Romance Writers' Conference

Hi everyone. I haven’t posted for a while — mainly because I’m still trying to work out how the new newsletter and blog forwarding system works. Mad Mimi who I’d been with for years closed down, and now it’s a whole new ball-game. But I’ll get there, eventually.

As well I’ve been in Adelaide (capital city of South Australia) for a romance writers’ conference.

The theme was “Trope Actually” and because the cocktail party that always kicks off the conference is a costume affair, people were dressing to tropes.

So there were all kinds of brides — runaway brides, jilted brides, even pregnant brides As well there were people dressed in western-style outfits,.

The pic on the right is of “a lost thong” (in Australia we call flip-flops thongs.) So clever — she’s looking for her sole-mate. Heh heh.

Below that is author Rachael Johns as a nun — I’m not quite sure how that’s a romance trope, but it looked good.  

And below that is a collection of some of the many brides at the cocktail party.

It’s always a great ice-breaker. Before we turned the cocktail party into a costume party, they were quite dull affairs, as often newbies were very shy, and there wasn’t much mixing.

Now everyone has a talking point — the costumes, and even though not everyone dresses up, it doesn’t matter at all. 

For the first time in years I didn’t make my costume — I ran out of time and in the week leading up to the conference I came down with a cold — the first one since before CoVid. So I just put on a western-style dress and my red cowboy boots that I’d bought in San Antonio, and wore a black vaguely cowboy-ish hat. See below.

On the Saturday and Sunday there are talks, workshops and panels.

I took a workshop on writing series, and a lovely workshop participant took several photos of me, for which I was very grateful. I usually forget to get a photo.

And below that is a pic a friend took of me giving a speech at the Saturday night dinner.

As usual I was pretty tired by the end of the conference.  It’s always the case — too many late nights sitting up with writer friends taking and catching up, too much stimulation to the brain — but I came away refreshed and inspired. And so pleased to have caught up with so many writing friends. I’ll leave you with a photo of some of the many brides at the conference.