Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

I am a romance writers’ conference virgin, or newbie. I’ve been a plenty of SF conventions but have not put a toe on the romance side. What an experience it has been so far, even though the actual conference doesn’t start until tomorrow. There have been a number of pre-conference events. I’ll say one thing these romance writers are organised.

I arrived on Thursday afternoon to the QT hotel in the Gold Coast. I missed out on the convention room booking, but ended up with a really cool deal through my Rydges Priority Awards. We have a fantastic room on the 20^th floor, with 180 degree views from the ocean across Surfers Paradise and the canals up to the mountains. The weather is fantastic and warm.

Here is a shot of the canals and mountains.

View of the canals with the mountains in the distance.

The romance writers provided an informal ice breaker event last night for the newbies to the romance writers’ conference. It was great to meet people and talk writing. I felt my head expanding as people talked of what they were writing with such terms as romantic suspense or romance crime or romantic comedy. It is bit daunting to know there are around 300 writers here. Also, the ones I met and observed are open, welcoming and articulate. Most of them appear to know what they want and what they are doing. It is also daunting that I only know a handful of people here compared to SF cons where I usually know most people by sight.

Here is a shot of the contents of my goodie bag.

Contents of my Diamonds are Forever goodie bag.

Straight after the icebreaker where I met a range of interesting writers, including a whole bunch from Adelaide, I headed with Nicole into the Penguin event, which was champagne and rather a lot of food. Again I met some interesting people who introduced themselves, inquired where I was from and what I wrote. Then the launch of the Destiny imprint came along with readings etc and still more food coming out. Nicole and I had a free dinner booked at the restaurant so we were trying to say no. After the launch a lady came around enquiring whether we wanted to pitch our novels to Carole George, from Destiny. When I was listening to the readings and also from conversations around me I realised that I could pitch one of my novels, because it had a strong romantic line. So I signed up for a pitch and so did Nicole. As I had been working on a paranormal romance, I didn’t think I’d pitch anything at all, but the lights went on in my head. Yes, that story of mine is also a romance.

We also caught up with Peter Ball who is organising Genrecon in Sydney in November. We had a very interesting conversation-idea creating conversation. Oh dear. I don’t need any more ideas.

We had a fantastic buffet dinner, where we controlled ourselves mostly. Nicole didn’t eat dessert but I indulged. We retired pretty early after talking and reading a bit. I was out like a light apparently.

This morning we went to the beach and had a walk. Nicole put her toes in the water. Her camera died and I forgot my phone. It was lovely. The ocean was a deep green blue and looked so clean. I’m afraid we brought a lot of sand back with us. I didn’t realise it was in my pockets until I lay on my bed. I have sand in my sheets. Eww! We also scored breakfasts with our room booking so we are now completely stuffed with awesome breakfast goodness, which probably isn’t good for us.

Here is a photo of me and Nicole at the beach this morning.

Me at the beach this morning.

Nicole at the beach

So this morning we’ve been sitting here in our hotel room working on our pitches, which is hard work. I’m meant to be writing now that I’m done but I find I’m rather fidgety until I get that pitch over and done with. I’ve not done one of those either. I did a workshop on pitching once but that was yonks ago.

So my star rating for this conference so far is 5 stars. Tonight is a cocktail party, with a 50s movie star theme. I hope to get shots of me in my dress.