”

Maybe that’s what I was thinking when I whipped out my credit card and paid for this convention.

Now, how about a Marcus that I don’t need my credit card to pay for?

Oh yum. God, he makes my Mondays easier. Despite what I spent this weekend. *winces*

Have a great Monday everyone!

Yes, those of you new to my blog may not know that Halloween is my birthday. Paired with working at the cemetery and writing paranormal creatures like vampires and ghosts, you can imagine the raised eyebrows I get. At any rate, despite the goodies I’ve already received for my birthday (I’ll get to that in a moment) I’m just not feeling it this year. And no, I’m not telling you what number it is either.

Yesterday was Gay Day at Ethan Day’s Yahoo group and I received a little pressie during the party. Love Me Dead released at MLR Press. So, now you can buy my ghost story. Just in time for Halloween. Or you can head over to lexvalentine.com and click on the News page for info on my birthday contests and maybe you will win a copy or win an autographed copy of Fire Season or the Tales print book.

With Halloween only a few days away lots of Yahoo groups are having Halloween parties. Paranormal parties are always kinda fun cause all the book excerpts are vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other paranormal creatures.  And then there are all the cemetery and dead related jokes. You know the ghost crying ones, Booooo hoooooo! *eye roll* I’m gonna do a few cause I have this new release and I wanna pimp Fire Season in print too.  But other than some promo, I’m not doing any paranormal birthday party. Nope. No birthday this year despite being offered the chance to see Alice Cooper on Saturday. I just am not in a birthday mood.

Currently, I’m still plugging away at Ride the Lightning, which is an intense and sad story. No throbbing vampire cock here. It’s all dragon. I think I’m even gonna have em mate in dragon form. Just as a twist to the other books where the dragon-ish stuff was kinda limited. Once Lightning is done, I’ve got some Christmas stuff to write. One’s a freebie so you’ll all get your shot at it.

On the home front, things have been a bit better. I hate to talk about for fear I’ll jinx it.  Usually, my life in the personal arena is one step forward and two steps back.  At the moment, it’s baby steps. Really tiny ones.  I can’t even say I’m cautiously optimistic at this point.  It’s just better this week than last week.

Now, it’s time for my favorite part of any week, a Marcus! Oh, yum! You can click on this. It gets bigger. Heh.

I hope you all have a great paranormal party aka Halloween. Have a drink or three for me in honor of my birthday that I don’t feel like having wouldja? *wink* Happy Monday!