RT Day 4, Friday the 27th of April
If there could be a day from hell, this was it.
I got the Aspen Mountain Press release for the day out, an exciting science fiction mystery, New Tortuga: Monday’s Child, without any problems. The day went downhill from there.
Laura and I got dressed in our costumes and headed downstairs for some media coverage from Houston’s Channel 11 news. Initially, an email went out a few days before the conference asking for 50 volunteers to come in costume to the media event. When we got downstairs, there were just a few people. A reporter asked where our books were. I looked at Laura and then told her I would run back to the room to grab ours. While I was gone, Laura chatted up the cameraman which worked out well for her. She was the first one interviewed!
I came back with our books and a few more people were there. The camera crew asked us to mill around and the reporter said she’d select people from the crowd to chat with. Unfortunately, a NYT bestselling author pushed her way in front of me, as did another author. I was stunned at the rudeness of both. I know you should stand up for yourself, and that you do need to be agressive, but I’m pretty sure that is not the way you want to do it. Especially since the day before there was quite a furor over the historical workshop on surviving in today’s market where one of the well-known presenters absolutely said that historicals were dead and there was no market for them and flat out told another author she was wrong. At any rate, I’ll choose my own way to stand out and it will not include shoving in front of people or embarassing others.
I went from that workshop down promotional row and noticed Laura’s things were missing. I had to rush to the room to change into “normal” clothes so I could do the spotlight segment on Aspen Mountain Press. Unfortunately, the publisher in front of me ran long by fifteen minutes, and the publisher after came in to set up their things before my time was up. My time was fairly squeezed out. The crowds for the spotlights were pretty non-existant, most probably because the spotlights were relegated to the 4th floor, far from the traffic of the conference. Several publishers were disappointed in the turnout.
Laura and I continued to search for her promotional material but couldn’t find it. We spent some time at the Triskelion sponsored lunch. We had a little time off and so I went back to the room to check on the pdf version of the e-Marketing sectional I was doing. The information I submitted to the pdf wasn’t included! Panicked, I called home to ask them to email me the information and it got to me about fifteen minutes before I had to get to the workshop.
I was with Adrianna Dane and Stephanie Kelsey and boy was our workshop lively. There were tons and tons of ideas floating around the room and the hour went by at astonishing speed.
I spent some time chatting with the owners of MojoCastle and headed back out promotional row. Laura’s stuff was still missing. I walked into the publishers’ room, Club RT (another horrible story) and Laura’s baskets are sitting on the registration table. I waited to speak to someone, but the woman at the desk was too busy talking about her lunch, so I picked up the baskets and walked out. I saw Laura standing in front of another promo item desk and she’d found one of her baskets as well. When I told her where I got the baskets, we went back into Club RT and Laura very pollitely asked why her items were removed.
The woman behind the desk got visibly nervous and started tripping over her tongue, I kid you not. She could not string together a coherrent sentence. At one point I heard her say the items were “too risque” and I turned and went back to promo row, gathering all the risquee postcards and other items I could find. As I was doing this, I noticed Laura go into a smaller room with another woman.
I knew I had to go in and support Laura, plus give her the things I’d found, somewhere around twenty items just from the first run through. I knocked, Laura invited me in and I slid her the stuff. Sharon Murphy was quick to emphasize that Romantic Times wasn’t responsible for pulling Laura’s items, even though it was Laura’s items that were specifically targeted.Â
Eventually, the convention manager, Lance was called to the room and he refused to look Laura in the eye. He said he requested her things be removed because they were sitting on top of boxes, he said that it was a decision of he and his peers to request the items be taken down…not moved. He also made the decision to call her promo gear risque and when shown other items far more so said he was not backing down from his decision to have her things removed. We found this ironic as the 400 Epic bags were left on the very same boxes he faulted Laura’s things for being on. Bottom line was his story just didn’t wash.
Unfortunately for Lance, the news spread fast. Authors and publishers came out of the woodwork to protest the prejuidicial attitude of this particular manager. The fallout is still coming.
Lucynda Storey