GCLS Author Guest Blog: ANDI MARQUETTE

My strongest memory of Andi Marquette was at one of the conferences in Orlando – I can’t remember which one.  Might have been 2010.  Anyway, I remember Andi at the awards dance – she was the DJ.  Andi isn’t one of those DJs who hangs out by the equipment and simply changes the music.  Oh, no!  I remember Andi dancing.  And, boy, was she dancing with enthusiasm!  It was awesome!

We’ve “talked” a bit via Facebook, but I’m really looking forward to meeting Andi this year.  Just based on her Facebook and Twitter updates, I know that she is an absolutely fascinating person!

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I’m baaa-ack!

Hi, GCLSers. I’m Andi Marquette, and I have been unable to attend the last two GCLS conferences for untoward and unwelcome reasons, none of which involved alien abduction (at least that would be a cool story). Consequently, I’ve been out of the loop for a bit, but I’m back on track (I’m pretty sure). Which could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the perspective. Heh.

The first GCLS I attended was Atlanta, 2007.  Then I went to Arizona in 2008, and Orlando 2009 and 2010. Over the years, there’ve been great speakers and great panels, and that’s one of the many reasons that I enjoy attending this conference. I always meet awesome people, see some great panels, and hear some super-cool speakers. So for you newbies out there, it’s well worth your time to attend one of these.

Carleen asked me for some GCLS stories. I’ll give her one from Arizona. I drove to that conference from Colorado, and brought a cooler full of food and the makings for mojitos (I’m particular about my mojitos, dammit). On the way, I stopped at a truck stop  near the border of NM and AZ and bought a 12-pack of Diet Coke for Joan Opyr, because she’s a little particular in that regard. I also had a bottle of New Mexico wine in the car that I was going to give to some friends in Flagstaff. Well, dumb ass that I was, I left the wine in the trunk wrapped in my sleeping bag. I was from Albuquerque, after all. Hot, dry, desert. I’d not had any wine mishaps prior to this. My wine had always survived. But I learned differently in AZ.

The last day in Arizona, I went to my car to check on the wine. I opened the trunk and holy crap, the cork had popped and the wine had literally evaporated. All that was left was the faint smell of New Mexico red. It hadn’t even stained the carpet. It was as if it had exploded and evaporated as soon as it hit the air. That was a serious kick in the butt about how hot the Sonoran Desert really can get, and what that heat can do to the interior of a car. Note to self: take your alcohol into your hotel room when staying in the Sonoran Desert.

Also in Arizona, Joan Opyr and I ended up at a party Lisa Girolami threw and we met a whole lot of authors we hadn’t yet. Good food, good conversation and music, and assorted hijinks. I’m pretty sure Joan still has the mattress tag she ripped off the hotel mattress at that party and for my part, I’m never going to try to match Jane Fletcher in beer-drinking again. The English are just better at it. Note to self: two pints is plenty for you, Andi.

I enjoyed Orlando, as well, because I DJed the awards dance and that is always a blast because I love music and yes, I do like to dance. I sure hope those of you who were there when I did that had a good time.  I also had the honor of winning a Goldie one of those years and participating in things like an author talk with Amy Dawson-Robertson and Tracey Richardson. I think experiences like that make the GCLS the special event that it is. It’s a chance for me to meet fellow authors (aspiring and established) and to talk with readers and publishers and get a sense of what’s going on in the world of lesfic.

The GCLS in Dallas, thus, is part of my return to active writing life, and I’m really looking forward to it. The untoward and unwelcome circumstances I alluded to earlier disallowed me to write as much as I would have liked the past couple of years. Regardless, I managed to release a romance novella, Some Kind of River, in 2012 and then another, From the Boots Up, in 2013. I’m also releasing the third in my science fiction series in the next month or so. Hope you look for The Edge of Rebellion. And I’m working hard (as is the publisher) to get the fourth book in my New Mexico mystery series out by the end of this year. Day of the Dead features Albuquerque homicide detective Chris Gutierrez as well as the whole New Mexico posse.  And stay tuned for a couple of romance novels in the pipeline, one of which is a continuation of From the Boots Up.

I’ll also be doing author thingies in Dallas, including a master class on setting and a coffee chat with authors Erica Lawson, D. Jordan Redhawk, and MB Panichi on science fiction and fantasy. Should be a blast. And though I’ll be running around as usual, it won’t be that hard to find me. Just flag me down.

Hope to see you there!

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Andi Marquette writes mysteries, science fiction, and romance. You can find her at her website: http://www.andimarquette.com 

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