Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Howdy! If you saw me or Jane from Dear Author, Marcella White Campbell, or Kassia Krozser on the Today Show and are checking out our sites as a result, welcome! Nice to meet you!

As is the standard in tv, where there’s piles and piles of tape but the audience sees about seven or eight inches of it, our segment was probably pretty quick. But we were talking then and are here now to say that the stereotype of romance readers is wrong. Romance readers are smart, erudite, clever, and tired of being dismissed as undersexed, overweight frustrated women. I hope that our enthusiasm and love of romance came across. If you like romance novels as much as we do, we’re glad you’re here.

ETA: There is a link to the video online if you’d like to see it for yourself. My comments after I watched it for the first time are below - click the “more more more” for, well, more more more.

I am terrible and boring at entries where I tell everything that I did, because it becomes one long string of ‘And then… and then.... and then...’ and your eyes would glaze over. So here’s a small-paragraph recap in no particular order of The First 36 Hours Of RWA.

So tomorrow AM the Today Show segment will air and I’m hoping they use all of us, because Marcella, Kassia, and Jane were outstanding. Marcella batted that interview right out of the park.

Funny part! During the literacy signing, which raised nearly $60,000 in one night, I was walking around with two authors when the film crew from The Today Show approached us. They were looking for two people to pose and gaze up at the ceiling as if they were thinking of George Clooney and Patrick Dempsey. I happened to be standing with, count ‘em one, two people. So if the Today Show airs the segment with two people posing as if they were dreaming of celebrities, one will be Barb Ferrer and the other will be Lisa Kleypas. They were totally good sports about it, and I hope that Today’s uses the segment, because, awesome!

Item the First: Dost thou know we have zee Twitter? We have zee Twitter. I don’t quite understand the joy of zee Twitter, but I’m going to have some fun with it. If you are at SF, either because that’s where you live, or you’re attending the conference, stay tuned to zee Twitter. I’ll be posting while I’m in SF a trivia question or a secret word. If you’re the first to (a) find me and (b) answer the question or give me the secret password, I’ll have a prize for you in my Big Ass Bag. (No, the bag is not made of actual ass, nor will your prize be ass).

Why am I doing this? Because it’ll be fun, it’ll be a neat way to meet new people, and why not give cool stuff to strangers to make new friends, right? Plus, I get to say “zee Twitter,” like The Giver from Send.com used to say his own name (He was The Giver, from Send.com. Giving was in his blood and muscle tissue) . And I have neat prizes, thanks to Ninth Moon and their very very thoughtful clearance sale.

Item the Second: Remember the accounts from last year of thieving booksellers doing the grab and run at the publisher book signings? And Walt from CuppaCafe among others ranted about it, discussing how to better prevent such crapful behavior again? Yeah. I’m hoping that same crew of ass isn’t around in San Fran, but I have my doubts as to the possibility that assholes won’t be assholes. So, I’ll be keeping my eye out for the crew of shite. If you see it happening, or you can identify the crew of crap what’s swiping the books, let me know.

Item the Third: I’m still adding slowly to the RWA Google Map of Food and Drinks and General Merriment, so stay tuned. And if you have a suggestion, please let me know.

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From the “Holy Shit I Haven’t Even Packed Yet” and the “There Goes My Hopes of Traveling Carry-On Only” department comes Louisa Edwards’ account of pre-conference mishigas at the San Fran Marriott. Honestly, this does not bode well.

So, looking for alternate accommodations that are walking distance from the hotel? Good luck with that. There’s the Four Seasons across the street but if you’re not familiar with the Fo-Sea, every one of those seasons is damn hell holy shit outta your budget expensive. Same with the St. Regis.

If you’re feeling the first stirrings of a need to make backup reservations, there is a Hilton (which is great if you have points, which I do not) and there’s a few other major player hotels a few blocks from the Marriott. There’s also a feature on hotels.com that will allow you to search for hotels using the Moscone center as your home point - which is next door to the Marriott.

Are you already at the Marriott and having a hell of a time? There’s a comment form on the Marriott website, but my best advice to you is to Document Everything. Every thing that goes wrong, every time you see something beyond the pale in terms of service crap badness, WRITE IT DOWN. Name names. The people who do things excellently right? Name them. The people who don’t? Name them, too. Then, send a letter (not an email, a letter) to every person whose name and address you can find in control of the Marriott Corporation. If I have an experience equal to Ms. Edwards’, you can bet I’ll be posting mailing addresses and contact info here. Start with the general manager of the San Francisco hotel, and CC as many people as you can. Document everything that went wrong (if anything did - I’m not usually such a glass-half-full-of-crap person but the initial account is alarming). Because let me be honest with you: RWA’s conference committee spends a buttload of time researching these hotels, and to my understanding the hotels court the conference like broke Regency heroes court rich ingénues. If you’re like me, this is a big chunka what-what out of your budget, and if the hotel isn’t up to snuff, complain. Capital-C Complain.

Note: this is not a diss against RWA. Y’all know I am a fan of the RWA. RWA, you, me, and the rest of us conference folks deserve better than a hotel that isn’t getting the job done in terms of service. So if your conference experience doesn’t get better from the account that’s been linked to, take note. Take copious notes. And complain. Tourism in the US is at a record low. The use of the word “staycation” is in every major publication because people just plain cannot afford travel this year. So? Any hotel and every hotel should be actively courting business, and any problems should be addressed promptly. If that is not your experience, take notes.

(But try not to cross the line in to douchebaggery. Please. As someone who used to work the front desk of a hotel, there’s stating your problems reasonably, and there’s abusive yelling. Please try to stay on the reasonable line, even if the problem isn’t reasonable.)

Thanks to Bitchery reader Jora, we have a heads up on a cool place to meet the San Francisco readers who might not be attending RWA but would like to meet Bitches in person, and an equally cool place for folks at the conference to meet up and have a drink with us.

Bitching Happy Hour will be Friday 1 August at 3:30 pm at the Thirsty Bear bar, 661 Howard Street. It’s on the Bitchery Food & Drink map of San Francisco if you need a visual or you really dig the street view. They have house brews, wine, and tapas, and since I love two out of three of those things, I am there like merde and mon dieu.

We’ll be gathering, drinking, and eating, and we’re looking forward to meeting you. This is open to anyone who wants to come have a drink with us - we hope you’ll come by! To give us a rough idea as to whether you’re going to duck out of work early and drink with the crazy ladies from this here website, leave a comment please so we can get an estimated head count. See you in a week!