Lynn Peters, Fantasy Author: July 2014

I'm going to give a review of RNC 2014 in the same fashion I give my associates their reviews at work. It's a sandwich review. Start with positives, move into opportunities and end with positives. Got it? Here we go.

The first thing I have to say is that once the classes got organized and going, they were great. I never took a "dud" class the whole time I was there and never heard a word from anyone about being unhappy about a class they took. NYT Bestselling author Angela Knight started me off with a wonderful class called Brainstorming to Revision and provided handouts for us furious note-takers. You'll discover I love handouts. I'm a visual person so handouts are stupendous. She also gave a class called Mild to Wild: Writing Love Scenes that Sizzle. I didn't get to that one but she had, you guessed it, handouts from it at her table at the book fair! I also took part in VS Nelson's sprinting class (twice, cause I love it so much and she had a chart), a class on using Scrivener by Livia Quinn and Cadence Denton (with a fabulous handout), a panel class called Indie Publishing 1,2,3...10. Guess what? Another hand out! Woot woot! That was done with Mary Harris, Fiona Jayde and TJ McKay. Indie Writing As A Business by Victoria Danann (no handout...lol). Fiona Jayde gave a class called The Rebel and the Trendsetter. Every one of them was filled with information and new ideas for handling all kinds of things in the Author World.

Now for the middle portion of our sandwich. The biggest area of opportunity for this event was organization! I will admit to being disappointed on that count. There were several indications going into this that the organization issues from last year had been fixed and I'm afraid to say that was not the case. That being said, there were MANY wonderful volunteers working frantically to get things going and keep them going. Many of them took some of the blame for the lack of organization and I will say freely, and all the authors I spoke to agree with me, that it was not their fault. They kicked a** and took names whenever they could and should be commended for their hard work. I have a special place for Taabia D. who, on that first day, answered every question my mom and I had when we were trying to get where we needed to be and when, amongst the confusion. The simple fact was that when it was boiled down to the nitty gritty, the organization was simply not there. There were many other issues but I won't go into those as none of them involved me directly and there are two sides to every story. However, it should be noted that it was not one person here or there with one issue or another, but many people with same issues repeatedly. There were quite a few other inconsistencies but I think you have a fairly good idea of what was up.

There was also the issue of our host being a ghost that flitted in and out of the scene and was usually more out than in. They were not even seen at the Welcoming Social until 2 hours after it started and there was no welcome or even mingling among the guests. I can say that in 5 days, I never spoke a word to him and saw him only after social events had started and always hanging with his intimates. I saw more texts being sent to him than I actually saw of him. This does not impress me in the slightest as it said on the front page of the website, that he would be completely available to attendees. Maybe you just had to be a specific attendee. I was also surprised to see the banner sitting at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the convention floor was not for the conference, but for the hosts personal website. That sat wrong with me as we were there for the conference, not for a webpage and a webpage was not going to draw people to the conference or book fair/signing. If I had been walking through the casino, I'd have stopped in curiosity at the idea of a book fair. Books? For sale? AND I can have them signed? And I can get a picture with the author? I'm so there!! I'm going to completely pass the website advertisement and wonder what the casino had it there for.

And the bottom bun of our sandwich. The socials. Aside from not starting on time (ever...sorry, I dipped back into the middle of the sandwich) they were a lot of fun once they got going. The music was fun, the dancing was great (I guess I should say watching the dancing was fun as I only danced a handful of times...still trying to come out of my introvert shell at these things...lol). The Welcoming Social was especially fun for me as, for the first time in my 35 years, I got to dance with a gentleman taller than myself. It was awesome! His name was Justin and he was one of the event Casanovas. He was four inches taller than myself and it was awesome having to look up to talk to him. Sharon Hamilton's Military Mash and Costume Ball was given in conjunction with the release of her new SEAL book, Seal of my Heart, and was a blast. It was so much fun to see everyone dressed in costume. The Rone' Awards presented by InD'Tale Magazine were wonderful. It wasn't perfect and had it's little glitches but to me, it fit us perfectly. We Indie author's are not perfect and break rules and convention all the time. It seems only right the awards for us should go the same way. TJ McKay and her staff did a fantastic job. And I was super excited to see my friend Suzan Tisdale win for her book Rowan's Lady. The Casanova Contest involved some very handsome gentlemen and I hear it went well. It was not exactly my thing, so I went downstairs and had a drinks with a couple friends before they flew home. Congrats to Weston who won the Casanova 2014 title. On a more personal note, I attended a publisher social and was casually asked about what I was writing. After an informal rundown, I was asked to submit to them! Major ego boost for me! I was grinning like a fool...LOL

And speaking of Suzan, I finally got to meet her (we've been friends online for a while). It was pretty funny because I was using my pen name for the first time so when I caught her attention, she looked at me kind of blankly until I gave her my real name. Then I got the girly squeal and monster hug. She is just as fabulous in person as I thought she would be. She is also very caring as she called me just to make sure my mom and I had not got caught up in one of the organization debacles going on. I was ridiculously excited to win the raffle for her basket and let me tell you...that woman knows how to build a raffle basket...lol. I got to see my friend Eryn again and enjoyed several random hugs from her. It was pretty thrilling for me to be recognized by Kathryn LeVeque and asked how it was going. Hey, I'm a newbie and anyone recognizing me makes me happy. I spent some time with the wonderful Halle B. and her husband Gregg, Amy J., Victoria V. and met two fun ladies by the names Livia Q. and Cadence D. They were silly excited that I was working my way to publication and more than willing to help and offer ideas. I met many new people and look forward to building those friendships in the coming months. I enjoyed the book fair a great deal (I had to make two runs to the hotel room to dump my goods...lol) and loved getting to chat briefly with everyone before they started leaving.

So. Overall, though I learned, laughed, sang, danced (a little), and talked (a lot), unless there were some major changes to the organization, I won't be attending next year. In something like this, while free time is welcome, it shouldn't be used waiting for things to start or people to get where they need to be. I personally feel that the host of something like this should at least say a few words to welcome the people that spent hard earned money to come to their conference. That being said, THANK YOU to everyone I met. You all had some kind of impact during those five days and 99.9% of it was good.