Avon Romance Publishing Party

Mastro’s. Newport Beach. Dry ice martinis. This was the setting of the Avon Romance Publishing party.

I walked in and was immediately welcomed SO warmly by Jessie, and they brought me to Pam. Seriously, they were so nice and amazing to me. It was reiterated several times how 8,000 people applied to be Avon Addicts and only 25 were choose for the first 6 month spot. WOW! Well, I REALLY love to read Avon books so I guess that showed in my application… haha! I’m still flabbergasted about how excited they continue to be about the Avon Addicts program when I’m just so excited to get these books on a monthly basis and be able to chat about them!

Back to the party. Lemon Drop Martinis were circling and I had to ask how I got one of those babies. They were not offered up at the regular bar but were circling the room. So a nice waiter found one for me! Lemon drops are not usually as good as apple martinis but dang, last night they were perfect.

I was getting pretty good at spying on name tags. Tangent: Which were the most amazing things EVER! They were MAGNET. It took me awhile to figure it out… but you just remove the magnet from the back, attach to your dress, and add the back on and no pin holes! Best invention ever.

Sophia Nash.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

As I was waiting to jump into SEPs conversation (she was talking quite a long time with someone showing her phone photos – seriously, the amount of times I noticed people ‘waiting’ to speak to other people was hilarious – pretty much cause I was doing it, I noticed everyone else!).

I ran into Elizabeth Lowell and her writing partner (honesty, I asked about his wife and I felt like he side-stepped my question – I have no idea if they are married or not!) but I had to tell her that her latest ‘Beautiful Sacrifice’ was so well researched, I always learn things from her novels! Then I had to blunder about and say that my favorite was this book, and I loved it, and her name was Cat, and she fell on the steps… der… what was the name? Well, she knew it – To the Ends of the Earth but I can only hope that she appreciated the love.

Then, I met Jennifer Bernard, whom I was passed the book through the Avon Addicts club and her next anthology sounds super awesome (the LA Firemen going to help in a CO wildfire scenario!) and they had Eric the Fireman representing! Yes, he was cheesy beefcake for the ladies of Avon but never fear, Avon donated generously to the LA Fire Fund (or whatever the actual name was) and Eric was an actual Fireman from LA and super witty and hysterical about the fact all us ladies were getting our pictures with him. 🙂 Well, who could resist? Not I…

Kristi & Eric the Fireman

Tessa Dare – whose historical novels are fantastic – and who is so nice. She ended up winning a RITA the next night (the equivalent to the Oscars!).

Then I saw Sarah Maclean, whose stories I love. She introduced me to Toni Blake, and I got super confused because she said she wrote suspense novels and I was trying to place ‘suspense’ novels in my head and thinking the name was familiar, and I just looked her up and I have totally read one of her books and I have two others in my TBR pile and I do not think of those as ‘suspense’. Whoops. Oh well.

Julie Ann Long, I totally fan girl’d over her stuff.

I saw Julia Quinn, who I have met several times and who is my hand down favorite historical writer. Okay, maybe not favorite. Because I do love Eloisa James… and Judith McNaught.. and Jude Deveraux. Anyway. I have several signed things from her PLUS I got to sit next to her at dinner at the 2012 RomCon in Denver so I just smiled and said, I love your stuff! And your purse!

So many more. It was a great night and I was so happy to be there!