Groove Is In The Heart

Dudes! What you missed in Saturday 29 June from 8.30am until the early hours? OMFG. Shenanigans doesn’t quite cover it. Picture the scene... 

You’ve arrived in Atlanta, under the tower that is the Hyatt Grand. No, you’re not here for a League of Doom meeting. You are here to be part of reader royalty. After being royally announced, a tiara is placed on your head as a row of authors cheer and clap for you. Collecting candles, Mardi Gras beads, soaps, serious goodies and then the authors who were before crazy chicks on Facebook are crazy chicks in your face. 

Then the mayhem begins. Yvette Hines drops the phrase ‘house nigga’. Kassana uses the words ‘top shelf ghetto baby’. Janet Eckford reminds us to ‘beware the black vagina’. The Jeanie says she ‘likes to fuck’. Sienna Mynx reads out her own sex scene and says “damn I really wrote this!” Nikki Winter throws her question paper to the ground and declares “I ain’t your whore. I may dress like one but no.” Roslyn Hardy Holcomb shrugs off a “I’m 48 with a two year old. I’ll say what I want.” Liz Cole runs a quick survey and notices that some of us engaged in naughty public bathroom shenanigans. Shara Azod shows and tells with sex toys, giving out advice as Raelynn Blue hands out er ‘gifts’ of boob dice, lubricant and rubber ducks (look ‘em up). And Jayha, it's Star Trek. Star Trek. Let our official photographer tell you, that is if he's not checking the stalls in the toilet to practice his own reading. Reana Maori leads everyone in the Wobble and keeps us all to the timetable of events because there's so much to do and fit in the day. 

And me? Apparently all I need to do is say the word ‘pussy’ and the house is appeased. We read extracts of our favourite sex scenes. We ask questions and we give hilarious and truthful answers. In between this madness, you shake your money maker to earn paperbacks of books you love or yearned for. You’re privy to thoughts and feelings that never come over on a screen. And to top off the night? A vow renewal ceremony for a couple who have been married for 33 years. Barb and Rick Wilson share a deep moment of love with all of us and we weep like the die hard romantics we all are. We drink, we laugh, we eat and we dance. Hell yeah, do we dance!

Can you see all of that? Can you smell it, taste it, breathe it - if you can even breathe for laughing so hard you feel like you’ve done a round of Insanity Challenge? Good. Coz we’re doing it again next year. Bring your Stetsons people. We gonna line dance for your life! 

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