Registration and Ticket Deadline
There are just three days left to register for Sirens. Online registration, including the purchase of tickets for the Sirens Shuttle and Sirens Supper, ends on September 7, 2012.

We do still have a handful of Sirens Supper and Sirens Shuttle tickets available. We’d love to have you join us for our pre-conference staff dinner or on our shuttle trip to and from the airport. Tickets for the Sirens Supper or the Sirens Shuttle can be added to a new or an existing registration. Family or friends who are traveling with you but are not registered for Sirens are welcome to join us for the Sirens Supper or the shuttle trip, too–just add their ticket to your registration. Please note, guests attending the Sirens Supper must be at least 18 years old.

Registration and ticket payments are due no later than September 14, 2012, even if this means you have fewer than the usual 30 days to complete your payment. Any registrations or tickets that are still unpaid after September 14 will be canceled. We will have only a handful of on-site registrations available, and those will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

Checking In
We’re almost there! Over the next few weeks, please keep an eye on your inbox for e-mails from us about where to check in for the Sirens Shuttle and how to pick up your registration materials when you arrive at Skamania Lodge.

Hotel Reservations Deadline
Have you made your reservation yet? Skamania Lodge is a resort and operates a little differently from most hotels. One of those differences is that you must make or change reservations earlier than you might for other venues. You can reserve the discounted Sirens rate from October 7-16, in case you’d like to extend your stay before or after Sirens, but reservations and changes must be made by September 18, 2012. For more about Skamania’s policies, including how to reserve a room, please visit the Skamania Lodge page on the Sirens website.

If you would like to find a roommate (or two or three!) to share the cost of a hotel room, you can connect with other attendees on our message boards. You can also advertise on our Facebook page here.

Dietary Information
All conference registrations include a dessert reception, two keynote lunches, an afternoon tea, and Sunday breakfast. At this time, we have finalized our buffet menus, which are available on the Featured Events page of our website. (We’ve also sent all registered attendees an e-mail with the menu information.) We know that people have a variety of food allergies and other dietary restrictions, and we’d like to know what your restrictions are so that we may work with the hotel’s catering department to make your Sirens experience as enjoyable as possible.

If you have questions or concerns about the menus or the ingredients, please e-mail us at (registration at sirensconference.org). If we don’t know the answer, we’re happy to ask the hotel. If you’ve already contacted us about your dietary restrictions, thank you! Once we’ve collected everyone’s concerns, we’ll discuss the menus with the hotel and have more information for you mid-September.

It takes time to arrange alternatives with the hotel, and we want to make sure that we have time to do so. If we have not heard from you by September 7, we will assume that you are able to eat from our standard menus.

Volunteers Wanted!
There are still a handful of volunteer shifts available during the conference. In particular, we are looking for room monitors. If you have some time free during Sirens (or if you plan to be in one room for a couple of sessions in a row), we’d love to have you join our volunteer team for 2012. Typically, volunteers stay in a room during presentations, help the speakers get situated, and keep things running on time. You can find out more on the Volunteers page of the Sirens website.

Bookstore
Narrate Conferences, our presenting nonprofit, will run a new and used bookstore during Sirens. Our goal is to support both Sirens and female fantasy authors by selling new and used books, and we hope you’ll help us out.

If you are a published author, please let us know! We’d like to include you in our author signing time and have new books on hand. We have access to many books from major publishers; for those books we don’t have access to, like out-of-print titles or books that aren’t available through a major distributor, we have suggestions for how to make sure that your books are available at Sirens. Please contact Amy Tenbrink (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org) by September 8 to take part.

We will also be selling used books, with all the proceeds going to support Sirens. If you would like to donate fantasy books in good condition, we would be delighted! Registered attendees received a mailing address in the August attendee e-mail; if you’re not attending this year and want to donate books, please write to (help at sirensconference.org) for mailing information.

Auction
Last year, we were so overwhelmed and humbled by the generosity of those donating auction items and those bidding on them. It was a great fundraiser for Sirens and went a long way in covering our conference costs–so let’s do it again! We’re changing our auction format a bit this year, so we’ll need to have a comprehensive list of auction items by the end of the day on Thursday, October 11, and all sorts of items are welcome. If you’d like to donate an item and you have questions, please write to Amy Tenbrink (amy.tenbrink at sirensconference.org). (She’d love to hear what you’re planning and address any concerns you might have.) Also, for those of you with bulky items, we can provide a shipping address, if you’d like. And, of course, thanks in advance for your support.

You’re Excited About…

An excerpt from Rick Riordan’s third Heroes of Olympus book, The Mark of Athena, is available on the Disney website! –Amy

Some of the books I’m excited to read in August and September: Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction (short stories by a lot of women YA authors, including Malinda Lo and Laini Taylor), out on August 28; Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff (out September 1) – reputed to be Japanese steampunk with a strong female protagonist; Riveted, the third in Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas steampunk romance series (out September 4). –Casey

The Crown of Embers, sequel to The Girl of Fire and Thorns, by Rae Carson is due out September 18. –Sabs

Congratulations to Nnedi Okorafor and Karen Lord for winning the 2010 Carl Brandon Award! Details, including the full list of awards and honors, are available here! –Anonymous

Supporting Registrations
If you can’t make it this year, we will miss you, and we hope that you’ll please consider purchasing a supporting registration. This helps us present Sirens this year and offer Sirens in future years, and you’ll receive a 2012 program book following the conference. Supporting registrations cost $50; $35 of each supporting registration is a donation to Sirens, and because Narrate Conferences, Inc. is a charitable organization, that amount is eligible for tax deduction in the United States. (The other $15 covers the cost of the program book and our mailing costs.)

Spotlight: Guest of Honor Malinda Lo
Malinda Lo’s first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the Lambda Award for Children’s/Young Adult, and was a Kirkus 2009 Best Book for Children and Teens. Her second book, Huntress, a companion to Ash, was published in April 2011 and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her two-book young adult science fiction series, beginning with Adaptation, will be published in fall 2012. Prior to her work as an author of fiction, Malinda was an entertainment reporter, and was awarded the 2006 Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Journalism by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and has master’s degrees from both Harvard and Stanford.

Nifty:
Her website can be found at http://www.malindalo.com.

Her blog is at http://www.malindalo.com/blog/.

She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/malindalo.

Book covers!

Questions? You can comment here or write to us at (help at sirensconference.org).