A friend who's a published romance writer and had to be there asked if I'd like to tag along. Sure, why not? I had nothing better to do, LOL.
Surreal. That's the word I use to describe being around romance writers and their fans. We got to have dinner with the romance models, and one of them was at our table. Fabio was there, but I didn't get to talk to him. Anyway, every time I'd see our hunky dinner companion after that, he would ask me to laugh, because he claimed I had the best one, ever. Okay, whatever, mate.
The convention was very--very--white. This was over 20 years ago, though, so maybe the genre was different then. Not that there weren't a few brown faces around, because there were. We had a lovely conversation with one of the black writers after we had one of those elevator rides from hell that took forever because it had to stop on every single floor, and of course there was the crush to get off and the crush to get on and then--wait please. I regret to say I read some of her books back then, but I didn't keep up with her career , so I don't know if she's still around...
What I most enjoyed about the convention was that the book fair attached to it had tons of free books handed out, and not simply from romance writers. I came home with more fantasy books than anything. Surprised? Don't be. At that time, the publishing industry was making a tremendous push with female fantasy writers, to tap into the market of women readers--who are always the lion's share of book buyers thanks to the romance industry. In fact, romance is often a publisher's secret bread-and-butter that pretty much supports all of the hoity-toity literary authors.
So I got freebies of writers who were about to become tremendous successes. One of them was Sara Davidson (RIP--ovarian cancer sucks), who would have a bestselling series starting with the book I got at the convention.
I did have fun at the convention, even though I'm not a fan of the romance genre, per se. I will read it sometimes, as long as the heroine isn't an implausible virgin or gormless git, and the sex scene aren't too graphic or frequent, because the genre can be a pleasant escape for a few hours when the world gets to be too much.
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