I arrived in Atlanta on Tuesday evening (OMG that airport is NOT my friend!!! Its huge) and the first sight was the faces of some of my dear friends – Beth, Anna and Kimmi. We met up with some other pals for dinner (and drinks) and had a great time catching up.

(Beth, Kath and I at dinner)

Thats the hardest thing about having best friends from online — we are all scattered in so many directions and live so far from each other — often our only get-togethers are the National conference.

Weds we did some running around, checked out the hotel and I set up my goodies in the goodie room (Drawing for a gorgeous pair of hand painted margarita glasses is still open until August 31 – click on the mailing list link to the right of this post to enter!!) and I ran into my editor (that is about the coolest thing in the world to say, it really is) just long enough to say Hi.

Weds evening was the Literacy Signing. OMG it was crazy huge. Wall to wall bodies. I tried to do each row – I really did. It was so cool to see all my favorite authors and check out friends who were signing their books! I didn’t have my camera with me, but my friend Beth did, so she got some great shots! My dream picture is of me with my favorite author, Vicki Lewis Thompson! As soon as Beth is finished hanging out with her family, she’ll send me the pic and I’ll share it!

The lines were wild, as always, for Nora. It was inspiring to see how the authors promoted themselves, and get ideas for my first book signing.

But the ultimage thrill was when, in the insanity of the shoulder to shoulder crowd, I saw my editor. She smirked and told me “This is you next year.” I think I’m a little scared now.

There ya go, Tues and Weds of my conference experience I’ll post more tomorrow, but for now – I have to get to work.

My revisions are done and I’ll be shipping them off this week, but I want to go through the entire ms in a single read to make sure its ready. I’ve been away from it a week and a half- thats enough distance to get a fresh view (I hope).