It’s hard to know where to start. But let me preface this (long, long) post by saying I’ve been in this business for 15 years. I’ve been to many signing events, although not in recent years, (RTD2024 was my first US signing in 10 years). I’ve seen a lot in that time. A. LOT.

What I have never seen is an organizer who promises one thing but delivers another (or nothing). Or one who gets in authors’ faces when a simple clarification question is asked (more on that later).

I think the best thing to do is start from the beginning. And remember this is ALL my experience. I’m. not sharing anyone else’s damage, and yes, some of what happened was damaging.

Last year (or possibly the year before, I’m not sure on the exact date now) I put my name down as being interested in attending Readers Take Denver 2023. About a month before that event, I received an email telling me I wasn’t invited (well duh!) but if I was interested in attending 2024, I could fill out ‘this’ form. Obviously, I filled it out.

Fast forward to September 2023 and I received an email inviting me to be a ‘Rising Star’ author at Readers Take Denver 2024. I questioned that. I’ve been around over a decade, the term ‘Rising Star’ to me means someone starting out, not someone who’s got the number of books released as I do. It made no sense to me. The answer I got to my question was basically – this is what we’re offering you, if you don’t take it, you don’t get an invite.

I thought about it. And thought about it. I talked it over with Mr.C. Asked a few author friends. In the end I decided to take the invitation because I saw it as a way to ‘relaunch’ my career after going through breast cancer treatment. Plus, I was promised a shit-ton of extras under the ‘Rising Stars’ banner. (Side note. I’ve been invited to attend RTD2025. As a rising star author. I WILL NOT BE GOING!!)

I was excited to attend. One, to reconnect with people I’ve known for years, and two, I wanted to meet new readers, talk to those I’ve only ever met online, as well as meet with authors I read during treatment when radiation fatigue kept me on my couch for months.

My first concern came when we were offered the option to send stuff ahead of time for a $100 fee. Okay, that’s not a lot but when I didn’t plan to send all that much that fee seemed ridiculous for me to spend when it was already costing me thousands just to get there (I live in Singapore for those that don’t know).

Anyway, the next concern was the cost of all the event promotion options. Eep! I won’t go into detail, but due to time off during my cancer treatment I don’t have the revenue flow to cover anything that was available. I barely have it to cover the swag and books I planned to have for the event.

I was still excited. Still looking forward to boarding a plane (two actually) to get to Canada where I would stay for the week before RTD2024 with my friend Shana Gray who I was traveling to and rooming with at RTD2024. It was a great week! Really great having a mini retreat with her. It’s still great because I’m here for another few days before I board another two planes to get home.

Then the Monday before RTD2024 started we got an email from the organizer asking us if we would stay at a different hotel Wednesday night due to overbooked rooms. This hotel would be at the airport, so easy to get to, it would be free, and we would have a food voucher of $25. We would also get early access to our room at the conference hotel on Thursday, that night would also be complementary and another food voucher for $75. Oh, and a free shuttle to take us from the Wednesday night hotel to the Gaylord on the Thursday morning. Um…. okay…

Shana and I discussed it and while we’d booked last year and booked a day ahead of the event so we could get settle before things started, we decided we could live with the change. Wednesday night’s hotel was great! But when we got to the RTD2024 hotel we didn’t get into our room right away. We waited over an hour. I’ve heard others waited longer. Waiting seems to have been the theme of this event.

In hindsight, I’m glad we took the change and got a couple of nights free or else I’d be out of pocket more for an event that didn’t deliver what was promised.

If RTD2024 was a t-shirt I’d be sending it back and asking for a refund.

From there things just seemed to get worse. But let me clarify that.

The EVENT got worse.

NOT the influencers, or the venders, or the narrators, or any of the industry professionals, or the authors (except the one organizing, her behavior was not acceptable to me, I’ll explain that below).

Day 1

3:00 – 8:00 PM

Readers Registration

Author, narrators, and publishing professionals registration

Help desk & merch window

6:30 – 7:00 PM

Rising Stars authors & influencers welcome

7:00 – 7:45 PM

Authors, narrators, and publishing professionals welcome

8:00 – 10:00 PM

Welcome party with cupcakes open to all

Already on day one we have events conflicting. How can you stand in a line to register, a line that was hours long for most (even if you arrived early) AND attend the welcome events? And don’t get me started about them ‘running out’ of RTD2024 bags.

How does a conference run out of bags when they know the exact number of people registered?

Who’s doing their math?

Were the authors, narrators and publishing professions accounted for or did they drop those numbers but give us bags anyway?

And name badges? Lanyards to hold said badges?

It was a cluster.

And somebody’s math is way the hell off.

I won’t list the rest of the schedule because it’s just the same as above. Everything conflicted (except the book signings on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning). Every event had something else to compete with and a short window to get from one to another. AND a lot were on different levels. Even if I’d been there as a reader, I wouldn’t have been able to get to everything I wanted to.

Which brings me to why I was there, the ‘Rising Stars’ events and ‘special’ promotions like the early welcome with influencers.

At the welcome with influencers there was no direction, no announcement, no welcome…nothing. Just a bunch of people who mostly didn’t know each other standing in a corridor trying to get a drink from the only bar (another long line when one of the catch phrases used in the lead up to RTD2024 was ‘we don’t do lines’).

I agreed to being a rising star (even though I don’t consider myself one) to take advantage of the ‘special promotions’ I was told I would get when I was offered the spot.

One of the main reasons I agreed to the seat at the rising stars signing was there would be no other signing that day and nothing held during the time of our signing. We were to be the focal point of the entire RTD2024 attendees for the hours we were at our tables.

