RWA Here We Come
ConventionsConventions / RITA23 Comments
Today I leave for Dallas for the RWA National Convention, toga optional. At Blogging National, there are 150+ blogs listed and nearly all of them, as far as I can tell, are author blogs. This makes complete sense because “Nationals”, as it is called, is a writer’s convention. So why am I going with three other readers/bloggers (Sybil, Kristie J and Wendy)?
I hope to meet with readers, authors, agents, editors to find out what direction they think that the romance genre is headed. Is it dying, growing, waxing or waning? What are the hot genres? What’s the next big thing? What will we be glad to see the death of? I plan to blog each day, several times a day about RWA but not everyone may be interested so there will be a special webpage that you can read that will contain all the posts of my 2007 RWA experience.
I understand that there is alot of schwag at this conference and at the advice of Wendy, the Superlibrarian, I have an empty box packed in my suitcase. I am also bringing a few books to have authors sign. But for the readers back home, I’ve got schwag for you now.
Kresley Cole, a RITA nominated author in the paranormal category, sent me ten (10!) author signed copies of her RITA nominated book, A Hunger Like No Other.
Plus, we had the Harlequin offering.
And the Dorchester offering:
and Jill Shalvis, Roxanne St. Claire, Christine Rimmer, Jo Leigh Avon, Bantam, Del Rey, and Warner are all giving up free books for the winner of our RITA contest.
The deal here, if you don’t know it, is that there is an award given by authors to authors for what is considered “best” in the industry. Barbara Samuel sent out a plea for readers to pay more attention to the RITAs. Unfortunately, for authors, readers have no investment in this award. Dear Author has hosted the 2007 Reader Rita Contest in hopes of creating more reader interest. For anyone who reads, we have invited you to fill out a ballot of who you think the RITA winners will be for 2007. We’ll run the RITA contest until Saturday and I’ll pick twenty random entrants to win one of Kresley Cole’s book or one of the Dorchester books. The ballot that most closely matches the actual winners announced on Saturday night will win a box/bag of RITA winning books. An entire collection. Of 12 books. Rated the best by their peers. So, go fill out the ballot.
I’m interested in what you readers would like to know about the conference and what authors you would like to meet. What book you would get signed if you could. What you would you want to do if you went.
HAVE FUN and I look forward to your daily reports!
Hope you have a wonderful time! I’ll be reading your reports…
Have fun….what I would like to know…everything!!!!! I would loved to meet Julie Anne Long, Sylvia Day, Cat Johnson…oh heck all of my favs. I would like to get one of my Lori Foster books autographed..the one I paid $18.00 for because it was out of print when I brought on Amazon.com. Or one of those hard to find books by Nicole Jordan and Lisa Kleypas that I paid on arm and an leg for.
Looking forward to your reports…I can’t wait to see how bad I was in picking the winners of your contest!!!!!!!!!
Have a safe trip! It sounds like it will be a ton of fun, and I look forward to the updates :)
I’m just jealous of everyone who gets their hands on Sherry Thomas’ book.
I second Danielle, I’d like to know everything! I would love to meet so many authors. Julie Garwood, Kay Hooper, Sabrina Jeffries, Karen Hawkins. To many to name. If I could get anything signed it would have to be something by Julie Garwood or Kay Hooper I think. Have fun!!
Have a wonderful time. I would be interested in everything there. All the authors you meet and just the entire lovely, busy fun.
Hi, Jane.
I’m flying off to the conference this afternoon. I find it to be an overwhelming and amazingly interesting experience. The literacy reading is the thing that always blows me away–so many readers, so many authors, so many darn books.
If you are strolling down the aisles, and land in “I” (there are only about three of us), please say hi.
Travel safe.
Jessica Inclan
I live in the Dallas area and the one week I have to travel for Toronto for business is the week that RWA is in Dallas. I would have loved to have my books signed by Shana Abe, Eloisa James, JR Ward, and the list goes on and on.
Enjoy the conference and I look forward to reading your reports.
– Beth
Looking forward to your reader reports! Have fun, take lots of pics! :)
jude
Blogging National
I hope you have a blast, Jane. We’ll be living this vicariously through you, so tell everything!
Ditto on what Janine said. I assume that the link to the website you posted will work when you get there (now it just brings me back to the top part of the current post). Can’t wait for the running commentary!
Have a great time! :)
Like Angela, I’d want to get a signed copy of the arc of Sherry Thomas’s book Private Arrangements.
Have fun! I’d like to go just for the books–any and all of them. Years ago I went to a regional writing conference, my very first, and went into the huge signing room. I thought all the books were free (with conf. fee) and so I started stocking up! Ouch!!!
Have fun! I’ll be following your blog reports.
missing you already! :P
I’m looking forward to your reports! There may be quite a bit of buzz tomorrow (Wednesday) about the PAN and publisher recognition announcement.
Have fun! I’m looking forward to hearing about it!
Sherry will be at the RWA signing with something like a hundred ARCs, so if you or someone you know is going, maybe they could snag you a copy.
Wht does “ATSNBN” stand for, on the base of the trophy cartoon?
Gwen, ATSNBN stands for “Award That Shall Not Be Named.” When we first started our RITA contest, we put up a photo of the RITA statuette, but then the RWA requested that we take it off the site. So Jane had Ned draw a new statuette while we toyed with ideas of what to name our contest. We got our HEA when RWA generously said we could still use the RITA name, just not the image of the statuette. The acronym at the base of Ned’s drawing is just a holdover from those days.
I caught up to this a few days late, but still wanted to share.
I want to know everything about the conference.
I would love ot meet Nora Roberts, Marjorie M Liu, Gemma Halliday, Jeaniene Frost, Rachel Vincent and so many more.
I would be the crazed fan dragging the suitcase of books behind her to be signed. It’s sick in a good sort of way.