This is a post I should have done a few week­ends ago when it hap­pened but alas, trav­el­ing and writ­ing got in the way. Any­way, here it is!

SINCE I am doing the RT con­fer­ence in Kansas City next year (hope to see you all there!), I thought I would go for the local SIWC — Sur­rey Inter­na­tional Writer’s Con­fer­ence on Octo­ber 20th in a city quite close to my own. I fig­ured it would be the per­fect primer for this whole “writer’s con­fer­ence” thing and I wasn’t disappointed.

Yup, my first con­fer­ence and the first per­son I saw was my Twit­ter pal Lorna Suzuki, whose fan­tasy series Imalgo is pretty much in devel­op­ment for a major motion pic­ture. Got her — and the screen­writer — to sign my book.

And soon dis­cov­ered that my table­mate was Diana Gabaldon.

 

WHAT?

 

 

HOW IS THIS.….WHAT????

YES.

Nat­u­rally I played it cool (snort) and dis­cov­ered that Diana is one cool (and stun­ningly, del­i­cately beau­ti­ful) cat. She had lots of great writ­ing and pub­lish­ing advice (stick to your guns, write what you want, don’t worry if you can’t clas­sify your books because she can’t really clas­sify hers…) and we enjoyed many a glass of chardon­nay together (though she now owes my part­ner a drink).

It was only at the last minute that my part­ner and her got talk­ing about the MacKen­zie clan…he a MacKen­zie and she knowl­edgable about every­thing on earth.

Along the way, I met EIT read­ers Joy and Deanne who were awe­some to meet, really great peo­ple, as well as Amanda and Poonam (who are also great, lol). It was a great way to ease into the con­fer­ence lifestyle and wow.…if I ever have lines like Diana, I don’t know what I’d do ! Actu­ally it was really fun lis­ten­ing to each and every fan praise her and her work. Strangely hum­bling

As my first con­fer­ence and book sign­ing, I per­son­ally thought it was a suc­cess and can’t wait to do it again!