Monday monday

The very last day (sob sob). I started by doing the BART thing back out to Oakland to see my friend again (more mutual trying to persuade each other to move or, at least, vacation more often). Had a fabulous breakfast at the Blackberry Bistro, so if you're in Oakland check it out. Then we moseyed over to Berkley and sat up on the hill at the Berkley Rose Garden (in a fit of nostalgia from my last visit) and yakked away. After that I came back into the city for an afternoon of wandering around, hunting through various Borders trying to find Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the Grave with no success (though I did score Patricia Brigg's Cry Wolf). I also saw Wall-E which was way cute. Robot love and adventure..what more do you need?

Now I'm sitting in the lounge at SFO, having watched a very pretty foggy sunset over the hills. Boarding starts in just under an hour and then it's movies and trying to sleep and all that jazz until I make it home. I must say I like SFO much better than LAX. No hour plus queues to get through security for a start!

All in all I've had a fabulous time and really wish I was much richer so I could afford more jaunts here and to Chicago and New York and other cool places my US buds hang out. Conference always feels way too short. I'm glad I still have RWAustralia's to look forward to.

Saturday and Sunday

Yesterday was the big day, the GH/RITA awards ceremony. Sadly it was not a good night (in the ultimate winning sense, it was a great night in the 'squee we have lots of fabulous finalists' sense) for the Aussies and Kiwis, none of my buds are coming home with pretty golden statues or necklaces but it was fun to watch them all on the big screen and glammed up.

Before the ceremony was another day of conferencing. I only did two workshops (Jane Porter and Lilian Darcy's 'It's my process and I'll cry if I want to' and a panel on writing cross-over fiction) and wandered around a bit the rest of the day, stuck my head into some signings but didn't ultimately get anything (my case is full already), went for a walk, had the obligatory it's-near-the-end-of-conference-and-I'm-tired nap. Then I had to make myself all pretty and go to drinks hosted by my fabulous agency (the Irene Goodman Literary Agency) at Bourbon and Branch, which was a speakeasy during the prohibition years and still operates on the same principle. You need the password to get in and once in it's all dark with suitable decor (including a fabulous pressed tin ceiling in the libary room) and cute yet mysterious looking barfolk in thirties gangster type hats and shirts. The cocktails were pretty good too. I'm going to have to try and find orange bitters in Australia to replicate one of them. The drinks were fun and it was nice to meet some of Miriam and Barbara and Irene's other clients.

We made it back from drinks in time for me to find the Aussie contingent for the ceremony and much hooting and cheering in typical Aussie fashion of our Australian and Kiwi nominees. Then there was dessert and possibly more drinks and a quite late night : )

Today (due to said quite late night) has been quiet. Kelly and I succumbed to the lure of Macy's handbag department so we will both have fabulous bags to show off at the RWOz conference in a few weeks. Since then I've been reading and possibly napping and am now contemplating the wip again. Tonight I have to pack and then tomorrow night I fly home. Time has flown over here but in some ways it also feels like I've been away for a long time. It will be nice to get home to my own bed and the fuzzy beasties (though not so much the Melbourne winter!)

Friday

Am I the queen of imaginative blog post titles or what? lol

It's even more confusing when I'm posting this on Saturday here in SF but blogger thinks it's Sunday as my time zone is set to Australia. Hence the boring title.

So Friday (btw it's quite warm here today...almost summery!). Friday started with breakfast (bagels and fruit) where I ran into AA and Tracey. Then a little bit of writing time before I did the morning workshops (Writing in the Pressure Cooker which was good and the Spotlight on St Martins which just solidified my desire to write for them one day).

Next was lunch with Connie Brockway who did a brilliant speech on writers as superheroes using the hero's journey to illustrate the writing process. After a yummy lunch, I went to Eric Maisel's very interesting 2 hour session on Creativity for Life. I could've listened to him for a lot longer and took lots of notes. Luckily it was taped. I topped all that off with Jane Porter's first person POV workshop which was also great (Jane is always a fab speaker and she had some cool insights in first person, stuff I hadn't thought about from her particular angle).

Workshopped out, I headed back to my room, changed for dinner with Char and the gang from various online classes. We had fabulous mexican and fabulous margaritas and I discovered that my weird naturopathic diet has um, reduced my alcohol tolerance, so I had to drink lots of water and eat the pringles from the minibar and write a few more pages before going to bed lol. And that was Friday and now I have another workshop to run to, so the Saturday report will be tomorrow but think good thoughts for all our fab Aussie and Kiwi RITA and GH finalists tonight.

The rest of Thursday

So. Thursday was busy. I had lunch with Miriam, who really liked the new book, so that was a good start. I'll have a few revisions to do when I get home but then we'll start the submission process with it. Yay! Go weirdo witchy demon techno book. We talked books and Top Gear and various cool things besides my book and ate very yummy mahi mahi (at least I did).

Then I did some workshops in the afternoon. Including SEP's Six Magic Words which wasn't taped last year and I missed going to then, so was happy I got there this time. She's a great speaker and had good advice.

After workshops a quick dash back to Out the Door for more rice paper rolls on the grounds they are healthy (and not a hamburger) and I was going to the Golden Network dessert reception afterwards so needed something vaguely resembling nutrition.

The dessert reception was fun (and I ran into Miriam again who was trying to be a clone and attend about five different events at once). It was great to see four Aussies get booted to alumni status (you get booted from TGN when you sell). So yay for Anna Campbell, Christine Wells, Bronwyn Parry and Tracey O'Hara.

After all that, I headed back to the room and decided an earlyish night might be in order. I did get invited to drinks but was already in bed reading, so passed. Given today will be just as busy, that might have been a wise decision.

The first day part two and the second day part one

Last night was the literacy signing which was big and loud...one thousand odd women in one room is always noisy. I often wonder what the men there think : )

I managed to find some friends and strangely enough, buy some books. All good. After that I had drinks and dinner with some of the Aussie contingent - drinks up in the View Lounge on the 39th floor which has a great view over the city and great margaritas and dinner at Mel's Diner (I never knew I had a diner!).

This morning most the aussies had breakfast at the Palace Hotel hosted by the lovely Debbie Macomber. The hotel is just gorgeous. Very old world San Francisco and breakfast was delicious. The workshops start this afternoon and before that I have lunch with Miriam, so it's going to be a busy day.