I’m blogging today at Access Romance about my recent family vacation. But here, I thought I’d tell you about my girl time—the five-day summer party officially billed as the Romance Writers of America national conference but what I like to call my personal summer camp.

It’s so much fun to hang out with my romance writer friends and meet new readers every year. My good friend, Love Inspired author Renee Ryan, led the First Timers Orientation this year and she had a really fun analogy for a writer’s first time at RWA. She talked about the conference at large as the cool sorority and the other first timers were your pledge class. That each year you attend RWA, you look for your sisters who rushed along with you, cheering on their successes and commiserating on the bumps in the road. You share your journey with those folks, and it’s all the more fun for having a few BFFs around. Together, you become the cool sorority, squealing in the halls to see each other once a year at your personal summer camp. I loved that idea. To me, RWA is exactly like that.

Renee, for example, was in my pledge class. So was SIM author Beth Cornelison and Desire author Catherine Mann, my critique partner. Other classes close to me included Tanya Michaels, Winnie Griggs and Anna DeStefano, friends I seek out faithfully every year.

And we do more than just gab it up. We sign books to raise money that supports a literacy initiative. We teach workshops for aspiring writers to share what we know and attend workshops to learn from our peers. Oh, and we dance.

Summer camp isn’t summer camp without a glitzy party after all. The RITA and Golden Heart ceremony is our fun excuse to dress up and the publisher parties provide our opportunity to shake our collective groove thing. I’ve discovered Blaze authors Wendy Etherington and Jacquie D’Alessandro are just as committed to the dance floor as me, so I like to hunt them down once the music starts hopping.

I think every woman should have a summer camp – your personalized version of the sorority reunion. Whether it’s a handful of high school friends or the crowd from your book club, you owe yourself a retreat weekend to celebrate friendship and a common interest. Don’t have a big budget? You can tent it down by the lake for a night and share a few bottles of cheap champagne. I guarantee you’ll come home happier!

**You know what I’m talking about…. girlfriends speak a different language than our significant others! What’s been one of your favorite friend-dates? Ladies’ poker night? Neighborhood bunco? Chat with me on the boards today about fav ways to hang out with friends and I’ll give one random poster a signed copy of my August relese, Double Play.