Four out of the seven winners of the 2021 Passionate Plume Award were queer romance (woot!) and I’m proud to report that Adam Bomb was within the ranks. My gay romance, Adam Bomb, won the Passionate Plume award in the Steamy category. The category was created for books with strongly written steamy scenes in a book that doesn’t classify itself, on the whole, as erotic romance. Let’s just say that Adam Bomb had a few high points.
Read MoreIt's official! The Secret Ingredient is a finalist in the inaugural Vivian ® Awards. For folks who are blessedly unfamiliar with what’s happening on the author side in Romancelandia, the Vivian is intended to be the rebirth of the most prestigious award in Romance. The former RWA RITA ® Award was widely accepted as the leading award in the Romance genre. Publisher’s Weekly published an article about RWA’s decision to retire the RITA award and to create the Vivian in its place. This, in honor of RWA founder, Black author and industry pro, Vivian Stephens.
Read MoreI'm sending a huge THANK YOU to all of my readers and friends who supported the Jingle Balls Anthology, the limited-release collaboration I contributed to in support of the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation. Not only did you (my lovely readers) help raise a ton of money for the foundation: you helped Jingle Balls become a USA Today Bestseller! It ranked #99 on the list the week of October 8th, its debut week!
Read MoreHuge thanks to New Jersey Romance Writers for honoring Spooning Leads to Forking as a finalist in the 2020 Golden Leaf Contest in the Romantic Suspense category. This honor is particularly sweet because it's my 50th award and my first award for Spooning Leads to Forking. All of my books are a little autobiographical. In Spooning Leads to Forking, heroine Shea is a food critic (I used to be a food, wine and travel writer myself.) It was a great time in my life and I loved reliving it through writing the book.
Read MoreI am a-okay with the fact that Hidden Gems put The Secret Ingredient on its list of the Hottest Romances of 2019! I am even more okay with the reader review they put in the article. If you’ve ever sat with me and talked books, or listened to interviews with me in which I talk about my reading preferences, you’ll know all about a pet peeve of mine when it comes to romance novels.
Read MoreHot on the heels of an amazing review for The Secret Ingredient from Publisher’s Weekly, I’ve heard great news about the book: it’s been named a Quarterfinalist in the Publisher’s Weekly Booklife Prize! The competition this year was really amazing, with the five titles that made it to the Semifinals scoring 9.5 or above. I am so thrilled to have been honored even though I did not progress to the next round. Here is the full text of the scoresheet/critical review:
Read MoreFirst things first: Friended is highly unlikely to win the Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize for Fiction, even though I entered it this year. One thing I love about entering this award is that, win or not, the Publisher’s Weekly folks take the time to write a critical review! After the very odd situation I was in two years ago with the BookLife Prize and Snapdragon, I didn’t know what to expect from the process. But they reviewed Friended and I’m A-OK with the result.
Read More…and hopefully not its last. The New England Chapter of RWA named Friended a finalist in its 2019 New England Reader’s Choice Awards! Best of all, I’ll be at the awards ceremony in Boston, in person! This award (and this RWA Chapter) is close to my heart, as attending the NECRWA conference last April marked my very first book signing, my first 1st place award win (for Snapdragon) and the first time I had the opportunity to sit in the audience to hear my name called to accept an award.
I’m extremely excited to head back to Boston, reconnect with friends I made last year, sign more books, and return as a conference presenter. If you’re a reader and would like to meet me…
Read MoreLast night, I was so busy wrangling the littles and cooking a dinner I wouldn’t even get to eat myself (long story) that I missed a call I would much rather have been taking from Fenley Grant. It was the best kind of call from someone with a strange number: a call to tell me I’d won something. Not a free three-night stay in Las Vegas if I agree to listen to a brief ::cough::not brief::cough:: sales pitch—something far more awesome than that.
I’m excited to share that early chapters of my brand-spanking-new manuscript, “Love in an Elevator”, just finaled in the Great Expectations Contest put on by North Texas RWA! I know, I know—it’s not good that I just put a 1989 Aerosmith song in your head…
Read MoreI’m honestly not sure what they put in the water in Oklahoma. All I know is that OKRWA loves them some Kilby Blades. This week I was notified that the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America have named “The Art of Worship” 1st Place Winner in its Erotic Short Story category in its International Digital Awards!
Unlike OKRWA’s National Reader’s Choice Awards, the focus of the IDAs is novels or short works that are available ONLY in digital or print-on-demand format. My unconfirmed suspicion is that this award is intended to level the playing field for indie authors.
Read MoreIn an unexpected, good-news twist, I found out today (after having a very bad week) that Snapdragon was named a finalist in the Book Buyer's Best Contest run by the Orange County chapter of RWA (OCCRWA)! I had, frankly, given up on this award, as I'd heard titterings that finalists were receiving calls (a call that never came for me), and the notification date had long-passed. This is a tough business, people. The books that we sweat, bleed and develop drinking problems over may never do well commercially, may never receive a single accolade, etc. Snapdragon is a different work of romance, both in its structure and complexity. The fact that it isn't formulaic made it even less of a sure thing on the awards circuit.
