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So, I went to the high tea in Sydney with Sarah Wendall of STBT fame.
And it was awesome!
There were around 30 of us, we were all ages and types and kinds and interests and it was a lovely high tea! Sarah was a great conversationalist, used the word "awesome" a lot, and she brought a bag full of ARC copies to hand out, and is planning to take back a bag full of Tim Tams. :)
She's actually here for Genre Con this coming weekend, but figured she'd spend a little more time in the city instead of just coming, turning up, and going. As a result, she's missing both Halloween and the hurricane that's due to hit her area. (Her kids and her hubs aren't happy!)
I had a ball of a time!
It's so wonderful to have conversations with people who love books and are willing to discuss them. And Romance readers (I find) do meta thoughts wonderfully - probably because there's such a disdain of the Romance genre out in the rest of the world, so those who enjoy it and want to argue why it shouldn't just be dismissed as "stories for women" have a much greater depth of knowledge of stories, the way they're told, the internal id of reading and writing, and the building-blocks which make up a story.
Along the way we discussed fanfic, Fifty Shades Of Grey (really, you can't avoid that book in anything even vaguely romance-dicussion based anymore), Australia, America, politics, accents, authors we love, and so much more.
I have cards for the Australian Romance Readers Association, which apparently has discussions about this kind of thing all the time (and I need more discussion groups like I need a hole in the head, really), and Thingo Books (I think it's a bookstore, at the least, it's a blog), as well as several recs for romance, a romantic suspense novel (I sat next to the author at the tea), and a rec for romance/fantasy involving 'shifters' in Australia.
All in all great afternoon, and I had the hardest time pulling myself away to head off to church!
And it was awesome!
There were around 30 of us, we were all ages and types and kinds and interests and it was a lovely high tea! Sarah was a great conversationalist, used the word "awesome" a lot, and she brought a bag full of ARC copies to hand out, and is planning to take back a bag full of Tim Tams. :)
She's actually here for Genre Con this coming weekend, but figured she'd spend a little more time in the city instead of just coming, turning up, and going. As a result, she's missing both Halloween and the hurricane that's due to hit her area. (Her kids and her hubs aren't happy!)
I had a ball of a time!
It's so wonderful to have conversations with people who love books and are willing to discuss them. And Romance readers (I find) do meta thoughts wonderfully - probably because there's such a disdain of the Romance genre out in the rest of the world, so those who enjoy it and want to argue why it shouldn't just be dismissed as "stories for women" have a much greater depth of knowledge of stories, the way they're told, the internal id of reading and writing, and the building-blocks which make up a story.
Along the way we discussed fanfic, Fifty Shades Of Grey (really, you can't avoid that book in anything even vaguely romance-dicussion based anymore), Australia, America, politics, accents, authors we love, and so much more.
I have cards for the Australian Romance Readers Association, which apparently has discussions about this kind of thing all the time (and I need more discussion groups like I need a hole in the head, really), and Thingo Books (I think it's a bookstore, at the least, it's a blog), as well as several recs for romance, a romantic suspense novel (I sat next to the author at the tea), and a rec for romance/fantasy involving 'shifters' in Australia.
All in all great afternoon, and I had the hardest time pulling myself away to head off to church!
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