Have you been meaning to register for SiWC this year, but haven't done it yet? Get on it this week and save a few dollars.

Early bird prices expire at the end of the day (that's 11:59:59pm Pacific) on September 15. That's THIS Thursday. (I _know_! How can it be the middle of September already?!)

In honour of the deadline, I'll do a book draw on Friday for everyone who registers by the end of early bird. Yes, that counts all you super early birds, too. Hear that, BJ? :)

2010 registration prices are now posted. Click "register" on the blue header bar to have a look.

We've worked hard to try to keep this year's prices at 2009 levels, and are very pleased to be bringing you two very special early bird prices:

Our full conference package is now just $499 plus tax for early birds. This is our best value, and we think it may well be the best conference value anywhere.

Our master class price for conference registrants is just $89 plus tax this year.

As well as those two rates, still available are our conference basic, one day packages and young writers special price for Friday.

Registration opens Wednesday at noon PST. Have you picked your master classes and appointment wish list yet?

Well.

Here we are. Mid-April already!

I certainly have lots to report -- where to begin, where to begin...?

We have almost got our presenter roster in place for 2009. A few tweaks, a twiddle here and there, and it will be ready. This may seem early, but actually I am much later getting to this than I have in the past...mostly because I am also juggling the arrival of my new book. (If you haven't checked it out, you can read about it HERE.)

But all is not only well, but ahead of schedule, in some ways. For the first time, we are going to open registration early this year. As soon as I have a firm date, I'll post it here. 

Why are we doing this, you ask?

Well, mostly because we can. Last year we tried out a prototype registration gateway, and to our delight -- it worked very well. So we have our registration infrastructure in place much earlier than we did last year, and we'd like to take advantage.

We also have to acknowledge that with the state of the economy, we want to give our attendees a chance to save money by booking their registration early to take advantage of our early-bird discount.

Right now I am working on the 2009 schedule, and when this is in place and we have the final okay from all our presenters, it will be full speed ahead.   Make sure you are on our mailing list, get this blog onto your RSS feeder, and you'll have all the info as soon as it is available!

~kc

also blogging as leftwriter