Instead, I´ve been dreaming about the cooler weather of fall, and conferences. Granted, conferences take place all year long--RWA´s national conference was just two weeks ago and drew roughly 2000 writers, plus agents and editors from around the country, as well as hundreds of readers for the big Literacy Campaign booksigning to kick off the week. But I´ve discovered that most of the conferences I´ve gone to and plan to attend take place in the spring and fall. And they´re not all huge conferences either. There are dozens of RWA chapters that have their own conferences, usually shorter than some of the bigger conferences. There is also the Celebrate Romance conference that takes place annually for both readers and writers. This spring, it was in the northwest; next year it´s scheduled for Atlanta.
The biggest conference, though, has to be Romantic Times´ annual Booklovers´ convention. The location for this one also varies, but you can depend on Kathryn Falk and her team to plan a great event. I´ve been drooling with envy over the pictures from this conference for many years now and will finally have my chance to see it for myself this year. Houston in November sounds nice, doesn´t it? Certainly warmer than Pennsylvania in November. Just a few of the events planned for this year include a cover models´ reunion, a costume competition and Venetian masked ball, Heather Graham´s Vampire Ball. There are also publishers´ parties, authors´ parties, and ten tracks of workshops for two days and a huge bookfair for the last morning of the convention. If you´re a writer, there are two days of workshops prior to the start of the convention just for you. For more info, visit their website, listed in the related links for this article.
I already mentioned the RWA national conference. This one is aimed at the writers among us, and is a great place to meet other writers, not to mention the agents and editors. For those RWA members who missed this year´s conference, there are tapes and handouts available from many of the workshops this year. Also, next year´s conference is scheduled for New Orleans. Check out their website for more details (related links).
I also mentioned the RWA chapter conferences for the writers. Some of us prefer a smaller conference, for networking and learning, and these are perfect in that way. Just a few of the upcoming chapter conferences include: New Jersey Romance Writers Put Your Heart in a Book, Sept. 22-23; Moonlight and Magnolias, GA Romance Writers, Sept. 22-24; Emerald City Writers´ Retreat in Seattle, Oct. 13-15. For more, go to RWA´s site and check out their links to the chapter websites.
See you next week! Happy reading.
