Great Covers and Fab News

Firstly, before too many words fill the page, I have to show you this:

Isn't that gorgeous? It's the cover to Blind Dates And Other Disasters, an anothology coming out in January 2011, featuring my first ever book, Blind-Date Marriage, which was not only nominated for two RITAs, but won the RNA's New Writers' Award. Not only that, but it contains Ally's Blakes fabulous first book, The Wedding Wish (best first and last line ever!) and Barbara Hannay's The Blind-Date Surprise, with a seriously sexy professor hero.

And, in other good news, I have just discovered that Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After has been nominated for Best Harlequin Romance in the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Awards!

Bits and pieces

I've just heard that Invitation To The Boss's Ball has been awarded a certificate of merit in the Short Contemporary category of the HOLT medallion! I'm so thrilled!

A full list of all the winners and finalists is here.

Holiday and surprises!

I've just come back from a much-needed holiday on the South Devon coast. Just look at these pics and you'll see why I'm so rested:

Anyway, I came home to the news that Invitation To The Boss's Ball is a finalist in the GDRWA's Booksellers' Best Award! And I found an honest-to-goodness glass award to put on my mantlepiece for my Golden Quill Award win. Made the tortoruously slow drive home on the motorway worth it!

Now I've just got to knuckle down and write the next book...

Golden Quill

Really excited to share that Blind-Date Baby won the Traditional Romance category of the Golden Quill awards. For a full list of finalists and winners, click here.

Writing Grace and Noah's story was a bit of a rollercoaster - I scrapped most of the book and had to rewrite it in a fortnight - so I consider it a bit of a miracle story. It was part of the BlindDateBrides.com mini-series. More info can be found here.

More good news!

I got some more good news! Both Blind-Date Baby and Invitation To The Boss's Ball are finalists in the Golden Quill Awards' Tradtitional category.

I've been working hard for the last three weeks on revising Jennie and Alex's story, so this news was a much needed boost.

Best Harlequin Romance of 2009

I'm thrilled to be able to announce that Invitation To The Boss's Ball has won the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Harlequin Romance of 2009!




Great news to spur me on while I struggle with my revsions. I'm a visual thinker, and find it helpful if I can 'see' my story structure. Post-it notes are my best friends. But in an attempt to get my head round my current story, my desk is looking like a scene from Bruce Almighty. Well, sort of...

And it'll probably get worse before it gets better.

Romance Prize 2009

Finally I can let the cat out of the bag and tell you that I've made the shortlist for the RNA's Romance Prize again this year!

Here's the full press release, including the shortlist:

The Romantic Novelists’ Association, who will announce the shortlist for the Romantic Novel of the Year award on 13th January, is also honouring writers of shorter romances such as those published by Harlequin Mills and Boon.

“Although both awards celebrate novels with a high romantic content,” explains Catherine Jones, Chairman of the RNA, “the Romance Prize honours the most memorable stories set around a single theme that concentrates on the developing love affair.”

The Romance Prize will be presented at the RNA’s Awards Lunch on 10th February 2009 at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington. The winner will be selected from the following books:

What's Love Got to Do With It? - Lucy Broadbent (Little Black Dress, Headline)
The Wild Card - Beth Elliott (Robert Hale)
Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure - India Grey (Harlequin Mills & Boon)
Sold to the Highest Bidder - Kate Hardy (Harlequin Mills & Boon)
Saying Yes to the Millionaire - Fiona Harper (Harlequin Mills & Boon)
Promoted to Wife and Mother - Jessica Hart (Harlequin Mills & Boon)

Fiona Harper has been short-listed before, and both Jessica Hart and Kate Hardy are past winners. Kate Hardy, who won in 2008 with Breakfast at Giovanni’s, had this to say: "Winning the Romance Prize has been the highlight of my career to date, and it's certainly opened up opportunities. I'm very proud to have won the award and to be part of the RNA - and have been delighted by messages of support over the year. I even had a personal letter of congratulations from the chancellor of the University of Leicester!"

The shortlist will be judged by Margaret James, creative writing teacher for the London School of Journalism and regular columnist with Writing Magazine; Paul Reizin, writer, producer and journalist; and Linda Leatherbarrow, prize-winning short story writer, reviewer and MA lecturer at Middlesex.

Margaret James, a member of the RNA for 20 years with 13 published novels to her credit and a former organiser of the Romance Prize and the New Writers’ Scheme, says it’s a delight to be involved in the judging. “I'm finding the shortlisted novels are perfect reading treats for these cold winter evenings, and I know that choosing a winner is going to be very hard.”

Former journalist and TV producer Paul Reizin is the author of three comic novels and a memoir of his life in the lonely hearts, Date Expectations - the true story of how he met his wife. Reizin says: “Romantic fiction is generally thought to be a female preserve, so in helping judge the 2009 Romance Prize, it’s particularly nice to be asked to provide a male perspective.”

Linda Leatherbarrow’s story collection Essential Kit was published by Maia in 2004. She has won a Bridport Prize, an Asham Award and is a three time winner of the London Writers Competition. Her stories have been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Linda says: “I was delighted to be asked to judge this prize and look forward very much to meeting the short-listed authors.”


Now, do I read the ones on the shortlist I haven't read yet and continue to scare myself silly before the ceremony on 10th Feb, or do I bury my head in the sand and remain blissfully ignorant?

Anyway, congratulations to all the other authors on the shortlist and I look forward to saying hello to you all on the day!

RNA Awards Lunch

Yesterday was the RNA’s Award Luncheon at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. Me? Nervous? Pah! Okay, I woke up at 2am and couldn’t sleep properly after that! Are you satisfied?

