When I first heard RWA was having their conference in Dallas this year I thought I ‘might’ go. I know it is a writers conference and not about the ‘reader’ but I thought it would be a great chance to meet up with the authors who have guest blogged on TGTBTU.

It would be a chance to meet with some of the editors and publicists I deal with on a weekly to monthly basis. I could learn more about what the publishers would be bringing us in the upcoming year and get a chance to find more authors I MUST READ.

As I tend to do, I went back and forth with the idea. I was going. I wasn’t going. I was going for a few days and would stay with a friend (one who I realized when I got HOME I hadn’t even called while in Dallas and is prolly now not talking to me). Back and forth I went until a few things happened….

1. Jane of Dear Author decided to go, how could I pass up one of my favorite people being in Texas.

2. Romantic Advances finally grew from an idea to a real live site.

3. Barbara Samuel’s posted about why readers needed to care about the RITA’s.

4. The Good, The Bad and The Unread could gain a few things from the experience and hopefully other readers could too.

5. I could put some faces to names and chat up the books, genre’s and authors I love with publisher peeps I email with often.

Along the way the stars aligned to where KristieJ and Wendy could join us, which was awesome. Anything to help libraries become more aware of Romance is a good thing I think and after the year KristieJ has had it was amazing that she got to go. And lets face it this is expensive so the four way split worked out well. Since we each had (mostly) different goals to take away from the conference, our schedules made it pretty easy. Much more than you would think with four women in one room.

As I am sure you have seen by now, Jane twittered her heart out on Dear Author, updated most nights and live blogged the RITAs. I think Jane’s Iphone was the most fondled object in Dallas last week. If you have missed anything, you can find her posts here.

KristieJ joined us after I saw a post on her blog saying her vacation had to be canceled. I said come to texas, meaning San Antonio but it worked out that Dallas was possible. I can’t begin to tell you all how proud our lil group is of kristiej. You can find her posts on her blog here.

I can’t think of a person who doesn’t know The Super Librarian aka Wendy aka my western bud (I told every editor, publicist and author I saw to write a western. Ok not every author but still…). She joined the posse when she mentioned she was thinking about going to the Librarian Day. Dude she buys for 34 libraries in CA. It was our duty to talk her into coming. And man talk about arm twisting *g*.

I will be doing a recap you can find the series here. And I will be putting up posts on random authors I met, so you can meet them too. Plus there are a slew of reviews and three guest author days in July. So there are going to be a ton of posts here. Sorry, I know that annoys some people. I thought about combo’ing the authors but I didn’t want to. So even though the conference is over, expect posts here for a bit.