RomCon — Blog

I'm being a v. bad conference attendee and am holed up in my room...more on that in a moment. But without further ado, here's my brief recap of RomCon Day 1! 1) Teresa Medeiros is a great keynote speaker. She's warm, friendly, seems genuine, and knows how to move an audience. I cried at the end of her speech, and while I don't exactly have a heart made of stone, it's not super easy to get me to cry in public - so congrats (?) on that. She opened the conference with some remarks on why she writes romance, which she read in adverse circumstances since she'd set her room service tray on her reading glasses the night before! Luckily the hotel had some reading glasses in lost and found that they let her steal, so she was able to talk. And she ended with the story of how her father stuck by her mother (and her, when she was a baby) when her mom was diagnosed as bipolar many years ago, and how even though she now has dementia he still sees her as the beautiful girl he married - now do you see why I started to cry?

2) Readers rock my world. I participated in speed dating this afternoon, which meant that readers came around to my table and we had 90 seconds to talk about books (theoretically my books, although I also asked what they were reading, what they liked, etc.). It's pretty awesome to meet other avid romance readers and to see their energy and excitement for books - given the recent studies on how readers tend to develop more empathy than average people, it's no wonder that meeting other avid readers always makes me light up with hope and enthusiasm.

3) The Fudge Ladies vendor at this conference is DANGEROUS. I sampled some of her stuff and promptly bought three bags. I'll foist some of it off on the friend I'm staying with Sunday night as a gift, but I'm sure I won't resist gorging myself on the rest of it. If you're at RomCon or ever make it to Denver, definitely look for them!

4) Elizabeth Hoyt and Julia Quinn are both rockstars (obvi). I went to the hotel restaurant to have lunch and ran into my friend/fellow San Francisco RWA chapter mate Isobel Carr, who invited me to join her and her friend...who turned out to be none other than Elizabeth Hoyt, a fantabulous historical romance writer on whom I have a gigantic crush. I managed to subdue my inner fangirl squeeing, and getting to know her over lunch was lovely - she's funny and gracious in person, which is always nice to discover about one of your favorite authors.

And at the end of author speed dating, I got to spend ten minutes or so with Julia Quinn, which rocked my world since I've been a diehard fan ever since the Bridgertons (but then, who hasn't?). Oddly enough, I shared a garage with her sister last year, so we had a bit of a random connection. She's also smart and fun and totally down to earth, and very, very eager to meet readers - I'm really in awe of how she connects with people. So, meeting her and Elizabeth Hoyt were definitely my highlights for the day!

5) As for lowlights...I'm tens of thousands of words behind where I intended to be on Muses #3 (Ellie's story), since I took almost a month off in May due to some family medical issues. I'm also somewhat shy at conferences (which makes no sense to anyone, given how very not-shy I am with my friends), and so those factors combined into a perfect storm that made me decide to hang out in my room and write tonight. I didn't get as far along as I had hoped, but at least I made some progress.

Are any of you shy conference-goers? What do you do to overcome it? I'm totally fine in person (see: not making a fool of myself with the readers at the speed dating or JQ/Elizabeth Hoyt), but gearing up to walk out of my room is sometimes daunting. That feels vaguely like oversharing, but writers are a somewhat introverted bunch, so I don't think this revelation is all that shocking :)

More fun awaits tomorrow, including some Highland Games and something called the Chocolate Mangasm - stay tuned!

RomCon 2012 is a reader-focused romance convention held every year in Denver, and this is my first time attending (yay!). It doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, but I flew into Denver this morning to acclimate and hang out with my (very pregnant) best friend. I also ran into my beloved fellow 2011 Golden Heart finalist Maire Claremont (she won the historical category!) and her partner in crime Delilah Marvelle, who is hosting the Chocolate Mangasm party on Saturday - it’s supposed to be 100 degrees this weekend, so things could get messy. But I digress. Without further ado…Five-ish Thoughts on RomCon Day 0

1) Conference centers should maybe think about what events are booked at the same time. RomCon doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, and maybe this other event ends today, but right now there’s a bizarre overlap between the pre-RomCon events and a conference for Korean Christians. Our giveaway bags have all sorts of inappropriate things; their giveaway room has religious tracts in Korean. And while I was watching the cover model photo shoot (more on that below), the rousing sounds of piano hymns on their side came through the movable wall while the photographer on our side ordered people to take clothes off, flex abs, look fierce, etc. Awkwardest photo shoot ever!

2) Male cover models do a lot of push-ups. I watched one guy casually hold a girl in his arms for five or ten minutes (yum), take a break, and then start doing push-ups. Apparently on long shoots they have to do push-ups to keep the blood flowing so their arms are as defined as possible. I didn’t question the physics of this, since I was too busy enjoying the show, but the amount of work these models put into staying defined and photo-ready is incredible.

3) Cover models aren’t just defined - they’re dehydrated. One model walked into the shoot saying that he couldn’t wait to be done so he could drink water again. They cut back on fluids to be as lean and tight as possible. I heard a rumor from one of them that some of them do it by drinking alcohol the night before, but I think as you get older, drinking the night before is a recipe for a puffy face and a vertigo-inducing hangover. Er, not that I have any experience with that. Again, this job is not for the faint of heart.

4) People give you funny looks if your carry-on sized bag weighs 50lbs. I checked a roll-aboard sized bag filled with excerpt booklets to give out at RomCon, and it weighed in at 49.6lbs. It wasn’t overweight, but they tagged it ‘heavy’ anyway to warn the poor baggage handlers that this bag felt like a pile of rocks rather than clothes for an easy weekend getaway. By the way, if you want an excerpt booklet, find me at RomCon or RWA Nationals or email me your mailing address (mailto:dearsara@sararamsey.com) - we’ve got Regency excerpts from Sabrina Jeffries’s Christmas novella, as well as Darcy Burke, Leigh LaValle, Heather Snow, Erin Knightley, and Valerie Bowman.

5) San Francisco has made me weak. I grew up in Iowa, but now I can only tolerate a narrow band of temperatures between 55 and 70 degrees. If the excitement of hanging out with a bunch of romance readers and writers all weekend doesn’t kill me, the heat or the desiccating lack of humidity might. I’ll be the mummified body over by the bar.

That’s it for the unofficial day before RomCon! If I don’t pass out from dehydration or exhaustion (which is actually dehydration/exhaustion, not code for an overdose like the Hollywood starlets use), I’ll post a recap of Day 1 tomorrow!