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CR Spring Blog

Events Schedule 2008

FRIDAY
5:30pm: Registration opens

7:00pm: Dinner and meet and greet hosted by Jade Lee & Elizabeth Hoyt

SATURDAY
9:00AM: Stephanie Bond, “New Genres & New Settings: How Dead Bodies lead to Romance”

9:20AM: Jenna Black, “Demons, They’re not just evil anymore: How Urban Fantasy is taking romance by storm”

9:40AM: Linnea Sinclair, “Science Fiction: Finding a Future in Romance Reader’s Hearts.”

15MIN BREAK

10:15 DISCUSSION GROUP TALKS BEGIN

GROUP 1 (40min)
Rosemary Laurey, Viki Lewis Thompson, Cindy Holby
“Nerds, Mythical Beasts, and Betas: The New Unconventional Hero”
A discussion on how romance characters are changing with new hero
types, and role reversals of hero and heroine. Do we like it?

GROUP 2 (40min)
Linnea Sinclair, Jenna Black, & BA Tortuga
“Blurring of Genres: The Good, The Bad, and the Just Too Weird”
A discussion of what we all think about new genres, new romance rules,
and what’s in the market.

12PM-1:30PM LUNCH

1:30PM FINAL DISCUSSION PANEL
Isabo Kelly, Linnea Sinclair, Julia Talbot
“Bringing it all together: Unconventional tales and the Changing Face of Romantic Fiction.”

2:30PM FREE TIME, ABT, Off site Book signing, etc

SUNDAY
9:00AM Sabrina Jeffries, “The Tale of My Addiction to Romances”

9:20AM Sara Reyes, “Starting a Book Club”

9:40AM Isabo Kelly, “Beings of Myth, Legend, and Fantasy”

10:00AM Book Signing and Raffle

12:00PM Good Bye!

Hotel Deadline and Other Updates

HOTEL DEADLINE

Our room block was released by the hotel as of Saturday. This means we can no longer guarantee rooms at the Inn for conference attendees. However, the hotel will continue to honor our rate, as long as they have rooms available. That means you can still reserve a room at our $125 per night rate, but if the hotel gets booked up, you may be out of luck. Even though this is an “off season” weekend, it’s a small hotel, so they could run out of rooms.

So, if you want a room, please, please, please, go ahead and reserve one now. As of Friday, there were rooms available. You never know what might happen - there are always events going on in Columbia, and the hotel could end up being fully booked. We don’t want you to be homeless!

The Inn’s phone number is 1-866-455-4753 - I think I put the wrong phone number in a previous newsletter.

SATURDAY NIGHT BOOK PARTY

We are trying something new this year - a Saturday Night book party and signing. This is an opportunity for our authors to sign books for local readers - we will still be having our own, private signing on Sunday morning. But it’s going to be a fun party for everyone, so readers are welcome to come along! It’s going to be held at Books A Million on Saturday evening, from 5:30 until 7:30 or so. We’re planning to head out to dinner afterwards. We should have plenty of cars to transport people from the hotel to the bookstore.

This is not an “official” part of CR - Saturday night has traditionally been a free night when people can go out and do whatever they’d like. There are lots of fun things to do in Columbia (more on that in a future newsletter!) But if you want to come along and party with the authors, please join us!

And if you know anyone in the Columbia area who isn’t able to attend CR, but would be interested in a book signing, please let them know about our fabulous book party - email me if you want to know more about the specifics.

The bookstore address is:

Books a Million #278
275 Harbison Boulevard
Columbia, SC 29212
803-749-9378

BOOK TRADE

The advanced book trade is in full swing - we’ve already had over 100 books requested and more than 80 of them have been found! If you want to join in, please send me an email.