Harlequin author Paula Roe talked to an audience of romance readers and aspiring writers at Penrith Library about the glamorous life of a romance author, from royalties to rolling over in Russia, before taking questions. And we had a LOT of questions.

This is not a word-for-word transcript of everything Paula said. I had to paraphrase and summarise just to keep up, but I tried to keep the spirit of what she said. Any mistakes are mine.

Paula started off with a few facts about the genre. Romance is the largest selling fictional genre in the world. Australia doesn’t keep many statistics, so we have to rely on the American figures. There were 9000 romances released in 2009, and readers spent $1.3 billion on them.

Harlequin Enterprises is largest romance publisher in the world, releasing 110 books per month in 28 languages over 106 continents.

Why is romance so popular?

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Somehow, a vampire snuck into my Blaze. I am so outraged. An open letter to Mills & Boon.

Dear Mills & Boon,

I heart your category romances; you know I do. I love some of your authors like a sheikh loves his billions.

But Harlequin, we have a problem.

Last week, I had nothing to read, so I decided to open one of the many ebooks sitting in my Reader, waiting for just this moment: the in-between TBRs decision dilemma*. I had a bunch of titles from Mills & Boon’s Everyone’s Reading website. I was surfacing from a historical romance binge, so I was eager to get into Kimberly Raye’s Cody.

I didn’t read the blurb when I downloaded the ebook. It was a Blaze. I thought it would be safe to assume a few things about the book.

When I open a Blaze, I expect a contemporary story with a bit of drama, a bit of humour and, more often than not, urban lifestyle issues. I can usually relate to the characters’ conflicts, secrets and insecurities.

But this one? The first page is set some time after the US Civil War. And the hero? Well, he’s a vampire. Yes, a freaking vampire!

Let me take a deep breath and calm down, because…

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Ultimo Library put together a panel with a good cross-section of the romance community represented by romance author Annie West, academic Sandra Barletta and reader-blogger Kat, moderated by librarian Vassiliki Veros, to talk about why they love to write, read and discuss romance.

First, the disclaimer: I’m not fast enough to have been able to type everything that was said precisely word for word, so this is a slightly paraphrased transcript as I tried to keep up. I made an effort to get everything that was said in its context, but any mistakes are mine.

When I arrived there were glasses of pink lemonade and mini pink cupcakes, but I couldn’t resist an adorable chocolate mini cupcake with cute little red and pink hearts on top of the chocolate icing. Pairs of books bundled together with curly, shiny ribbon called from a nearby counter.

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Join us for a night of sex, love and passion. And, of course, plenty of books.

I’ve been very remiss in not announcing this sooner, but on Friday I’ll be at Ultimo Panel talking about—what else?—romance books. A great way to start the Valentine’s weekend, no?

Sex, Love and Passion — The appeal of romance novels

Kick off your Friday night talking about Sex, Passion and Love with our romance panel discussion. Join Mills and Boon author Annie West, romance scholar Sandra Barletta and book blogger, Kat Mayo along with Ultimo’s romance reading librarians in discussing romance fiction in the 21st century.

Love, passion and romance have inspired authors throughout the ages from Homer to Shakespeare, Jane Austen to Nora Roberts. Whether you go for Mr Darcy, Vampire Love, or cougars on the prowl, join our readers for a night of Happily Ever After. A free romance book will be provided on the night.

Friday 11 February
6.00pm for 6.15pm
Ultimo Library
Telephone: 9298 3110

Bookings essential
Free event

You can find more details on the City of Sydney website. The panel will be moderated by the lovely @VaVeros.

I’ve heard that the event is heavily booked, so if you’re interested in coming along make sure you give the library a call.

Let me know if you’re coming along and if there’s anything in particular you’d like to talk about!

Wandergurl’s recommended reads from 2010 and a self-imposed challenge to conquer her TBR pile.

Book picks for 2010

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne

Effectively the prequel to The Spymaster’s Lady, this equally wonderfully written novel is about ‘Maggie and Doyle’. Marguerite de Fleurignac, a French noblewoman, encounters William Doyle in her burnt out chateau. They both pretend to be people they are not, as she is trying to desperately smuggle out people during the revolution and he is an English spy looking for her father. The romance is lush and lovely, the spy plot moves around nicely, and I was kept captivated. Highly recommended.

