First of all, I have to thank Cynthia N., Cindy C., Kim H., Melanie Anne, Riane H., and Mayas S. for sharing their photos with me on Facebook (since I was too busy to take my own!) It was a pleasure to meet all of you! Thanks to you, I have these great pictures to post on my blog.
I’ll try to remember everything that happened, but it was BUSY. When I arrived at the IRC in Tennessee, the first thing I did was have lunch with Kallypso Masters and her readers, as well as my #WriteBitches pals, Linzy Antoinette, Tasha L. Harrison, and Chhaya Delaine. After that we headed to the hotel to prepare for the BDSM Demo event that Kally coordinated with me and Red Phoenix. She invited some lifestyle friends of hers, ToyMaker and Eirocawakening, to show the attendees their kink gear and talk to us about the lifestyle.
It was so fun!! Ladies were volunteering to test out the toys and gear, and even get zapped with a violet wand. Best of all, I got to meet two really awesome people who were willing to share their private life with the world.
Here’s me and Red and Kally welcoming all the attendees.
Here’s me and Eirocawakening on the right, with Mayas Sanders on the left, who is a blogger with ReadingByTheBook.com, and a super fun, supportive reader. These pics are from her friend Kim who was awesome too!
Mayas, me, and Kim! These ladies were super smiley.
And here’s me, Red, and Kally again with our big smiles!!
That night we had a pizza party and heard a keynote speech from Victoria Danann. She was such a good speaker. I’ve never read her stuff before but now I might!
The next day I gave an hour-long class on writing BDSM Romance. I was afraid no one would come because it was at 8 in the morning but miraculously, I did have fifteen or so attendees, including Holly Roberts, who I was overjoyed to meet. We had been email and Facebook friends for a while and she was so sharp and so classy. I wish I had more pictures of the workshop because everyone was great but I think we were just all too tired. I did have this great picture of me and Riane. Thanks for sharing it, girl!
Later that day I participated in a panel called “Let’s Talk About Sex.” It was fun because it wasn’t just smutty writers like me. We also had inspirational writers, over-40 romance writers, young and new adult writers, etc. It was fun to see the different strategies we used to add romantic tension vs. hot sex into our books. There were tons of people there too, and that was fun. Here’s me with (from top left) Lori Brighton, Kallypso Masters, Donna McDonald (front row:) Angela Brown, Kym Grosso, and Hailee Bridgeman. Thanks to Melanie Anne for the pic!
A little while after that, we had the book signing. Book signings are quickly becoming my favorite part of these conferences, not because I’m mercenary and I only want to sell books, but because it’s so heartwarming when people come up and say, hey, I’m going to try your books out. And they smile and talk with you. It’s awesome! Or even better, someone comes up and grabs a book and says, this is my absolute favorite book by you and now I get to have a signed copy of it (Bethany :-)) Well, it’s just really cool. I have this photo courtesy of Cindy, and you can see me there in the far right all super happy talking to a reader. It was fun!
After the book signing things were winding down. Me and my writer group buds headed to the Mexican dinner and enjoyed sangria, margaritas, tacos, burritos, ceviche and other good stuff. Thanks for the picture, Kim!
Everyone had a great time at this con because it was really small and everyone there was super friendly and welcoming. I was so happy to be invited and hopefully I picked up a few new readers. Thanks for reading my Indie Romance Con report. 🙂
Great report! It was wonderful to meet you this weekend at the IRC. So sorry I wasn’t able to attend your workshop Saturday a.m. but thank you so very much for the print info! I so appreciate your writing advice since I’m a “newbie”. Hope to publish shortly after New Year’s! Keep doing what you’re doing! Great job!
Thanks Melanie Anne! It was great to meet you too!!
Annabel, it was so amazing to meet all of you and be able to help some who have only ever read about the “Things” in the books. We had so much fun. Thanks to everyone who volunteered, it helped make our demo even more successful than we imagined. I hope that everyone who attended was able to take something back with them.
I am so excited about all the books I have from you! But you totally know which I’m reading first!
Biggest Hugs!!!!!!
YAY!! Yes, I hope you really like them. It was so much fun to see everyone participating in your demo. XXOO Looking forward to seeing you around the interwebs. 🙂