If you’d like to share your thoughts on the conference, please take our survey - there’s one for authors and one for readers.  (Most of the questions are the same in both surveys.)

If you’re an author, please use this survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=MpjM_2f114dswN0sRNG8ShNw_3d_3d

If you’re a reader, please use this survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WI2zEczrLYSsPoEFwjBpAQ_3d_3d
 

Hope you have fun,

Karen

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!

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.

 Send them to:

Celebrate Romance

c/o Wendy Etherington

106 Gallantry Drive

Irmo, SC  29063

 We appreciate any items you want to send us for our goody bags.

Leanne

We’ve just had some new authors sign up which is really exciting.

So far we have:

• Sabrina Jeffries
• Stephanie Bond
• Jacquie D’Alessandro
• Cathy Maxwell
• Vicki Lewis Thompson
• Karen Hawkins
• Cindy Holby
• Linnea Sinclair
• Jade Lee
• Elizabeth Hoyt
• Rosemary Laurey
• JC Wilder
• Isabo Kelly
• Julia Talbot
• BA Tortuga
• Jenna Black
• Beth Williamson
• Teresa D’Amario
• Jennifer St. Giles

The authors range from contemporary to futuristic, gothic to historical, vampires to dragons, and just about everything in between. I’m really excited for the opportunity to meet the new authors to CR and welcome back those who have attended in the past.

Please encourage your friends and family to come and join us. We need more readers!!!!

Looking forward to another year of fun,

Leanne

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!