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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.

Thanks to Wendy Etherington we have a mailing address for mail and packages.

 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

Celebrate Romance is just under 2 months away. It’s a time when the committee has to really kick into gear to make sure plans are progressing so that it all appears flawless at CR. Yeah, right!

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 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!

As authors you want as many of your fans, and potential new fans, to attend CR. We do our best to get the word out, but as attending authors you have far more power. This is how you can help us help you…

1) Add one of the CR banners (scroll down to find them, this is so simple all the code is there!) to your website, blog, or newsletter.

2) Print out CR flier in word format or pdf format, and pass them out wherever you go. Leave them at your local book stores. Stick them in all your shelved books at those book stores. Flier can be found at crspring.com

3) Be sure to include us in your newsletters and blogs. ALL OF THEM. Telling everyone you are attending and that they should come.

4) Spread the word anyway you can. Authors tend to talk to authors which is great. We love getting authors, but the fans are what this event is about so be sure to tell them to come too!

If you need any help contact csolyn@rakehell.com :)