First, we find out there’s another signing event the morning of our day. Okay, not a conflict, we’re in the afternoon. I can live with that. THEN we discover there are going to be ‘big name’ authors do pop ups in our event to draw readers into the room. This quickly changed to outside our room. WTF? How does that draw readers inside? It doesn’t!

THEN we find out there will be panels during our signing time. Again. WTF?!

Finally, during the actual signing an announcement was made that another ‘big name’ author was signing in a different room.

You can only imagine what that did to the crowd of readers in our room. Especially when a huge amount of them missed out on seeing their desired authors due to a ticketing system that was so confusing it had no hope of working.

I do not have ill will to any reader who left the rising stars signing to get time with another author. But I do have ill will toward a woman who promised to make the rising stars signing the only focus during the scheduled time. One of the many promised things that were not delivered.

AND to top it all off, rising star authors paid the same money to attend as the other authors who got TWO signing events! TWO! For the same cost. With no conflicting events. I repeat NO CONFLICTING EVENTS! (The very thing rising stars were promised!)

Again, if RTD2024 were a shirt I’m missing a couple of sleeves.

Now let me explain the getting in an author’s face thing.

In the words of Taylor – It’s me, hi. But I ain’t the f*cking problem.

Yep. I’m the author the organizer got in the face of. Which isn’t easy because in shoes I’m six feet tall and she’s about a foot shorter and half my width. I could have squashed her like a bug. Obviously, I didn’t.

Anyway…

When I arrived at the room the rising stars signing was to be held nothing was set up. The authors who were in the room for the previous signing were still pulling their stuff down. Again, this was rushed due to conflicting events. But okay, I can live with a rushed set up, but I wanted to know when I could set up and to be honest, offer help if they needed it. I approached a group of volunteers near the door and asked if they knew when we could begin setting up.

I didn’t even get the sentence finished before Lisa (the organizer) stepped into my personal space and raised her voice to tell me she’d announced that already in multiple places and couldn’t I see all that they had to do. I actually put my hand up and said whoa. I mean come on. Was the raised angry tone necessary? I’d asked a simple question in a polite manner. I was going to offer my help. Not after that. Once she shut up, I explained (again, politely (I’m so proud of myself for that)) I hadn’t received any notifications, and I was fine with the time but was I able to leave my books and swag over by the wall and come back so I could go get some lunch.

The answer to that?

No. Because people are stealing.

*I need an emoji here – the head exploding one – maybe ten of them*

People? What people? Your volunteers? The hotel staff? Other authors? Who the f*ck is stealing? And where the f*ck is the security you told us would be at this event?

As I mentioned above, I’m really proud of myself for not going off. Because by then I knew things were a clusterf*ck and unlikely to get better, but I kept my frustration and anger in check because I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse.

My assistant and I waited with my books and swag until we were able to set up my table. Other authors took it upon themselves to find tables and chairs so they could set up because once the first row of tables went up nothing else did. We were basically on our own.

The signing was great! The readers and influencers who stopped by were fantastic. I had a great time. Enjoyed chatting with everyone who stopped at my table whether for a book or just a signature. I love it. And the readers who brought a book they already owned for me to sign MADE MY DAY!

Then, 30min before the end of our time a ‘volunteer’ came around and shoved a phone at my face (too quickly for me to see what was actually on it) while I was talking to a reader and said something I didn’t catch. Luckily, (or unluckily, depending how you look at it) my assistant got the same treatment but was able to hear what the woman said. We had to pack up at 5. Sharp. Which we knew, right? Because our time was from 2 to 5. I’m not sure why we needed the rude behavior to remind us but whatever.

Except that isn’t all this ‘volunteer’ did. (I’ve got volunteer in ” here and above because I’m not sure she was one. She didn’t have on one of the lanyards most of the volunteers did.) At 5 her rude behavior became destructive when she returned to my table and began shoving things off the tall round table I had beside my short long one. She said she was trying to help by moving things off the tall table but she dropped a box that was especially made for me with my name on it. The box crashed into the edge of the short table damaging the lid and side. I was more than upset by this. I’ll be honest, I wanted to punch her. I didn’t.

When I said something (through gritted teeth) her reply was rude and when I pointed out the damage, she said ‘oh, I thought you meant I damaged books.’ Um…maybe I’m being picky or sensitive or I was hangry (I never did get lunch) but WTF? Who cares what it is you damaged? It’s still damaged, right? Obviously she could see I was about to go off because she quickly disappeared.

I’ve heard others had similar treatment but I didn’t witness it. I did witness Volunteers yelling at attendees and authors. I witnessed the utter chaos of the event, the lack of communication between the organizer and her volunteers, between the volunteers themselves, between the volunteers and attendees. It was insane how little anyone seemed to know about what was going on. And don’t get me started about events being moved to different locations and nobody having a clue about it until they turned up.

Everything started late. Everything!

RTD2024 was an unorganized disaster.

But let me be clear – it was the event organizer who was to blame.

Not the hotel like the organizer tried to blame.

Not the high profile author in attendance the organizer tried to blame.

Not the volunteers the organizer has asked us (in an email) to ‘tattle on’ so she can be sure they don’t come back next year.

HER!

The organizer.

Lisa Renee Jones.

Is she going to stop herself from attending next year when I ‘tattle on’ her?

Is she going to continue to get authors and readers to her event with promises she has no intention of keeping?

Is she going to stop pointing fingers and apologizing for the fact ‘she can’t control what others do’ and actually apologize?

What others is she talking about anyway? Because there are no others when you are putting on an event.

SHE is the organizer.

SHE is responsible for how HER event runs.

HER!

No one else!

I get that things go wrong, I get it. I really do, but this wasn’t about things going wrong.

This was about poor management and at times no management.

This was about promises made and never kept.

This was about disappointment, both reader and author.

This was about disrespect on so many levels.

This was about segregation.

This was about lies.