Tuesday, July 28, 2015

RWA in NYC again

I'm kind of cheating here, using a storify of my tweets to do most of the work.  But, I tried to be a good tweeter, so once my brain was mush, I would have a record.  The bus trip to New York was blissfully empty, such that I had a row to myself.  (Coming back Sunday was not the same, but not unexpected. And my seatmate back had a little manspread issue, but was otherwise fine.)  We did not quite make it in time for me to hit Lady Jane's Salon, which was a shame but, as these things go, traffic based transit carries this risk. 
I stayed offsite, so ended up getting even more steps than I would have traversing the five floors of the conference hotel the worshops were spread across.
The Literacy Signing seemed much smoother to me, they set up a huge room with chairs assigned by letter so that you could sit inside and be called by batches.  There were clumps where traversing the aisles got a little messy, but it seemed so much calmer than I recalled from before. 
I enjoyed the workshops I went to (tweets here: https://storify.com/TaraTLK/rwa15-a-partial-look) and got the recordings so I could catch up on the others.  The YARWA chapter also had an event with a chance for people to hang out and also to ask questions of a panel of agents and editors and authors. (Tweets here:https://storify.com/TaraTLK/evening-of-ya-2015.) Katie McGarry and Sarra Cannon both told stories about reader interactions with people telling them their story gave them hope you could get through the dark times.  The Rosemary awards were also given out. 
And then Saturday there were a few more workshops, and then the awards where the Ritas and Golden Hearts were given out.  The awards were wonderful (although I hear seating was tight, I was maybe in line very early to avoid that).  It's one of those things.  I happen to have read some of the entries for the Golden Heart, and had read some of the nominated books.  I haven't read all of them, but I know I read an entry that I loved that didn't final.  I read an entry that finaled but didn't win.  So for everyone who won, so, so, wonderful.  And for everyone who didn't - well your story still touched someone.  So, yay. 
It was a great conference.  I look forward to San Diego.  And well, I'm so happy for everyone I did get to see, if even briefly, and will try to do better catching up with folks I didn't get to see or see enough of.