Feet of the Chameleon by Ian Hawkey

This is a largely anecdotal history of modern African football and how it has shaped various countries’ political histories. I read this book during the football (soccer) world cup while in Africa so it was especially poignant. It explained a lot of things that were interesting to me, and would be interesting for anyone with an interest in Africa, its people and its history.

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HeartMate by Robin D. Owens (Celta's HeartMates, Book 1)

A well crafted book that will appeal to fans of Jayne Castle’s series. Just ignore the attack of the apostrophes.

Rand T’Ash is a member of one of the Great Families on the planet of Celta, colonised by the people of Earth many years ago during a search to find a suitable location to develop their psychic gifts. Formerly a street rat he is now a respected nobleman with a talent for shaping stones. He has crafted a necklace as a HeartGift, as is customary in their culture, for his HeartMate, the woman who is destined to be his. Danith Mallow walks into his shop one day and is drawn to the necklace, but after some alpha grunt-type discussion and a bit of chaos caused by other customers, she leaves, and T’Ash has to find her and somehow convince her that they are destined to be together. Thus the story and the apostrophes begin.

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Decadence, Wandergurl and I read many more books than we’re capable of reviewing on this blog. This means that not all the review copies we get or the library books we borrow are mentioned on the blog. This is a shame! Some of the books we get have the most interesting blurbs … but for some reason they just don’t appeal to us or we don’t end up reading far enough into the book to be able to write up a decent review.

So this year, we’ll be doing a monthly post highlighting the review copies we receive, notable media releases we get via email, with the occasional borrowed or gifted books thrown in, in case other readers might find them of interest. The plan is to post every third Monday of the month. That’s the plan. You know how well we’ve managed to follow a blogging schedule thus far… *ho hum*

Authors for Queensland

Today is your last day to bid on the items up for auction at Authors for Queensland, an initiative by authors who are aiming to raise funds for victims of the Queensland floods. Romance readers may be particularly interested in signed book packs by Anna Campbell or Bronwyn Parry. Even more fun is Nikki Logan’s offer to use your (or a friend’s) name as the hero/heroine of her next romance book!

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ARRA has released the draft program for the Australian Romance Readers Convention in Sydney this year. Click here for a list of ARRC11 posts.

The program includes some of the favourites from the 2009 convention, including ‘This One Time’ and a repeat with different panellists, ‘This Other Time’. I didn’t attend the session in 2009, but I heard it was a total riot. Anna Campbell, Nalini Singh and Cindy Gerard are the keynote speakers, and Helene Young will be launching her new book. Subgenre panels include paranormal romance, historical romance, category romance, romantic suspense, outback romance (‘rural lit’), erotica and sff romance. There’s also a panel showcasing up and coming authors and a publishing panel.

It’s a cracking good line-up with one big problem: How the hell are we supposed to choose which panels to attend?

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Kat’s favourite books of 2010. Oh, and look! It’s just in time for the Australian Romance Readers Awards nominations.

I wasn’t going to post a best-of list for 2010, simply because it takes me ages and causes a lot of internal angst. But the nominations have opened for the 2010 Australian Romance Readers Awards, and I thought I’d use the nomination form as my best-of list. I’ve included the rules, for the curious.

Favourite Paranormal Romance

1. Play of Passion by Nalini Singh
2. First Drop of Crimson by Jeanine Frost
3. Lover Mine by J. R. Ward

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Decadence looks back at the books that highlighted her 2010 reading year.

If I had to sum up 2010 in one word as a reading year, it would have to be growth. I read a total of 80 books, which is the most books I’ve read in a year since I started recording them in a spreadsheet in 2007. I read an average of almost 7 books a month and doubled the number of new authors I’ve read from 15 in 2009 to 30 in 2010. I reread 11 books and have 201 books in my TBR.

My best reading month was December with 12 books, and 3 books makes February my worst reading month. I began 2010 with Salvation in Death by JD Robb and ended the year with Bloody Valentine by Melissa de la Cruz.

Genres

The numbers are a bit funny, partly because quite a few of my books cross genres (e.g. some of my paranormal reads were also YA, which is how I classified them).

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