I Touched a Rita!!!

Hello Honorary Bees!

Well, Conference Memories week continues...

So much happened in Dallas. First of all, if you've been reading the blog lately, you've enjoyed Marley Gibson's Fabulous Dallas Adventure. Marley was everywhere.

Next year, if someone can't make it -- God forbid it's me! -- I vote that we get a life-size cutout. Maybe Jessica Alba will have a new DVD release and we can steal her cardboard body from Blockbuster and paste a Buzz Girl face on? I'm just sayin.... This stand-in idea could blossom...

Okay, some personal highlights from the week....

Here I am with my beautiful partner in crime, Dona Sarkar, with our "First Sale" ribbons. If you haven't been to RWA national, these are the pink flags you get to stick on your name tag when you finally sell a book. All week long, people ask you the name of your book and when it's coming out... so it's pretty cool... And it's kinda good promotion, too.

Here I am on Wednesday with YA Uber Goddess Nic Burnham at the charity booksigning. Nic is so sweet and a great writer. She serves on the National RWA board and just kicks butt in general.

I went all around the event snapping photos and then waited in the gi-normous line to buy my books. It was so hot and humid in there, I about fainted. Luckily, some girls were passing out jelly beans.

Not that they will save you from fainting, they are just delicious...

On Thurday night after the Buzz Girl dinner at the top of the world, Marley accompanied us to the Golden Network party. It was fun and look, I got a certificate to frame!

Here's a picture with my good friend and mentor Pat White. She's like a big sister to me. I look a little scared in the picture because I'm trying hard not to mess up my smile. I'm always the girl blinking or talking in photos, people. This shot took some work.

You can almost see my dress -- I was channeling Audrey Hepburn that week and this was the Roman Holiday look. You'll see me working the Breakfast at Tiffany's look later in the week...

Okay, on Friday night, the people at Avon actually let us HarperCollins Teen authors come to the big family dinner! My first publisher party! (Cue choirs of angels...)

They had buses which took us from the Hyatt to the beautiful Hotel Zaza and get this... SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS sat next to me on the bus and talked about Harry Potter and the new Harper YA book Wicked Lovely with me and Mary Castillo and Ann Mallery. Yep, Melissa Marr (author of Wicked Lovely) and I have the same editor. She's a genius so I'm in good hands..

Here I am with Julie Blattberg, Harper's online guru, and Terri Clark, Harperteen author of Sleepless Summer, which comes out next uh... summer. Duh! Terri is a sweetheart. Friend her on myspace if you haven't already.

The food was awesome at the Hotel Zaza. Yummy appetizers like chicken on skewers (what do you do with the skewers after!) veggie fresh rolls, and little potstickers.

Dinner was salmon or steak, delicious mashed taters, grilled veggies and then yummy strawberry shortcake. I was gonna take a picture of the food, but I didn't want to be too geeky... I did shout out the name of my book when they introduced me. (And people laughed at the title! Yay!)

Also, Avon gave us totes of great stuff, including an audio book of the complete works of Dorothy Parker. Love her! Can't wait to listen to that. Chatted with nice folks like Lynda Sandoval and also, Jacquie D'Allesandro introduced me to her stuffed animal alligator purse. So cute! On the bus home I sat with Tera's friend Sophie Jordan, who was just lovely. Good people over there at Avon.

I was too tired to go out to Dona's HQ party, so I just had a fangirl moment with the fabulous Rachel Gibson and then went to bed.

Saturday... had a dinner meeting with my "wonder"ful agent. He'd been surrounded by Buzz Girls since the moment he landed -- heaven help him! -- but he took it all in stride. Maybe he's our honorary Buzz Boy?

Anyway, we had a great dinner away from the hotel and then made it back in time to join the Buzz Girls section at the Golden Hearts/Ritas. It was my agent's first time at nationals, so he wasn't sure to expect.

During the awards program he leaned over and said, "Hey, this is kind of a big deal." I was like, "Duh." ;) (See he didn't know because he's sheltered from the glitz and glamour of the RWA -- but no longer!)

Oh, I ransacked Dona's bag of M & M's (mooched from the Harelquin party which I'm sure she'll tell us all about) during the Awards and then we all shmoozed and chatted and ate lots of nummy desserts.

I captured this next photo late in the evening -- the adorable Mari Mancusi trying to snag YA author Caridad Ferrer's Rita for Best Contemporary Romance.

Ladies! There will be a YA category next year! Mari, your time will come.

We chatted in the bar with new friend Shannon Greenland and old friend Delilah Ahrendt and hubby -- and then Dona and I hit our respective hays.



Finally, exhausted and nearly broke from the hotel bill, Dona and I headed for the airport on Sunday... Only to find Rita winner JULIA QUINN and her bestselling buddies Elizabeth Boyle and Jane Porter.

So where do giant authors hang out? In the airport bookstore/cafe of course! They were so sweet--- and all were on the same flight as us, since they are NW girls too.

And then... Julia let us touch her Rita! It (or is it SHE?) was traveling in her Coach bag, of course.

Then, we had Texas airport barbecue with those romance giants 'cuz that's how we Buzz Girls roll...

(Acutally, they really did invite us! When I'm that famous, I'm so going to invite little YA authors to lunch in airports. It's just good karma, dontcha think?)

Hope you all had fun on my adventure!

Hugs,

Heather

Heather Davis is the author of

Never Cry Werewolf

Coming in 2008 from HarperCollins