Romantic Times Booklovers Convention & Other Ramblings...

Like many people, I’m spending today scrambling to get ready for the Romantic Times Booklover’s Convention in Pittsburgh. It’s one of my favorite conferences, and that’s saying a lot since I just returned from my other favorite conference—the local Desert Dreams conference in Chandler, Arizona, last weekend. Desert Dreams is a terrific conference with less than 300 attendees, great workshops, intimate access to editors, agents and other authors and the beautiful April weather of Arizona. :) The fact that I don’t have to buy a plane ticket to get there and that it’s held by one of my local chapters only improves its appeal.

But now that Desert Dreams is over for 2008, it’s on to RT, which also happens to contain my biggest author promotion push of the year.

Don’t get me wrong, I promote year round, but at RT, I’m speaking on one of the Paranormal panels called “Lighting the Sacred Files: Turning Up The Heat in Paranormal Romance,” I’m speaking with my critique group in a talk called, “Critique Groups: The Good, The Bad & The Butterscotch Martini Girls”, (which we did at Desert Dreams also) and I’m on the Faery Court, which hosts the Faery Ball on Thursday night—complete with dinner, a costume contest and our book covers flashing on the big screens all night :) I’ll also have plenty of my Cassie Ryan bookmarks (since I’m attending the convention as my alter ego, Cassie Ryan), as well as my hot pink “Got Seduction?” buttons, (which were a big hit at Desert Dreams along with the black and hot pink lanyards provided by the Butterscotch Martini Girls.) :)

My other favorite part about RT, besides getting to see all my friends who don’t live close, is that I get to meet so many readers, and sit and chat with them. A lot of writers are introverts and pretty shy—I don’t think I got either of those genes, so I absolutely love getting to meet new people and hearing from the readers what they love to read and what they don’t love to read. After all, I was a reader long before I was a published author, so either way we definitely share a love of books! So, if you’re at RT and you see a woman with a Cassie Ryan name tag walking around, come on over and say hi!

If you’re heading to Pittsburgh, too, I’ll meet you in the “networking area”—aka the bar. :)

If you’re not, then I plan on taking plenty of pictures while I’m there! So watch for them when I get back.

By some ironic twist of fate, my plane leaves at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow morning and I have to be at the airport somewhere in the 3am range—EWWWWW!

Why, you may ask, am I whining about this when I obviously booked my own flight? Well, when I booked it using frequent flyer miles, it wasn’t quite that early, but it was still plenty early as the fine print for redemption indicated it needed to be unless I wanted to get in uber-late. Then about a month later, I got one of those “friendly” emails advising that my flight had been rescheduled. Not just me—the entire flight, but OMG!! I’m usually not even awake at that time, let alone coherent during any of that time frame, and they expect me to not only get dressed and make sure my underwear is under my clothes and not over, but also get my luggage together and find my way to the airport, then the correct terminal and onto the right plane?

ACK!

I’m just hoping I actually end up where I’m supposed to rather than stepping off the plane after a nap and realizing I’m on the opposite side of the planet. (Although I totally wouldn’t complain if it was somewhere like Ireland or Scotland!)

Anyway, I have to get back to packing. I hope everyone has a great week!

Cassie/Tina