The Illustrated Romance

RomCon 2011 was this past weekend and it was maniacally crazy and fun.

So here is the rundown:

I kinda bribed the Pervy Trinity Jamie (@JamieLynn831 of For the Love Of Romance), Kati (@RomancingRakes of Romancing Rakes) and Rita (@NotAnotherRBlog of Not Another Romance Blog) to come to RomCon with this:

First stop 10 a.m. DIA to pick up Jamie and Kati then to our hotel where they checked in as close to the suites as they could get because I had booked a King suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Then I checked in but was given a room with a king bed with no way to upgrade because the suites were already booked for the attending authors (“RUDE” -Kati). Not a big deal, I mean, I’m no diva, I could handle the king bed. Problem was Derek was flying out and staying with me (hence the suite).

So.

Call number one to my husband.

Then we went to the room. The tiny, stinky, kinda hot, room with no circulation and I had a minor freakout about the fact I was sharing a room with a 24 year old male model and the sofa bed was 6 inches from the king sized bed. Then I looked at the bathroom and realized I was sharing a bathroom with a 24 year old male model.

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE!!

I love Derek but… *sigh* I am an old married lady. I don’t want my underwear in the same room as him unless they are ON me!

So we dumped my gear, 300 pounds of equipment, swag and clothing. It took up the ENTIRE king bed. Then I escorted Kati and Jamie to their room on the 4th floor. It was just like mine but with a double instead of a king. And it didn’t smell funny. And it was nice and cool.

We wandered the hotel looking for people, found the awesome Brandy (@Brandy_W) and cruised with her for a bit then finally found Laura (@mysmicker) and Heather and Melanie of The Book Reading Gals (@HeatherLire and @Melanie_Sands = @BookReadingGals) then we got checked in for the con, picked up our bag o’ swag including some cute little butt plug looking thingys we had to google to find out what to do with (turns out they were electronic cleaning devices – who knew?)

We headed back to the airport for Rita and back to the hotel. We had dinner with Heather and Melanie and a group of authors, readers and bloggers at the hotel and I was sammiched between Delilah Marvelle (@DelilahMarvelle) the AMAZING and Gabi Stevens the brilliant (@GabiStevens). But the talent at the table didn’t end there with Fancy Miss Carly Phillips (@CarlyPhillips) across from me, Shayla Black and Isobel Carr down the way and so many more!! Best dinner ever. Did I mention how cute Delilah Marvelle is? She is, so very.

After dinner we…um…I have no idea what we did. I could check twitter, but so could you. At 11:30 D texted me that he had landed and I rushed out the door with the Trinity in tow to get him from the airport. As we pulled up to the passenger pickup We Are The Champions from Queen started playing, so we cranked it up, rolled down the windows and and the Trinty held up their Derek posters in the window as we pulled up to get him. It was EPIC. (and ridiculous, but that’s how we roll.)

We headed to Walmart for model friendly food, and back to the hotel, wherein I explained the mixup in the room. D didn’t even blink. Only I was freaked out. That made me feel better.

That was the first day.

Got to bed around 2:30 a.m. with a 9 a.m. call time.

More soooon….

UPDATE: Then It Continues…