Read MoreI'm not the kind of author who is blessed with plotbunnies that will yield straightforward books. My work is complex and doesn't always fit clearly into a single category. Snapdragon was a doozie to write, but even more than Snapdragon, I've struggled with Crocodile Tears, my unpublished manuscript that's gone through quite an identity crisis. I haven't said much about Crocodile Tears yet--what you should know is that it deals with a multi-generational family feud. When the hero's father dies and leaves the daughter of the enemy family half of his multi-million-dollar fortune, my hero and heroine are forced to get to the bottom of the family feud.
Read MoreIt's hard to even know how to begin this article. My experience at RWA this year is a lot different from my first year in Orlando in 2017. Not knowing anything about anything that first year, I blindly followed the advice of my book bestie, L.G. O'Connor. I signed up too late to have secured appointments with agents and editors, and, either way, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go traditional. But I was sick of sitting at home in my bathrobe, writing and swilling coffee. It seemed a good opportunity to get out of the house. So I went. I attended workshops. I had, literally, no place to be. I met other authors. I visited the overwhelming swag room. And I watched nominees walk across the stage to accept RITA Awards.
Read MoreI'll admit it--it's been a tough year for me in terms of discovering truths about the industry--and, by that, I mean coming to some realizations about how far we still have to go with respect to promoting diversity in romance. I certainly knew that we were underrepresented--that it seemed more difficult for diverse authors to get traditional publishing contracts and, if we get them, to have good experience with our publishers around marketing and promotion. I did not know until recently about a litany of other issues--from earning retail space, to being dropped from publishing, to problems with book displays and shelving, to serious issues with the RITA Awards.
Read MoreWe talk a lot, in romance, about empowering our heroines. So much of what I read still misses the mark. Typical romances still make heroes better at nearly everything, compared to heroines. Heroes tend to have more prestigious jobs, are more likely to be self-made if they're wealthy, tend to have more grit, wit, foresight and problem-solving skills. They're more comfortable sexually and are generally in better harmony with their bodies. This is ludicrous. Men are insecure (duh). Men have body image issues. Men worry about sexual performance. They have money problems and, contrary to what the romance genre would have you believe, they're not all rich.
Read MoreI never talk about my novel, The Art of Worship, without admitting that it's super weird. Most romance stories are boy meets girl (or girl meets girl or boy meets werewolf--you know what I mean). It's full of really fuzzy love and really funny sex, but it's just not a typical romance. Trust me when I tell you that I do not look back at all of my books as volumes that I can read again and again. But I can read The Art of Worship 100,000 times and never get tired of it.
With that said, it's a bit of a love-hate kind of read. Reviewers love, love, love it, but its plot is so weird that, in contests, it's done just okay. I am thrilled to announce that
Read MoreMore news on the awards front: this time about two unpublished manuscripts I've been sweating over for months: the Contemporary Romance Writers of America have named "Crocodile Tears" and "The Secret Ingredient" as finalists in their unpublished Stiletto Contest!
These books are very special to me. I'll be blogging about them one of these days and releasing teaser pages that show off the plot. For the time being, it means a lot to get the scorecards, hear validation that judges liked both, and to see where these manuscripts may need work.
Read MoreWhoa! Have you seen some of the names on the finalists list for this year's NRCAs? I'm on the same page--twice--with Jill Shalvis. Being in such talented company makes it even sweeter that "Snapdragon" has made it to the finals in this year's National Readers' Choice Awards for Best First Book and Erotic Romance! I'll be looking forward to RWA Nationals in Denver in July, where they'll be announcing the winners and where I hope to meet (in person) some of the lovely ladies of OKRWA. Beyond staying with me through some technical problems as I was entering the contest, these girls were all just as sweet as apple pie.
Read MoreIn the dumbest of all first world problems, I was starting to get worried. I've received more amazing accolades for Snapdragon than I ever could have hoped. But Snapdragon wasn't the only book I released this past year--it was one of three, and one of two that I've put my hat in for contests. Up until now, The Art of Worship (which I actually think is a better book) hasn't gotten any love. I am thrilled to announce that at least a few people had the courage to upvote my novella The Art o Worship. It's got a plot that I've never seen anywhere in the romance world before…
Read MoreYou know what they say about fifteen minutes and fame. So when I was named a finalist in the New England Chapter RWA's Reader's Choice Awards and invited to the conference to revel in the honor, I figured I'd better absorb whatever warmth I could from my day in the sun. At the time, the other book I'd been entering into awards had won exactly zilch. I figured, maybe this was it! There were other compelling reasons to attend the conference. Beverly Jenkins was giving a masterclass on small town romance, and let's be honest--she could've been giving a masterclass on underwater basket weaving. I still would have wanted to go, because Beverly f*ing Jenkins!
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