Huge congratulations to all the Romance Writers of America RITA and Golden Heart Award finalists, announced yesterday.

A special shout-out and extra WOOO-HOOO to the Down-Under contingent:
In the RITAs: Lilian Darcy, andBarbara Hannay in the Contemporary Series Romance category; Christine Wells in Regency Historical Romance; the amazing Stephanie Laurens finalling three times in different categories; and NZ’s Nalini Singh in the Paranormal Romance section. And in the Golden Heart, the contest for unpublished manuscripts, Vanessa Barneveld has finaled in the Young Adult category.

I think it’s fantastic that, despite our relatively small population, Australian (and NZ!) authors continue to do so well in these awards – the major international awards for the genre.

The RITA and Golden Heart winners will be announced at a gala event at the conclusion of the Romance Writers of America national conference in Washington, DC, in July.

I’ll be cheering on the Aussies in spirit at least, if not in person. I’m not sure just yet whether I’m going to DC or not this year – since my workshop proposal wasn’t accepted, and since As Darkness Falls didn’t make it to the RITA finals, I’ll need to decide whether I want to spend several thousand dollars to go to the conference. Okay, I do want to – no doubt about that – but I’ll have to work out whether that’s best use of the funds at this point, and whether it’s the most important thing to fit into an already busy year. I’m definitely going to the Australian conference in Brisbane in August, though!

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