Sunday Salon: Romantic Times Convention

I've been home from the Romantic Times Convention in New Orleans for a week now and life has gone back to being as busy as ever. I brought scads of books home with me and have yet to sit down and read a single one.  Story of my life!  But I have been reflecting on the event, what I learned there, and the insights it gave me into myself.

I went to the convention with two friends and we sometimes stayed together for discussions and sometimes split up depending on our interests. In looking back, I find I went to a surprising amount of panels on erotica. And honestly, I'm not a huge erotica fan; I don't see the appeal of BDSM and unless I'm missing something, that seems to be the major focus of the sub-genre right now. My friends and I mostly went to sessions where authors spoke rather than crafting or interactive sessions. We did go to Cover Model Karaoke and spent a lot of time laughing. The session I enjoyed the most though, was the session on creating a cover where we got the perspective of an author, a photographer, and a cover model. Color me nerdy but the mechanics of all of it really appealed. There was a huge book fair (sale and signing) event and while I spent my fair share of money there and did have the books signed, I discovered that I truly don't care about meeting the authors or having them sign my books. I am content to know and appreciate them through the pages of their works so that I don't have to make small talk with them, something I am dreadfully bad at doing. One of my favorite parts of the whole weekend was probably meeting up with a local friend and hopping around to three different independent bookstores with her, where I also spend more than my share of money. One credit card company, forgetting my bookstore weakness, even shut my card off after only a few transactions, worried about fraud. Good thing I had a second one. ;-)

Between the three of us, my friends and I had to buy a whole new piece of luggage to bring all our books home. We loaded it up at the hotel and then had to unpack and repack carry-ons and the checked bag as well at the airport when the latter tipped the scale at 64 lbs. Whoops! It took us three re-adjustments to get us under the 50 lb. mark and left our carry-on luggage extremely heavy. Both my friends ended up checking their carry-ons but me, being my usual cheapskate self, did not. I was the big winner for the day though as the flight was full and they offered to gate check bags for free so I didn't have to heft my now almost 50 lb. carry-on into an overhead bin either.   Now I'm home and still trying to figure out where all to stash the new books. And in two weeks I head to Detroit for another bookish event: the Women's National Book Association National Board Meeting. I'll have to pack a little lighter as I'm hoping to visit an independent bookstore or two up there as well. Maybe this time my credit card will cooperate. And if not, I still have a second one!

P.S. For all those of you who are wondering, the two biggest takeaways from the weekend are that "Lizards don't build space ships" and there are books for everyone out there (Tyrannosaurus Sex anyone?).