Last month I had the privilege of attending the annual RWNZ conference—this year’s title being Love and Other Journeys—in Christchurch.

I was doubly excited about going as, although my dad was originally from Christchurch, I hadn’t been there for years. As well as attending the conference I spent a few extra days with my friend Gillian St. Kevern in Akaroa which is a couple of hours drive out of the city.

Last year when I attended my first conference, I hardly knew anyone. This year was spent catching up with friends. I volunteered for the role of contest coordinator just before last year’s conference, which has been, not only a learning curve, but a great way to meet people. A few of the winners came up to me and gave me a hug after the awards ceremony too which was lovely.

I also got to meet a few new friends, many of whose names I recognised from shelving their books at the library. I might have had a fangirl reaction when I met one or two of them. They were all very nice and welcoming. It was great to see bigger name authors mingling and attending workshops along with everyone else.

We also had a good sized rainbow writers’ contingent this year, many of whom were members of our online New Zealand Rainbow Romance Writers group. We had our own LGBTQ table at the awards dinner!

I spent a lot of the downtime between workshops hanging with friends, and chatting about writing. It’s so good to be able to talk in person to someone else who gets it. I don’t get to do that very often as my work hours mean I need to take leave to attend any local chapter meetings.

This was the first time the conference had been held in Christchurch and I was very impressed by the venue and the organisation of the conference itself. Our lanyards this year had room on the back to write our workshop details, and we could choose genre buttons to attach to it.

I must admit I was very excited about being able to grab a Scottish badge to celebrate Lou Sylvre and my upcoming The Harp and the Sea release next year.

The speakers were well worth listening to, and spoke about a range of topics. I found Melissa Storm’s talk about re-launching and reinvigorating your backlist very useful, as were her other talks, especially as it’s something I will be working on in the near future. Other highlights were workshops presented by Sophie Jordan, Laura Kaye, Natalie Anderson, and Soraya Lane. All the presenters were very knowledgeable and gave down to earth advice. They were also very approachable and friendly.

I was sad when the conference ended and am already looking forward to next year’s in Auckland. The theme for that one is ‘Get out of my dreams and into my book.’ Two of the already announced speakers already write paranormal and urban fantasy. I might need to do some reading research.

I’ll leave you with some Akaroa scenery. It’s a beautiful, tranquil, and the perfect place to write—in between exploring and getting steps in. I wrote a chapter and a short story over three days, despite wrangling with a tablet and keyboard and google docs crashing and taking 600 words of my manuscript with it.