Katherine Falk announcing her retirement and the end of RT.

It was confirmed today at the welcoming breakfast by Katherine Falk that this will be the last RT for her and her husband. She will be retiring after thirty-five years of bringing romance readers, writers, cover models, editors and publishers all together to share their love of romance books at the Romantic Times Conference. The conference in Reno will be the last RT.

Katherine Falk thanked everyone for her thirty-five years of making friends and bringing everyone together for the love of romance books. She shared stories from the start of the conference in the mid-eighties including humorous stories of including a cover model named Fabio at the event. One story ended him with him joking that they would end up being “prisoners of love” together after Katherine had to be hard ball as the conference leader.

There were tears, smiles and laughs at all the memories while rain poured outside around the city of Reno. Maybe the atmosphere is trying to tell us something. Katherine Falk will be missed, and her contribution to the romance community will be remembered in years ahead.

As far as RT continuing, there has been a lot of speculation that the RT will be dropped and the conference will just be known as the Book Lovers Convention in the future. Nothing has been officially announced as of yet. But I will update this blog post when the information is available.