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Congratulations to all the finalists for the 2012 R*BY awards!

Romance Writers of Australia has announced the finalists for the 2012 Romantic Book of the Year awards. The awards will be presented on Saturday, August 18, at the RWA national conference at the Gold Coast.

Short Sweet
Molly Cooper’s Dream Date by Barbara Hannay
How To Save a Marriage In a Million by Leonie Knight
Abby and The Bachelor Cop by Marion Lennox
Single Dad’s Triple Trouble by Fiona Lowe

Short Sexy
The Fearless Maverick by Robyn Grady
The Man She Loves to Hate by Kelly Hunter (Kat’s review)
The Wedding Charade by Melanie Milburne
Her Not-So-Secret-Diary by Anne Oliver

Long Romance
Midnight’s Wild Passion by Anna Campbell
Boomerang Bride by Fiona Lowe (Kat’s review)
The Best Laid Plans by Sarah Mayberry
The Voyagers by Mardi McConnochie

Romantic Elements
The Trader’s Wife by Anna Jacobs
The Shelly Beach Writers’ Group by June Loves
Busted In Bollywood by Nicola Marsh
Shattered Sky by Helene Young

Kate and Kat talk about their favourite Australian romance authors. Part 3 of a series of vodcasts for Aussie Author Month 2012.

So now we get to the fun part. In this next series of vodcasts, Kate and I talk about some of our favourite Australian romance authors, with some digression into our—okay, my—to-be-read pile.

We’ve grouped  our chats into romance subgenres and this first one is our favourite—historical romance. See if you can guess our favourite authors!

If you can’t see the video below, click here to view it directly on YouTube. It runs for just over 13 minutes.

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Thanks to romance author Anna Campbell, who first alerted me to GenreCon 2012, a three-day convention for writers of genre fiction. The event is an initiative of The Australian Writer’s Marketplace and will be held at the Rydges Parramatta from November 2 to 4.

Representing romance are Australian author Anna Campbell and romance reader advocate Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, who is also an author, marketing consultant and all-around social media butterfly.

The program isn’t available yet, so I can’t tell if there will be much for non-writing fans, but I’m hoping non-local guests will appear at the odd bookshop before or after the event. If not, I reckon we could try bribing Sarah with Tim Tams and koalas and high tea with scones and cucumber sandwiches and chocolate fountains…

To kick-off #AWW2012, I thought I’d post a list of reviews we’ve previously posted for books written by Australian women. I’ve included a short except from each review to give you an idea of what we thought of each book.

If you’re on Twitter, I’ll also be retweeting links to these reviews because, in the era of e-publishing, there’s no reason why you can’t grab a copy of their books and try them yourself! Click here for a full list of our #AWW2012 reviews.

Claiming The Courtesan by Anna Campbell

I’d be hard-pressed to recommend this book to someone I don’t know. If you have issues with forced seduction, you’re better off giving it a miss. But Campbell takes great risks in this book, and for that alone, I’d say try it—even if you have to buy it secondhand or borrow it from the library … or get a friend to read it first.

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Anna Campbell has once again been voted Favourite Australian Romance Author at the 2011 Australian Romance Readers Awards, held last night at Cello’s Restaurant in Sydney.

Campbell also retains her undefeated status in the Favourite Historical Romance section, the award going to her Avon Regency book Midnight’s Wild Passion. A representative from HarperCollins accepted the awards on Campbell’s behalf, reading a prepared acceptance speech that, in true Campbell style, had the audience smiling.

New Zealand author Nalini Singh picked up the most awards, winning  Favourite Sci-Fi, Fantasy or Futuristic Romance for Archangel’s Blade and Favourite Paranormal Romance for the much-anticipated Kiss of Snow, the latest book in the Psy/Changeling series, for which Singh was awarded the prize for Favourite Continuing Romance series for the third year in a row. Singh’s awards were received on her behalf by selected ARRA members. Singh had also pre-recorded her acceptance speech, which was shown to the audience after her final award was announced.

Helene Young (photo by Kat)

Shattered Sky was named Favourite Romantic Suspense. Queensland author Helene Young was the only winner who was able to personally accepted her award. Young’s next book, Burning Lies, with be released in July by Penguin Australia.

Australian authors Kelly Hunter and Denise Rossetti won Favourite Short Category Romance for With This Fling… (see Kat’s review here) and Favourite Erotic Romance for The Lone Warrior, respectively. Julie James won Favourite Contemporary Romance for A Lot Like Love.

