Not Much Gossip

Home again, home again, from my back-to-back trips. Good times. I didn't spend much time at the RWA hotel, but I did talk to a few people here and there. I didn't pick up a lot of gossip, but there were a few things.

Some authors are angry over RWA's decision to drop the First Sale ribbon in favor of a New PAN Member ribbon. They see it as RWA's continued effort to ghetto-ize a large section of its membership. I heard a lot of talk about how to force RWA to change. It's never gonna happen, kids. RWA's power has always been in its inclusiveness, and its weakness has always been in the constant internal warring that this inclusiveness causes. Any organization that ostensibly welcomes all -- but only to a certain point -- is going to have loads of problems over the places it draws its internal lines. Nature of the beast and all that.

Speaking of inclusiveness, I was party to a discussion with some GLBTQ writers about what it might take to get their own Rita category. Smart thinking in that group. I wish them much success, and then I wish that they would share their successful methods with the erotic romance authors, who are still beating their collective foreheads against that brick wall.

I heard rave reviews of the Michael Hauge workshops. (Is that how we spell his name? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) Based on the little I heard about workshops, I would hesitantly conclude that this one was the best of them.

Not a lot of chatter about the houses. Some rumors floating around, but nothing confirmed, so I won't repeat them here.

For my money, this year I chose to attend the IASPR conference instead of RWA. IASPR was fantastic. The quality of analysis in this group is very high. I took mad notes during the panels, and one particular paper on wild characters made me think for a long, long time afterward. Still kind of mulling over some of the points.

So, for those of you who were there, what did you hear? What's the news?

Theresa