[BOOKISH ARTICLE] Romance Author & Reader Events a.k.a. RARE

Some of you may know already that I love reading romance books a lot. Contemporary romance, romance combined with fantasy and paranormal elements. Just basically every kind of romance, lol; Love, love, love all of it. I have many favorite authors who write romance books. Some years ago I discovered this event called RARE. It’s an event focused on Romance authors and Readers in Europe. Aside from the ‘Boekenbeurs in Antwerpen’, I don’t think there’s another book event that’s as huge as RaRe is, over here in Europe. It takes place a couple of times per year, divided over different cities.

Each city event can be different from one another when it comes to which authors attend. I’ve been wanting to go for years now but never got around to actually go until Kaylee, a friend of mine, and I decided that we should buy tickets to the London event in 2019 and so we got ourselves acquainted with the Facebook group and started gathering information about the event. I thought it would be fun to write an article about it and let you guys get acquainted with this large book event in Europe.

CLICK HERE -> RARE EVENT FACEBOOK GROUP <- CLICK HERE

| Attending Authors |

My friend Kaylee and I were so excited about going and when the day came that the announcements were made, we went berserk. So so soooo MANY unicorn authors of ours will attend. One huge name after another was being announced and I seriously cannot believe that we’re going to meet all these amazing authors. A lot of these authors have been on my ‘want to meet wishlist’ for years now, some are fairly new to me and a lot I haven’t even read yet so there’s a lot happening here haha. A lot I have to think about when it comes to managing this event as efficiently as possible, lol.

Fun Fact: We scored Early Entry Tickets so we’ll be able to meet up with authors 2 hours prior to the official opening. So that hopefully means we’ll be able to see a lot of our unicorn authors in a more quiet environment. I’M SO EXCITED! 

| Priority Lists |

It’s impossible for me to read all of these authors and to buy all their books beforehand and take them with me, so I had to make cuts even though I’d really don’t want to rule any authors out here – but I won’t rule out any author/books for sure; I’ll see how far I’ll come with reading new to me authors before September 2019. I decided to make three different lists regarding as to how I decide to meet up with which author:

• a list consisting of my UNICORN authors; authors I want to meet for sure and I hope I’ll be able to use the extra 2 hours before the official opening hours to see most of them – since it’s my first time going I have no idea as to how realistic this plan of mine is, lol.
• a list of Authors I’ve already read and really liked and would want to meet up with, but they aren’t priority (yet).
• a list of Authors I haven’t read yet but I want to read and get to know beforehand and meet up with if I have time to spare.

It’s my first time attending an event of this large a scale so I’m trying to go about it in a way that’ll make us able to see as many authors possible in the amount of time we have available haha. Do you have any plans made up before an event? To me, the most important thing here is to be able to meet my Unicorn authors. Especially since a lot of them are known to not be in Europe a lot, if almost never, so this will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to go see them.

I am so excited already! Kaylee and I are trying to read as much as possible written by RARE authors, in between our regular books, and try to get ourselves aquatinted with as many new-to-us authors as we can.

| Practical Information & Preparation |

Aside from deciding which authors we want to meet, we also have to think about some practical stuff like; sleeping arrangements, travel arrangements and luggage. It just isn’t doable to us to do all of this in one day so we decided to book a hotel and stay for several days – that’s definitely no hardship when you get to spent time with a friend and you’re in LONDON, am I right 😉? So far we’ve talked about some things like:

• sleeping arrangements: we found out the venue is in South Kensington, which is where I normally stay in a hotel when I’m in London with my husband so the surrounding area is a bit familiar then so that’s nice! We’ll be looking into booking our hotel in January ’19 so we can book a hotel nearby.
• travel arrangements: Normally I always travel by plane but that’s not really doable this time around since we have to take a lot of books with us to London. There’s a limit as to what you are permitted to take with you as hand luggage on a plane and that’s so little in comparison as to what we’ll have to take with us haha – we could take larger suitcases with us by plane but that’s really expensive! – so we decided to go by train. Earlier this year, Kaylee went to London by train so she’ll know how to go about it. We’re planning to book our train tickets in January as well – you can never book things like these too soon right? haha
• luggage: I’m still debating as to what suitcase(s) to take with me. I was thinking about taking our large vacation suitcase with me, with inside a smaller one so I could take the smaller one with me when we go to the event. And I have the addition space in the larger suitcase for when we go back home – since we’ll probably buy some more books at the event itself and/or when we’re in the city doing some shopping maybe? We have to take into account that we’ll have to travel through the city with our large suitcases so I was thinking about taking a cab this time around when we arrive at the translation in London. What are your experiences with taking cabs in London? Love to hear from you!

Are there any tips you’d want to give me regarding going to an event on a large scale like this one? Whether it’s about the event itself or about the travel/sleeping arrangements or whatever… I’d LOVE to hear from you!

With Love,
Melissa ♥