Never Turn Novelists Loose on a Friday Night...

What do you get when you take around 80 published novelists, hand them digital cameras and a list of the novels they've all written, then set them loose on an unsuspecting hotel for a race to see who can come up with the most creative pictures for said titles?

Um...pandemonium comes to mind.

On Friday night at the ChiLibris retreat, we always have a fun night to get crazy. One year we did karaoke (you should hear Robert Elmer belt out "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie..."), another year we went to a dinner theater where we got to take part in the play (after Randy Alcorn and I acted out our scene, in which he was a gangster and I was his moll, the real actors said they hated it when the amateurs were better than they were. ) This year, as I said above, we broke into 9 teams, were given a list of ChiLibris authors' titles, and had a race to see who could act out the most titles in an hour. Here are a few of the things my team came up with. Guess who they chose to act things out...especially the crazy or goofy stuff?



Team Members: Janet Benrey, Cara Putnam, and little Rebecca (with Nancy Moser and yours truly standing behind them). I gotta say, Cara was a heck of a trooper racing all over the hotel with Rebecca on her hip. And that sweet little baby girl was an absolute angel!
Book Title: Open Arms

Speaking of Rebecca, she was the perfect focus for the next book title: Eyes on the Prize:

Team members: Moi, Cara Putnam holding Rebecca, and Janet Benrey (apparently swearing the baby in for something...not sure what the raised hand was about, but hey, we were in a hurry...)
So on to the next one...

Team members: Janet Benrey being blessed oh so believably by Meredith Efken
Book title: Blue Heart Blessed by Susan Meissner

Team Members: Nancy Moser, Janet Benrey, and yours truly. The fella behind us is a poor guy we grabbed and begged to help us out. You'll know why in a second.
Book Title: Escape from Fred by Brad Whittington (Yup, the poor guy is playing Fred, from whom we're all escaping...)

Team member: Yeah, you guessed it. We grabbed the apples from behind the buffet glass, where they were a very pretty decoration. The ribbon...well...don't ask where we got that. Suffice to say I was glad to get it off my head.
Book title: A Big Apple Christmas (a Christmas compilation by various authors)

Team members: Nancy "Bruiser" Moser, Meredith "Baby Face" Efken, Janet "The Negotiator" Benrey, and Karen "Red" Ball. Yeah, we're sitting at a bar. No, we didn't drink! And our cigars are pens and straws. Hey, you work with what you got, you know?
Title: Wagered Heart (can you see those are hearts we're betting with?) by Robin Lee Hatcher

Team member: Yup, me again. Just love havin' little crocodiles nibblin' my ears.
Book Title: Whispers of the Bayou by Mindy Starns Clark

and last but not least...

Team member: the same one they always pick to be crazy. Wonder why that is...? Maybe because I was the only one brave (sounds so much better than stupid...) enough to not only open the fire extinguisher case but take the extinguisher out. The others were sure the alarm would go off if I opened the little glass door. I told them it wouldn't.
Thank heaven I was right.
Book title: Operation Firebrand by Jefferson Scott.

Of course, that's not all the titles we did. I think there were around 35 titles to do, and we got 27 or 28 of them. All the teams were racing around the hotel, jumping into position, snapping the picture, then taking off again. And we all dragged unsuspecting hotel guests into the frivolity. It's amazing, really, how willing people are to take part in something when they can tell the folks asking are having a blast. And believe me, we were! Sadly, our team didn't win, but that's okay.

We'll get 'em next year!

Karen