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The sad news… CR is over for another year. But there is good news - we’ve already started planning Celebrate Romance 2009! We’re still working out the details, but we are looking at several cities in the West and Northwest, and dates in March. (It may be a bit chilly, but CR is always hot…)

If you want to keep up on all the latest CR news, please sign up for our newsletter. You’ll be the first to hear about next year’s plans.  Of course, it will be announced here as well.  See you in 2009!

Karen

I just sent out a newsletter with some more information about the hotel. Even though it’s early, we’ve already had questions about hotel registration!

I think Leanne picked a fabulous hotel this year! The Inn at USC is a small hotel that was originally built in 1912 as a family home, and it’s located immediately adjacent to the University of South Carolina campus. That means there are a lot of restaurants and shops near the hotel. (I counted over 100 restaurants within 1 mile of the hotel!) We’re also close to some of the local attractions, including Finlay park and the Columbia Museum of Art.

The hotel itself has a lot of great amenities. The rooms have complimentary wi-fi service, as well as pillow top beds and refrigerators. Attendees will be eating breakfast with our group, but if you have family staying at the hotel with you, they’ll also receive a complimentary breakfast. And the hotel has a fitness center, lounge and library, as well as free parking.

ROOM RATE

Our room rate this year is $125 per night. This is for a double room, either with two double beds or a king size bed. If you want to go ahead and make a reservation, please call the hotel at 866-697-8849 and tell the hotel that you are part of the Celebrate Romance group. It’s very important that you make your reservation through our group, because we need to fill a certain number of rooms to fulfill our contract with the hotel. You can find out more about the hotel at their web site, but please call to make your reservation, rather than booking online. (I’ll post this information again when we get closer to the conference date.)

If you have any problems making reservations, please email Leanne at ldavis9@ix.netcom.com and let her know. We should be in the system, but sometimes it takes a reminder from Leanne to get things going.

The Wikipedia page for Columbia includes a lot of interesting information, and there’s also a MySpace page for Columbia visitors. There’s a great site on historical buildings in Columbia that you might also be interested in. There’s lots to do!

ROOMMATES

If you are interested in finding a roommate, please email me at karen@crspring.com and I’ll add you to the roommate list. I’ll match people up a few weeks before the conference.

See you in a few months!

In case you missed this week’s newsletter, here are some of the highlights:

TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

CR is such a great conference – I was a fan and attendee for many years before I started helping out, and every year I have a great time.  I think you all know how special CR is!  But we need your help to spread the word, especially to readers.  A lot of authors learn about CR through their writing groups or from other authors, but it’s harder for us to reach readers, since there are so many web sites, blogs and message boards out there these days (not to mention those readers who aren’t online.)  We will be publicizing CR on some of the romance web sites, but we need you to help!

If you are an author, please try to mention us on your web site, blog or mailing list.  If you are attending CR, your fans want to know!!!  If you’re a reader (or an author) and you participate in a romance blog or message board, please mention CR!  If you live within driving distance of CR, and you know a great romance-friendly bookstore, library or reading group, please drop me an email and let me know.  We will be sending out flyers in a few weeks and want to make sure they reach all the great bookstores in the area.

I know there are a lot of readers out there who would love to attend CR, but just don’t know about it yet.  I first heard about CR from another reader, and I’ll bet many of you did too. Spread the joy!

REGISTRATION

Registration is already open, and we have some great people signed up already!  I’ve gotten a few questions about the registration fee, so I thought I’d let you know what your registration fee covers.  Everyone (both authors and readers) pays the same registration fee, which is $150 this year.  (We also have day rates if you can’t come for the whole conference.)  The fee covers all the events at CR except for dinner Saturday night (when we usually go out to local restaurants).  It includes dinner on Friday, breakfast and lunch on Saturday, and breakfast on Sunday.  It also covers the other conference costs, like renting the meeting rooms and service from the hotel.  CR is run by volunteers, so all of your conference fee goes to covering our costs.

The meals are going to be great this year – one reason we picked this hotel is because it had such delicious menu offerings!

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

Some of our authors are really on their toes!  They have already registered for the conference – aren’t they great?  A big round of applause for our early sign-up authors:

Our two keynote speakers, Sabrina Jeffries and Stephanie Bond

Karen Hawkins
Cindy Holby
Elizabeth Hoyt
Isabo Kelly
Rosemary Laurey / Madeleine Oh
Jade Lee / Kathy Greyle
Linnea Sinclair
Julia Talbot
Vicki Lewis Thompson
BA Tortuga
J.C. Wilder
If you have questions or comments, please email me any time, at karen@crspring.com

I have great news! Ever since March, we have been working on finding a way to continue Celebrate Romance for another year. We had such a great time in Kansas City, we just couldn’t let CR die. And thanks to Leanne and the other CR volunteers, we’ve been able to make arrangements for CR 2008.

Next year’s CR will be held in Columbia, South Carolina, from Friday February 29th to Sunday March 2nd. We looked at several other dates, but we ran into conflicts with other events in the area, as well as other romance events. But March in Columbia should be much warmer than it was last year (no snow!)

We looked at several cities in the Southeast, but settled on Columbia because we found a great hotel, the Inn at USC, which is a small hotel near the University of South Carolina. It combines the best of both worlds - it’s small enough to give us individual attention, it’s not too expensive, they have great meeting rooms, and it’s located in the downtown area near lots of shops and restaurants. And they have great food! I need to double check the rates with Leanne, but if I remember correctly, we have a room rate that’s similar to last year’s cost.

We already have two fabulous keynote authors signed up - Sabrina Jeffries and Stephanie Bond. We’re thrilled to have such great authors already! And we’ll have many more authors signing up in the months ahead, so stay tuned! If you are an author and want to find out more, you can email Cybil at csolyn@gmail.com and she’ll give you all the details.

It’s very important that next year’s CR is a success. If CR is going to continue to thrive, we need to find new ways to bring in new attendees, especially readers. We love our authors, but we need more readers to go with them! We’ve been brainstorming to come up with new ways to publicize CR and spread the word about how much fun we have every year, but we need your help. If you have ideas, please send me an email - I’d love to hear from you! karen@crspring.com

The web site will be updated once we have more specific details. (Be sure to sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already.) See you in Columbia in 2008!

Karen

As many of you have noted, there has been a marked increase in discussion on the lists lately. Cybil, Karen, and I have been working very hard behind the scenes to get things moving.

I toured the hotel last week. The Sheraton has just redecorated all the suites. They are very nice. Each has a small refrigerator, microwave and a pull out couch. There are some connecting suites. Instead of using the website to register, you will need to call the hotel directly to book them. It could make for some fun.

The meeting rooms are divided between the lobby and the third floor so we shouldn’t be able to create too much noise.

We especially want to thank Nils for all his hard work on the website.

Have a great week, everyone.

Leanne