Adventures in San Francisco

I'm finally out from under the deluge of e-mail (and plain ol' snail mail) that accumulated last week, and I've properly assured Tipper the Wonder Poodle that I'm going to pay lots of attention to her this week, so time to post the San Francisco update!

Got in on Tuesday and quickly located Terri Clark and Lynda Sandoval, my partners in crime (and, with Ellen Hopkins, my co-authors on Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.) We went shopping, cruised over to Castro to see the neighborhood, then went back to the Ferry Building Marketplace for coffee and some decadent sourdough cheese wheels. (Lynda ended up buying a whole bag of cheese wheels to bring back to the hotel. Not that we mocked her or anything.)

That night, we donned our "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" T-shirts and hit McAfee Stadium to see the Oakland A's take on the Kansas City Royals. Check out our book on the big screen!



Wednesday was RWA's "Readers for Life" booksigning for literacy. Over 500 authors signed books, with all proceeds going to literacy charities. Check out Terri signing her first copies of Sleepless! The book will be in stores any day now, so keep an eye out for it. If you enjoyed Ter's story in Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, you'll love diving into Sleepless. She sold a ton of copies at the literacy signing!






Another major highlight of the night for me was getting to see Maryam Mehrkhast, who was my best friend in fifth and sixth grade (until I moved, thanks to my dad's Army career.) Maryam and I were inseparable in those days, and it was incredible to get to see her again. The way we were chatting, you'd never know it'd been so long since we'd seen each other. She's still gorgeous inside and out.


During the two-hour event, I got to meet a lot of readers and I signed a slew of books (when I wasn't catching up with Maryam!) She took this picture of me talking to readers while I signed copies of Goddess Games. (And, for those of you who missed the event, but want an autographed book, it's not too late! You can send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope and request autographed bookplates to stick in the front of your Niki book(s.) Just tell me how many you want! All the info is on my site, right here.)

Thursday and Friday passed in a blur, and Saturday night was the Golden Heart/RITA Awards Ceremony and reception. Lynda and Terri and I got dolled up, though Lynda had to have very good posture or risk a Janet Jackson moment in her dress:



We let Lynda take this one, as she said she felt safer behind the camera:



Thankfully, all three of us made it through the night with no wardrobe malfunctions!

StubHub Redux

So I got an e-mail via my website from the Executive Customer Care Manager at StubHub, who I'm guessing has a Google Blogs notification that pings her when StubHub gets mentioned in a blog. She asked me to call her, which I thought was cool, considering that I had nothing good to say about StubHub in my earlier post, wherein I described my Great George Michael Ripoff.

Long story short, she apologized for StubHub's mistake (though it was really a long series of mistakes by person after person over five days that left me out $200+ in tickets) and credited me $100 at StubHub for a future purchase.

I wasn't expecting to get anything, and didn't ask for anything, so it's certainly better than a poke in the eye. Not sure I'll use the credit, though. I mean, someone would have to be able to properly LIST their tix first, right? And you can almost never get concert or baseball tickets for two people for $100, which means I'd have to shell out more $$ in order to use the $100. AND...if there's a problem, I'm not too keen on calling to get it fixed (though everyone I talked to was nice, no one actually fixed my problem. Which is a problem.) So we'll see.

Later today (or as soon as I get a chance!): An update on all that happened in San Francisco. Great pics to come!