The best group of losers

I've been at the LDStorymaker's conference this week. It's always super fun because I get to see so many writing friends and because people at Storymaker's actually think I'm cool. (My children refuse to believe this fact, but it's true.)

Here I am with Angela Morrison and international bestseller, Anne Perry. She was the keynote. Pretty much everything she said sounded amazing because she can quote Shakespeare, Dante, and speaks with a British accent. Memorizing large passages of classic literature is probably beyond my abilities, but I may start working on a British accent.

Every year at Storymakers, the Whitney Awards are given out. This year I was presenting the romance award with Sarah Eden. We were supposed to come up with a cute way to introduce the contestants. The problem with that was that Sarah and I spent two days joking around about all the bad and completely inappropriate ways we could present the award, so what we really did was come up with our introduction while we were getting dressed for the event. I'll put it in a future blog: Ways to tell you might be addicted to romance novels.

Every year, the funnest part of the Whitneys, (at least for me) is the after dinner drowning-your-sorrow-in-cheesecake because you didn't win pictures that Julie Wright, James Dashner, and I started years ago.

I didn't even get nominated for a Whitney this year. (The one book I had out in 2012 was disqualified because it was a rewrite of an earlier book.) So I figured that made me a double loser and I was completely qualified to crash the loser photos this year.

Here I am with the lovely Julie Wright, Melanie Jacobson, and Krista Jensen.Julie does despondent so well.

And here's the bitter group photo with awesome writers: Kelly Oram,  Tanya Parker Mills, Julie Wright, Melanie Jacobson, Krista Jensen, Theresa Sneed, Gregg Luke, Marsha Ward, and Annette Lyon.

Every time I look at Gregg I laugh. He's got the concept down.

Even though I love the loser photos, it wasn't my favorite moment this year. Julie Donaldson won the romance category for her book Edenbrooke (and best novel by a new author), which was especially  neat for me because she was one of the ladies in a week-long class I taught at BYU a few years ago. When she accepted her award she thanked me. I seriously nearly cried. I was so touched. It was way better than winning a Whitney.