The Member of the Year award when to Amy and the Bling Off culminated in a mini-parade, with authors Melissa Craig and Travey O’Hara sharing this year’s Queen of Bling title. They will be time-sharing the tiara.

Guest speaker Paula Roe spoke about the the books that shaped her love of romance reading and, eventually, led her to try her hand at writing romance fiction. Her passion and enthusiasm for the genre had the audience smiling, at times laughing, as she described some of the earlier novels she loved (and loved to read out loud to her friends in high school).

The annual Australian Romance Readers Awards are  managed by the Australian Romance Readers Association. Nominees are shortlisted from member nominations and winners are decided by popular vote among ARRA members.

The event was sponsored by Australian online bookshop Booktopia. The awards were sponsored by Galaxy Bookshop, Carina Press, Harlequin Australia, Rosemary’s Romance Books and Temptation the Romance Bookstore, Romantic Reflections, Romance Direct, Penguin Books Australia and Booktopia.

Check out the photos from the event via Flickr. I plan to write up a longer post on my observations from the night, so watch this space.

Helene Young giveaway winner

I just realised we never announced the winner of the Wings of Fear giveaway. Congratulations to Mary Preston who commented:

I would love to try Australian romantic suspense because it’s ours. The very essence of the book would be familiar, and this familiarity of location and turn of phrase would heighten the suspense for me. Romantic suspense I just adore for not being saccharin sweet.

Anna Campbell featured in The West Australian

The West Australian recently published an article, Aussies say love is king, by Alecia Hancock, featuring historical romance author Anna Campbell:

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Last weekend I went to Melbourne for the R*BY awards, but I thought I’d let you in on some of the things I heard and experienced which I think would be of interest to other readers. You can find all my photos on Flickr.

Anna Campbell now with Grand Central

Anna Campbell has changed US publishers. Her next book will be published with Grand Central, which is part of the Hachette group. She will still be published under HarperCollins in Australia. I had a chat with her about the Australian format for her books (C format, which costs about $30 retail), but I’m not sure if the change will have an impact on the Australian editions.

Dymocks trade stall

The trade stall by sponsor Dymocks (234 Collins St), managed by the lovely Helen, was fantastic. They arranged books in bookshelves and had couches and seating set up for browsing. It was lovely and cosy and so entirely appropriate for a romance convention.

Plenary session – Publishing panel

I heard separately from two people who attended the Saturday morning plenary session featuring representatives from various publishers. The impression I got was that the Australian (non-romance specialist) publishers were very reluctant to even say ‘romance’ and that they didn’t want to know who ends up with whom in the first page.

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Anna Campbell is one of Australia’s most beloved romance authors. She has won the Australian Romance Readers awards for Favourite Australian Author two years in a row, and for Favourite Historical Romance three years in a row. Stephanie Laurens coined the term ‘Regency noir’ to describe Anna’s debut novel, Claiming The Courtesan, a book which generated quite a bit of controversy among readers. Her latest book, Midnight’s Wild Passion, was released in May.

Website: www.annacampbell.info
Social networks: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
Genre: Regency historical romance
Latest release: Midnight’s Wild Passion

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My Reckless Surrender by Anna Campbell

Dramatic, thrilling and, yes, a little over the top—vintage Anna Campbell.

This is a modified version of the winning review in the ARRC2011 Reader Challenge. (Here’s a photo of Kat receiving the award.)

‘I want to be your lover.’

Diana Carrick presents the Earl of Ashcroft with an offer too good for a notorious rake to refuse. So when he declines, she doesn’t know whether to feel relief or despair. She’s made a bargain with the devil: a child in exchange for marriage to the man who controls  the estate in which Diana grew up and which she loves.

Tarquin Vale, Earl of Ashcroft, is intrigued by the mysterious proposition but senses a bit of, well, dodginess about the entire affair. But this is a romance, after all, and his willpower is no match for Diana’s allure. Ashcroft embodies that favourite of all historical romance heroes—the rake who’s not really a rake—with an added bonus of being powerful enough to vanquish villains.

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Today, the Australian Romance Readers Association confirmed that the 2011 readers’ convention will run from Friday, March 25 to Sunday, March 27 at the Swiss Grand, Bondi Beach.

Keynote speakers include Australian author Anna Campbell (historical romance), New Zealand author Nalini Singh (paranormal romance and urban fantasy) and US author Cindy Gerard (romantic suspense).

You can read more details about the keynote speakers at the ARRA blog.

I’M SO EXCITED! So … who’s coming to Sydney?