I decided to drag my lovely husband along for support. I think he was secretly terrified by the thought of a couple of hundred romantic novelists in one room, but he managed not to freak out too badly. It was also very handy to have someone who I could order to a) hold my handbag/glass of champers/ cardigan for a minute b) take photographs when I was feeling too nervous to do so and c) give me a cuddle when I got too hyper.

I arrived at the hotel with plenty of time to find friends and chat, and the first people I bumped into were Ray-Anne (in the Ladies!), my editor and the lovely Kate Hardy, who has always accused me of being a bad influence on her. Kate claims I made her buy a PDA, but all I really did was blog about mine. It's not my fault she had to have one too. But has now has got her own back and introduced me to Radley handbags. I whined very hard when my last royalties cheque arrived until hubby let me order one I fell in love with.

After a glass or two of champagne, all the shortlisted authors for the Romance Prize were herded (yes, that was the actual term used) into a stairwell for a photo call with some of our editors. We all look pretty pleased with ourselves, don’t we? Top row: Fiona Harper, Lucy Gordon, Joanne Carr, Maddie Rowe. Middle row: Kim Young (my lovely editor), Liz Fielding, Bryony Green, Julie Cohen. Front row: Sheila Hodgson and Kate Hardy.

By the time we returned it was time to take our seats in the dining room. The tables were decorated with dark red and silver balloons, anchored down by a bundle of some of the shortlisted books for both the Romance Prize and the Romantic Novel of the Year. Somehow, I managed to come home with a copy of Freya North’s ‘Pillow Talk’. Can’t imagine how that worked its way into my (Radley) handbag!

This year the lunch had a new high tech element. Large video screens playing swish graphics were placed round the room, featuring animated RNA logos, quotes from various celebs about romantic fiction and covers of the shortlisted books. I was determined to take a short video on my digital camera of my book covers sweeping past. Unfortunately, I always seemed to be talking at the moment the Romance Prize covers whizzed by. Randall Toye, visiting from Harelquin's offices in Toronto said to me, “You’d be awful as a paparazzi photographer, wouldn’t you?”. I had to laugh. “Yes,” I said. “I might be better at talking than I am at taking photos, but I have one thing in my favour – I’m persistent!” My determination worked in the end and I got it eventually! I'd upload it, but Blogger is being uncooperative!

Lunch was yummy, and I even forgot to be nervous for a while as I ate my cumin-roasted tomato soup, guinea fowl with port wine jus, confit cabbage cake (tastes better than it sounds) and fondant potato. And when I say potato, I mean potato – there was just the one, sitting there looking all lonely on the plate. Dessert was mulled wine soufflé with plum ice cream. Stupidly, I hadn’t looked at the order of events in the programme and hadn’t realised they were doing the Romance Prize first. At the previous two lunches I'd been to, they’d presented the Betty Neels rose bowl after the Romantic Novel of the Year has been announced. Suddenly, Trisha Ashley (Romance Prize judge) was standing at the microphone summing up our books and my poor little heart started doing an Irish jig. I managed to capture a bit of the judges' comments on my camera – just as well, because there was no way I was going to remember it – but unfortunately didn’t have enough memory to get the whole speech. I was particularly pleased that they said of English Lord, Ordinary Lady that: "...the heroine's relationship with her small daughter is particularly beautifully portrayed, and this well-crafted novel is a lovely read, with both humour and sadness."

I was still grinning when they announced the winner, who was…KATE HARDY for her book Breakfast at Giovanni’s. Kate is so lovely and was so thrilled, I just couldn’t sum up the wherewithal to be disappointed. I'm not looking too dejected in the photo on the right, am I? And, got to tell you, I was kinda relieved I didn’t have to make a speech, because I was all over the place and bound not to make any sense at all. In fact, all the ladies on the shortlist are lovely and write great books, so I would have been happy for whoever won. I know it sounds very saintly to say that, but it’s true, so pass me my halo – NOW! Losing to Kate was much better than not getting a RITA last year – after that ceremony I was just jetlagged, homesick and completely out of adrenaline. I’m still chuffed for having two books on the shortlist for this prize.

Helen Lederer, comedienne and aspiring novelist as the speaker and had the whole room in stitches. The only bit I remember enough to tell you about was when she quipped about a yummy man phoning her up and asking her to have a dirty weekend in Paris. Everything went silent. “Have I shocked you?” he finally asked. “God, no!” she replied. “I was just packing…”

It was time for the winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year to be announced and it was… Freya North for Pillow Talk (on the left in the picture above, with Helen Lederer on the right). Will be reading my snaffled copy shortly (hee, hee). Once the festivities were over, it was time to catch up with old friends (that's me and Liz Fielding in the pic), meet new ones and enjoy the fact that all the nail-biting was over and I could just look forward to the M&B centenary party on Thursday.

Hubby and I wended our way home on the train, he with a big Mac (one potato, remember!) and me with a smile on my face. Some days I just love being a romance writer.

Finally!

It’s almost time to give my trophy back. Last May I received the RNA’s Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Award for my first book, Blind-Date Marriage. As well as the huge confidence boost and the prize money, I got to keep a lovely little silver trophy for the year. And finally I have somewhere nice to display it! A couple of days ago, we had a fireplace put in and now I have a mantelpiece! Look!

The trophy looks a bit titchy, but I don’t care. It’ll have a place of honour for the next few days until I have to package it up and send it back to the RNA in preparation for the next recipient.

For a list of contenders, check here.