Blogmania

Today's going to be busy! I'm holding down the day job, demolition at the house and not one, not two but THREE blog posts (including this one!).

Over at We Love YA right now, I'm talking about teen idols. Later today, my inaugural post at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood goes up. I'm talking about the Golden Heart and whether or not you should enter a "controversial" manuscript. I'd love your opinions, so please come over and visit me!

Annie West sent me this link about Harlequin Teen partnering up with the ABC Family TV channel in the US. So far, four Harlequin Teen books are slated to tie in with episodes of the Greek series.

Put On Your Red Shoes!

The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood (aka the 2009 Golden Heart finalists) blog has landed! Come and celebrate our launch, which was cleverly timed to coincide with the day entries for the 2010 Golden Heart opened. We've got goodies to give away and a grand prize of critiques.

Guest-Blogging at RWAustralia

Romance Writers of Australia has put out the welcome mat for me at their official blog. I'm blogging today about my whirlwind Golden Heart experience.

Writing Contest

Hey, I'm back from Washington, DC, where I was up for a Golden Heart Award for best unpubbed YA manuscript. Big congrats to lovely Shoshana Brown, who won our category!

I'm still dreadfully jet-lagged and will some day blog about my experience o/s (hopefully before it gets lost in my sieve-like brain). But to prove the whole thing wasn't a dream, Joanne Lockyer sent me this photo taken on the awards night. (That's the brilliant Simone Elkeles on stage announcing my name.)



A new writing competition just opened for Australian writers. The prize is a book deal with Scribe Publications + $12,000. The catch/es - the entrant has to be 35 or over (refreshing!) and the book must not be under consideration by any other publishers or contests. An entry form and more info can be found here.

Things to Come

On Friday, July 10 at the We Love YA blog, some of my fellow YA finalists in the 2009 Golden Heart Awards are popping by to talk about their nominated manuscripts. Leave a comment over at We Love YA for your chance to win a copy of HEARTBREAK RIVER, by 2007 GH winner Tricia Mills (aka Trish Milburn). Trish had the happy task of ringing each of us back in March to tell us we had finaled.

One of my dear critique partners, Stephanie Kuehnert, is gearing up for this month's release of her sophomore book, BALLADS OF SUBURBIA. In this powerful story, the main character, Kara struggles to find a way to cope when her family breaks down and friendships go awry. Steph has a very personal story to tell about what inspired her to write the book here.

And in other news...
One of my other dear CPs, Anna Campbell, features in the Sunday Telegraph's Sunday Magazine supplement today. The article talks about how romance novels are back in fashion and that the women who write them aren't stereotypical, champagne-swilling, bon-bon-eating, feather-boa-wearing hacks. (Although, I'm partial to champagne and chocolate, so the cliche is not far off in my case.) They're smart, savvy, and enthralling millions of readers. Overall, it's a nice article that acknowledges the good work of our nation's internationally bestselling romance authors.

Gold Rush!

I am having a very shiny, golden birthday week. The lovely Trish Milburn phoned me at work this morning with the amazing news that I'm a Golden Heart finalist for best unpublished manuscript in the YA category. (Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!)

If you followed this post on my postal debacle, you'll understand how much this means to me. Without my dad backing me up, my entry might not have made it to the RWA office in time, so to be among the finalists after all that drama is surreal.

Congratulations to my fellow finalists in the YA field: Amanda Brice, Elizabeth C. Langston, Addison Fox and Shoshana Dawn Brown. I'm told we're all in for a golden ride until the awards ceremony in July. I'll be saving all my gold coins so I can make it to Washington, DC.

I'm also soooo happy that my good friends Christine Wells (Historical) and Tina Ferraro (YA) have finalled in the RITA Award for published authors. Both of these mega talents so deserve to be recognised.

What's your good news for the week?

Please, Mr Postman, Where Are My Golden Heart Entries?

The Golden Heart contest is one of the most important for unpublished romance writers. Each year, the organisers receive about 1,000 entries in 10 different categories. These are whittled down to 100 entries. Acquiring editors at publishing houses judge the finalists, and the winners are announced at a ceremony often dubbed the Oscars for romance writers. In this contest, though, winning isn't everything--many past finalists have gone on to publication as a result of the comp.

This year, I entered two YA manuscripts. I forked out over 200 bucks in entry, stationery and postage fees. ("I'm stimulating the economy," I assured myself.) I airmailed the mss from Australia to the US on November 15. Usually, it takes up to seven days for mail to reach its destination. Plenty of time, I thought, to meet the December 2 deadline. If entries don't make it to RWA's Texas office by then, they're disqualified.

But yesterday, day 14 after mailing, I realised it wasn't looking good for my entries. They still haven't made it. How can this be? Did they get chucked into the seamail postbox instead of the airmail one? Did the plane's pilot make a detour in Tahiti and decide to stay? Or maybe a disgruntled postal worker delivered the mail to the garbage dump.

Ironically, the same thing happened to me about a month ago, when I had to snail-mail my final-round entry for the Golden Pen Award. The preliminary round in that comp is judged by Golden Heart finalists/winners. Somewhere, somehow, my mail went astray.

Whatever the reason, I had to take action this time.

Or rather, my dad did.

He lives in America, so he told me to email my entries and he'd take care of the rest. Despite sore, arthritic fingers and crippling back pain, he stayed up till the early hours of this morning, printed out a whole pine tree's worth of manuscript pages, collated and bound them, burnt my full mss to disks, and sent them off by FedEx. Three cheers for Dad!

Now getting to the final round in the GH means more than ever. It's one way to pay Dad back for helping me out so readily.