Atlanta GRL 2013—Day Zero

I’ve put this off long enough. This will be an abridged version of events, so some things will be left out, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember them or didn’t think they were special. Some things may be left out because they were too personal to me or because I don’t want this to become a novel. Some names are redacted mostly because I’m HORRIBLE at names (just ask Casual Paul’s) and I was hoping some of my delay would make it so I could find people on FB so I wouldn’t munge things so obviously. Anyone who’s edited me knows I’ll forget the names of my own character. Thursday Euclid will tell you I will meet people and list off everything they said but be totally unable to locate a name. Maybe this is an area where Aleksandr Voinov can put the whammy on me for reals.

Enough with the preface. On with the show.

We arrived on Wednesday night, which I thought was pretty early for how I usually roll into things, but got some author shade as Thursday and I dragged ass from the MARTA to the Melia where the conference was being held. It was playful shade, but I was grumpy so I may have side-eyed a little hard. The lobby was full of writers and check-in a little confusing because of the noise, but I was getting pretty excited. I just wanted some food and drink and then avail myself of the company.

Our room was on the 4th floor so we heard the buzz from the pool-side party as we tossed our bags in. I’m a little fuzzy on why we decided to get drinks rather than order room service that minute. Maybe because in my mind, a dinner prefaced with a few cocktails is more satisfying but I think Thursday wanted to see Z. Allora right away.

Either way, we landed at the pool party and talked to Deanna Wadsworth about evil day jobs and how Thursday got his hair so blue. Then we caught up with Z, Belinda McBride, E.M. Lynley, Cherie Noel, Embry Carlysle, Carrie Ann Kennedy, P.D. Singer, and, you know, it’s a long list. We had much loving and meet and greet chats. Some of the ladies I knew from before and some I’d talked to on FB more than at the last GayRomLit, so it was exciting to be fresh of the plane, settle back with a Sangria, and start getting my sea legs.

Then tragedy struck. After we broke off because room service closed at 11 and we wanted to give time to get the food and not have the room service people cranky, I called downstairs about 10:20. No answer. We’d only been there about an hour and a half so I had no clue where food would be or we would’ve just wandered out. But we were so tired from dragging our bags. We asked the front desk what was up and they took us to the bar where the tender took our order but upon Thursday inquiring about tea, we were told that they THROW IT OUT AT 10:30. What? In Atlanta? Gurl.

Food arrived, I left a nice tip and made faces at the cherry tomatoes inelegantly halved and placed face-down on my Margherita pizza and vowed to myself to be slightly less snobby. Right.