The Australian Romance Readers Awards dinner last night was a wonderful night – beautiful venue, great food, fantastic company, smooth organisation – I had a fantastic time!
And to top it all, I came away with this:
A huge thank you to the ARRA members who voted for Dark Country, to the ARRA committee who organised the awards, the award sponsors, and to everyone who was there to share a special night with!
There’s been a lot of activity on romance blogs and networks the past couple of days. The annual Romance Writers of America conference will be on in the last week of July, with the gala Awards night on the 31st. The conference is huge – about 2000 writers, publishers and agents, hundreds of workshops, many booksignings (including the huge 550 author Literacy signing), and countless meetings and other events. It was to have been held at the amazing Gaylord Opryland resort near Nashville, Tennessee… but last weekend, Nashville and surrounding areas received 13+ inches of rain over two days. There hasn’t been much on the Australian media about it, but most of Nashville, including the Gaylord, was flooded, with heart-breaking loss of life and damage to property and livelihoods.
By Tuesday morning, Australian time, the Cumberland River hadn’t quite peaked, but it was already clear that the damage to the Gaylord would render it – along with many, many other business in Nashville – out of action for months. I’d like to give many kudos to the Gaylord staff, for notifying RWA members so promptly of the necessary cancellation, even while many of them must have been struggling with the personal effects of the flooding. And huge kudos to RWA staff and Board, who faced the daunting task of finding an alternative venue for a huge conference in less than three months, with special requirements – when such venues are usually booked years ahead. I’m sure they haven’t had much sleep!
Less than forty-eight hours after being notified of the Gaylord damage, RWA has announced this morning that they have secured an alternative venue – the conference will be held at the The Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida. The quick notification of the new venue will enable conference attendees to make new arrangements more easily. I’m sure that there’s still a lot of work ahead for the RWA Board and staff and the resort staff in adapting existing plans to the new venue and arranging the many requirements for a conference such as this – a years’ work pushed into less than 3 months will be a challenge – but the RWA staff and Board have done a fantastic job in dealing with the situation already.
Am I going to the conference? My chance of going is quite slim, but I’m still clutching on to the sliver of hope. It’s a huge thing to be a RITA finalist, and I’d love to be there at the awards night. But I can’t go unless the aneurism is stabilised, and I can’t have the next procedure for it until the blood clot is gone… I’ll be seeing the neurosurgeon the week after next, and having an ultrasound to check the blood clot status about then. If it’s clear, and if the neurosurgeon is happy to go ahead with the occlusion, and if it can be scheduled quickly, and if I come through the procedure without complications… then I might be able to go to Orlando – assuming that I can find the $$!!
So, it will be a long wait before I know if I’m going or not. In the meantime, my thoughts are with all those affected by the flood devastation in Tennessee and surrounds, and my appreciation goes to the RWA Board and staff for the tremendous efforts in reorganising the conference.
One of the things I love about living out in the bush is the wildlife we frequently see. We have 100 acres of mostly regrowth eucalypt forest, and we’re in the midst of much, much larger grazing properties, with the gorge country not far away. Kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos are around almost all the time; we frequently see echidnas and possums, and the regular birdlife includes choughs, magpies, fairy wrens, tiny firetails, rosellas, kookaburras, wedge-tailed eagles, and tawny frogmouths.
Most of the native wildlife is nocturnal, though, so we often wonder about what we don’t see, or see only rarely – like koalas, dingoes and feather gliders…
Our dogs spend each night in the dog ‘run’ – a large fenced area, about 25 metres by 25 metres (yes, bigger than the average house block!) There are plenty of trees in the run, and it’s surrounded by trees. The dogs often bark at night creatures, and every now and then a possum spends the night up one of ‘their’ trees, having wandered into the run during the evening when the dogs aren’t there. (A few weeks back, we rescued a baby possum, huddled on top of a fence post; we took it to a tree outside the run, which it scampered up quickly!)
On Tuesday morning, when Gordon went to take the dogs for their morning walk, they were interested in the occupant of a tree on the edge of the run. This is one of Gordon’s photos:
No, it’s not a possum (Australian possums are cuter than North American ones). We’ve never seen one of these before, and had to check on the internet… it’s a spotted quoll, a carnivorous marsupial, native to Australia and a threatened species. It scampered off to somewhere safer while Gordon and the dogs were out for their morning run – we don’t know if it lives locally, or if its territory is further away – apparently they can roam about 6 kilometres in a night.
Maybe we should go out spotlighting at night some time, and see what else is living in the bush with us!
The Australian Romance Readers Awards dinner will be on in Sydney on May 15th, with Nalini Singh the special guest speaker. There are still tickets available – and you don’t have to be an ARRA member to attend. (But why not join, anyway? Membership is only $10, and great value!)
I’m going, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Dark Country is a finalist in the Romantic Suspense category, and I am a finalist in the Favourite Australian Author category. There’s plenty of other wonderful books and authors in all the categories, though, so the real winners are the readers, with so many great books to choose from! The Awards are voted on by ARRA members, and I am honoured to be a finalist. But more than the awards, I’m looking forward to meeting up with readers, and celebrating books over dinner in great company. It’s bound to be a wonderful night, so if you’re in Sydney or able to come to Sydney, do hop over to the ARRA website and book your ticket now!
Over I went to the Random Number Generator this evening, and asked it for the four winning numbers for my celebration giveaway. It picked:
So the two winners, who each win a signed copy of the UK editions of both my books are:
entrant number 5 – Jo Bryan, and
entrant number 15 – Pam Payne
The two runners up, who each win a signed copy of Dark Country, are:
entrant number 20 – Susan Atwood, and
entrant number 1 – Erika Kemp
Congratulations to all four winners – I’ll be sending you an email this evening! And thank you to everyone who entered – I’m just sorry I don’t have more books to giveaway!
