By Tara Cremin

The fourth annual Romancing the Capital conference took place in Ottawa on August 2-4^th. The conference is the brainchild of New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Eve Langlais. After attending a lot of conferences in the States, Eve decided it was time that Canada had an event of its own, and Romancing the Capital was born!

This romance author and reader conference is 3 days of fun, laughter, food and swag. RTC 2018 began with workshops on day one. Authors had the opportunity to learn how to up their social media game, attend writing seminars, and listen to yours truly share all that’s new with Kobo Writing Life. Day Two had a number of meet and greets, lots of other fun events, and ended with a Masquerade Ball. People went all out for the Masquerade Ball and I was in awe of the masks and costumes.

The conference culminated with a big, multi-author book sale and signing on Saturday August 4^th, that was open to the public. The level of swag at the book sale was very impressive. It was a real romance readers dream and a great opportunity for readers to meet their favourite authors in person.

SWAG!

I had the pleasure of meeting lots of KWL authors while I was there. It’s always great to meet in person to share what we’ve got planned for KWL and hear about the new titles we can look forward to seeing. If you missed it this year, don’t worry, Eve is already busy preparing for the 2019 conference! Reader tickets go on sale on September 1^st and authors are already starting to confirm attendance. You can find out more about it on Eve’s website (http://orc.evelanglais.com//) and the events Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/rtcottawa).

Eve Langlais and her Evel Minion helpers

Tara Cremin oversees the content processing for KWL. Her focus is to ensure that the books are on site without issue and that any reported bugs are fixed. Tara has an MA in American literature and film from University College Cork, Ireland. She originally moved to Canada because of her love of American literature.