Friday

You may wonder why on earth, after going to bed totally wiped out in the early hours of the morning, I would want to wake up before seven am. The answer: continental breakfast, included in the registration, and scheduled for 7:30 to 8:30 am. Being frugal *coughcheapcough* I made sure I was there early enough to avoid the rush of like-minded fellow conference attendees, but perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered: the buffet tables were not opened until about 7:40, and the waitstaff started clearing out the first one (which was empty as the desert) at about 8:15. Mind, the food offered wasn’t anything to write home about—some fresh fruit, Dunkin Donuts Krispy Kreme donuts (thank you, Kim in Hawaii!),  a couple of fruit breads—but I confess that I’m still puzzled by how little of it there was, considering that there were 2100 registered attendees. (This is not a swipe at RWA, by the way: I blame this entirely on the hotel²)

The company, on the other hand, was great: I hailed down Jodi Henley, of Will Work for Noodles fame, and we were joined in short order by Lorena Streeter of Hearts and Handcuffs and Anna Alexander (who has a wonderful tag in her cards: Live for the day, to hell with the rest), and a bit later by Linda Nielsen and Nikki Enlow. Again, conversation flowed around the table—most of us strangers to each other until that moment, but easy with each other, comforted by the knowledge that we all were there because of our passion for books and reading (and, in their cases, writing those books 😀 )

And here is when things got surreal… (or more surreal, if you will).

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