My brief trip this weekend to the Romance Writers of America 2015 Annual Convention in New York was a blast! It’s always so much fun to connect with my tribe: fellow writers, and especially fellow YA romance writers. Truly the nicest people on the face of the earth.
The location of the event was awesome. Here is a shot of the view from my hotel room:
Yes, that’s Broadway down there. Bright lights, big city, and basically fun, fun, fun central. A horrible spot for a hotel room if you actually want to sleep, but lucky for me, sleep was not high on my priority list.
Before the event, I met up with two dear friends, fabulous YA author Lisa Amowitz and rock star middle-grade author Kate Chell Milford, for a 3.5-hour lunch at O’Lunney’s Irish Pub. Caught up on a bunch of the latest publishing world gossip and had the most AMAZING hard pear cider. I highly recommend it if you’re in that neighborhood. Many thanks to Lisa (on the left) for her mad selfie-taking skills. Can’t you tell she’s an artist by the way she tilted the angle just so?
Next it was on to the YARWA “Evening of YA.” What do you get when you put about 90 YA romance authors in a room together? Lots of estrogen. And beautiful smiles. And laughter. And did I mention the niceness? So, yeah, a very fun night.
Capped off with:
Yay! My third book (which does not yet have a firm publication date), THE BOYFRIEND WHISPERER, won first place in the YARWA Rosemary Award for Contemporary Fiction.
I was so thrilled, and this vote of confidence for the manuscript makes me so excited to finish and polish it up so I can share it with the world!
Coming up in my next post: EM & EM cover reveal excitement.