So that was Dallas

Strangely I'm more jetlagged today than yesterday. Mainly because (or I assume) Tuesday night I was too tired to do much more than roll over and fall back asleep when the four am awakes hit. Last night, I read and dozed on and off then fell back asleep around eightish. Jetlag has been good for me catching up on my reading (especially since my bag of books arrived back safe yesterday). Hopefully tonight I'll be back to mostly normal.

Anyway people keep asking me what was the highlight of Dallas? I can't pick just one so here are a few:

1. Barbara Samuel's workshop on Layering in Lusciousness - she's a fab teacher and doing one of her workshops in person again was great (and one of the few 'I really want to see that' workshops that worked with my schedule).

2. Jane Porter's workshop at the Pro retreat. Jane's been to the Aussie conference a few times and she's always fabulous. I'm sorry I missed her two hour (untaped sob) workshop at Dallas but I had schedule issues.

3. Seeing Bron win her GH and her great speech (in fact lots of great speeches from all the fab GH/RITA winners).

4. Hanging out with Miriam and meeting some of her other clients (Rachel, I still didn't get Stray signed...looks like it will be making another international trip next year : ) ).

5. Buying cowboy boots.

6. Wandering around having fangirl "oh my god, that's X" moments.

7. Meeting up with lots of people I know from various online loops (again apologies for my jetlagged brain ladies).

8. Having a lovely time as a GH finalist, so many people took an interest and made us all feel like princesses. It's very cool to have some of your favorite authors ask you about the GH.

9. Seeing my friends get to do cool things like the literacy signings and workshops and general published author fabulousness.

10. The Star Wars exhibit at the Fort Worth Science museum (okay so that's non RWA related but it was way cool to see Luke's landspeeder and Chewbacca and C3PO and R2D2 and now I've just outed myself as a Star Wars geek.

11. Being inspired all over again and even more determined to make this my gig.


Things I learned from Dallas:

1. Next time go earlier and be less jetlagged.

2. You can't go to every workshop under the sun and building in nap time was definitely a good plan. Buy the tapes.

3. If the conference is in Dallas again, ask for a room not on the train station side of the hotel.

4. Arrive early to lineup for things like signings. There are lots of people at the conference (even though it isn't until the big events like lunches and signings that it really feels like that).

5. Take two cases.

6. Ear plugs are your friend (well, that was a continued conference learning...if you're a light sleeper and sharing a room then plug away).

All in all, I had a fab time and am looking to doing it all over again next year (and in between all over again at the RWAus conference next month).