Life has been busy here at Jewel Central. I attended the RWA board meeting this month. We got a lot of important work done plus I got to spend time with some really smart women and men. The RWA staff is just amazing. The Board meeting was the weekend of the time change, so Sunday was super fun, getting up extra early. I don’t know what I’d do without espresso in my veins.

Then I came home from that and was tired the entire following week.

On Saturday the 19th, I was on a panel on behalf of the EFF with some of the authors from the anthology the EFF put together.

Dave Maas of EFF getting ready for the panel

Yes! I was there! Next to Annalise Newitz omg

My adventure with arriving at the location of the panel at the Internet Archive in San Francisco began with me locking my keys in the car while I was getting gas. Fortunately, the gas station owner let me use his phone, and CSAA came really really fast and got my car unlocked. This used up all my time allotted for being lost so I was worried I’d be late. But I DID NOT GET LOST! It was a miracle. (No worries! I took two wrong turns on the way back.)

The panel was really fun and interesting. What a great group of authors. I got to shake Cory Doctorow’s hand and he was so, so gracious. As were all the panelists. They were so fabulous that I was just hoping to hold my own as we answered questions etc.

There was Romance in their midsts and everyone was fine with it, which as Romance authors and readers know, is often not the case in the mainstream. We talked about speculative fiction and civil liberties, and answered questions from the audience and everything everyone said was fascinating and thought provoking.

I did feel I had to apologize for my boring hair. I’ve decided to go purple-tinted platinum and in preparation for that, my hair was not dark purple, but a dark, dark, brown because that will be easier to bleach than the purple. So much colorful hair among the attendees!

By Sunday I was sick but needed to pick up my son who was home for Spring Break. Naturally, traffic was terrible and I got lost. Again.

I was sick most of the following week but it was great having my son home. Friday was a holiday from the EDJ. I got to make calls to the RITA/Golden Heart finalists which is pretty much the best thing ever.

My son went back to school today. I did get a little behind on my word count for Sinclair Sisters Book 3 because I was sick, but I’m coming up on the halfway point which is pretty exciting.

In writing-related news, I’m having all my books reformatted because I need not to spend time doing things that aren’t writing books. Ironically, this requires some work that is not writing, but as soon as everything is ready for Formatting Version 2.0, I’ll spend much less time obsessing over it.

And this means I can hint about some upcoming Exciting Things for Readers that are dependent on certain books being reformatted first. All that work went out Saturday and it’s in progress.

And so, March has been very busy, including writing.