GCLS Author Guest Blog: LAYCE GARDNER

I had the extreme pleasure of meeting Layce Gardner at the 2011 GCLS Conference in Orlando.  My mother and I attended a panel that included Layce as a participant (along with Saxon Bennett, Amy Dawson Robertson, Laurie Salzer, and Pol Robinson).  It was a fabulous panel…and, with Layce as the ringleader, we were all laughing our heads off for nearly an hour.  Below is a re-posting of Layce’s experience at the conference. 

Also be sure to check out Layce’s brand new short story Penny Nickel.  It’s a mere 99 cents!

Tell-All Expose of the GCLS “Goldies” Convention

I recently attended the Golden Crown Literary Society convention in Orlando, Florida.  For those of you not in the know, it’s a convention for lesbian literature.  There are authors, readers and publishers present.  That’s exciting enough, but believe you me, the most exciting revelations happened ‘behind the scenes.’ This is a tell-all expose of the antics that the casual observer would never see or know about.

(Now before one of you authors gets all huffy puffy and tries to sue me for slander, please consider two things:  #1, I don’t have any money.  #2, ALL publicity is good publicity)

I was going to save this revelation for last, but can’t wait that long since it concerns the woman who won the Trailblazer award this year – Karin Kallmaker.  Ms. Kallmaker is the Editorial Director at Bella Books and has written a jillion books of her own.  She’s won so many awards that she can’t even count them.  She’s beautiful, sexy, brainy, affable, sweet and charming and has an amazing fucking collection of shoes.

C’mon….  Really?  Did it ever dawn on you people that the divine Miss KK is just too good to be real?

I did some sleuthing.  Not to be confused with stalking because I was in stealth mode when I did it and she didn’t see me therefore it’s not stalking.  Here’s what I found out:  KARIN KALLMAKER IS NOT REAL.  Yes, you heard me right.  She doesn’t exist.  She is a hologram.  It appears that Bella Books has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years.  They (Bella Books) created a woman designed physically and mentally and emotionally to appeal to all lesbians, hologrammed her and beamed her in to the convention.

How do I know this you ask?

Here are the clues I gathered:  Every time Karin stood up from a chair and walked away, I examined the cushion on the chair.  She didn’t leave behind a butt print!  I also felt the spot where her buttocks had been just seconds before and the cushion wasn’t even warm!

Also… did anybody see Becky Arbogast working so diligently on her computer at the Bella table?  She was the one who was ‘guiding’ the hologram of KK around the room!  She may tell you she was selling books or looking at the nanny cam of her beloved dogs, but she was really guiding Karin’s hologram around the room and making her hug people.

Also…  KK hugged me and I distinctly felt her boobs pressed against mine and it made my nipples hard and my nipples stayed hard long after the hug was over.  The only explanation for this that I can think of is the energy traces that everybody knows a hologram leaves behind.

Also…  and I hate to say this because it’s just so obvious and you’ll probably kick yourself for not noticing it earlier, but… have you ever seen Princess Leia and KK in the same room?  Duh…

The next revelation I unearthed has to do with that funeral directors convention next door to our convention room.  Does anybody but me find it a little bit odd that there would be a room full of caskets right next to our convention?  And that Mary Griggs is from New Orleans where all the vampires live?  And that there was a whole bunch of lesbians there who wrote paranormal stories and stayed inside the hotel the whole time and never went outside into the daylight?  I propose that Mary Griggs is their Queen and she came up with the fake funeral directors convention and the room full of caskets just so her lesbian vampire minions would feel at home.  I followed Mary around (stealth mode, of course) and I never saw her eat or go to the bathroom.  I personally don’t have anything against lesbian vampires, but I just wish they would come out of the closet and quit coming up with silly ways to hide their identity.  (funeral directors convention… can you get anymore see-through than that?)

My next revelation is about Amy Briant, author of Shadow Point, which just won a well-deserved Goldie.  At first, I thought Amy was shy and didn’t talk too much.  Hah!  She’s not shy, she just happens to be highly evolved and has mastered the art of communicating telepathically.  I sat next to her at dinner and she wouldn’t shut up!  I think I’m the only person who knows of her ability because (as most people know about me) I can bend silverware with my mind.  This unique talent of mine enabled me to listen to Amy’s telepathic conversation and let me tell you the woman talks non-stop!  She told me the complete outline of her next three books!  She also is quite the quipster.  For instance at one point, K.G. MacGregor reached for the bread basket and Amy quipped something about being able to see down K.G.’s plunging neckline and how she’d like to butter those biscuits.  If you ever saw me laughing at apparently nothing it was because Amy was in my head telling jokes!

Also, Nat Burns sat across the table from me at dinner and played footsie with me.  But I think Natty does that to everybody.

And last but not least, the most interesting time I had was my night with K.G. MacGregor.  Some of you may remember Friday night Karaoke and how K.G. and Ginny sang Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking.”  My interest was piqued when I saw her sing that song because she was just… how should I say this?… a little too good.  She didn’t look like a woman who had never sang Karaoke before.  She looked like a woman who was VERY VERY GOOD at Karaoke but was taking great pains to appear to be a mediocre singer and dancer.

Once again, I moved into stealth mode and followed K.G. back to her room later that night.  I only had to hide in the hallway outside her hotel room for about three hours before she reappeared.  She snuck down the hallway and I snuck behind her.  She walked about two miles to the nearest Karaoke bar and went inside.  I sat in the shadows of the bar and nursed a wine spritzer while I watched K.G. perform song after song after song.  The woman can sing like an angel.  Well, maybe angel doesn’t quite describe it.  She sings more like Sonny Bono.  But that could’ve been just the fake mustache she had glued to her upper lip.  She sang every Sonny and Cher song the Karaoke man had!

The problem came later that night when she had drank one too many bottle of wine and tried to steal a car and drive back to the hotel.  She was stopped by a policeman.  And, of course, being the sexy K.G. that she is, she tried to talk herself out of trouble by using her feminine wiles on the male cop.  It almost worked, too, but she forgot she still had the mustache on.  So, K.G. was hauled off to jail.  I bailed her out just in time to go give her keynote speech.
To save her face, I bailed her out anonymously.  But, K.G., if you’re reading this, you owe me five hundred bucks.

Oh! And before I forget… if anybody is missing MJ Lowe, don’t worry.  When I got home I found her in my pocket.  She’s so adorable I’ve decided to keep her.  I bought her a Barbie dream house and  she’s driving around a pink Barbie convertible.  She’s hanging out and partying with all my female action figures.  She said her favorite is Xena; Buffy scares her a little; and Jesus with the glow-in-the-dark hands is fascinating.  You can write to her in care of me.

That’s all for now.  But, dear readers and convention attendees, remember one thing:  Layce is in stealth mode and just may be following you around!

(The original post can be found on Layce’s website.)

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Layce is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and novelist.  Her novel, Tats, was published by Bella Books in June of 2011 and won a 2012 Goldie award in the category of Romantic Adventure.  The sequel, Tats Too: the Case of the Devil’s Diamond, was published in 2012.  Her newest novels, A Perfect Romance and Wild At Heart will be published in 2013.  She has also written two short stories The Day I Tried Out for Cheerleader and Other Stupid Stuff and Penny Nickels.