Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball, from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Art by John Leech.
This has been an amazing year, seeing a book through production (at last!). Your patience and understanding and your words of encouragement and support keep me inspired and keep me going. These are wonderful gifts. Thank you!
I hope that your holidays, in whatever form they take, are joyous.
So there are these long stretches of time when you don’t hear from me . . . and then I inundate you. This ought to be the last one for a while at least.
Our most recent Two Nerdy History Girls chat is now online. You can watch it on YouTube here.
Susan Holloway Scott and I had a wonderful time—again—chatting with Meena Jain and readers about nerdy historical matters. We talked about 18th and 19th century travel quite a bit, and the dangers and discomforts thereof. I also mentioned a couple of nerdy history resources I’ve made frequent use of.
The Epicure’s Almanack: Eating and Drinking in Regency London, ed. Janet Ing Freeman. This is one of the books I might never have found on my own, so I’m grateful to author Candice Hern for calling my attention to it. If you don’t follow Candice on Facebook, you might want to start. She offers all kinds of fascinating historical material, including items from her amazing collection.
Paterson’s Roads (yes, that’s the correct spelling). Though I managed to get my hands on a crumbling 1830s edition, you will find many editions online. You can read an interesting blog post about it here at the Public Domain website.
Detail adapted from a kimono design in Yachigusa by Ueno, Seikō, 1901, Smithsonian Libraries colection
Meena Jain has very kindly invited the Two Nerdy History Girls for a return engagement on 17 June at 7pm.
She’s also invited me to join—this time in person—another cast of stellar authors for a RomCon in the spring.
Romancing New England RomCon 2024 - Romance Authors Festival at the Ashland Public Library, Ashland Massachusetts, on Saturday 18 May from 10-4pm
If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll attend. We have fewer opportunities to talk to readers in person these days, and Meena Jain and her team organize an especially enjoyable event.
More official posts will appear as we draw closer to the dates.
P.S. And for all the kind readers who signed up for this blog after the 2NHG chat: Due to deadline and then a flurry of catchup activity, combined with my own technological incompetence, I wasn’t able to update the subscribers list until today. Some of you may want to check out the blog post just before this one, wherein the fate of the third Difficult Dukes book is revealed.
A month ago, I invited readers to be judges in the New England Readers’ Choice Awards.
The contest is now open, and I’m inviting authors to enter their works.
Following is the invitation from the New England Romance Writers, of which organization I am a proud member and have been for many years.
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Welcome to the 2024 New England Readers’ Choice Awards contest for published authors, recognizing excellence in published romance fiction. Sponsored by New England Romance Writers, the NERCA contest is one of the few judged exclusively by fans: librarians, booksellers, and devoted romance readers.
This year, the grand prize winner of the New England Readers’ Choice contest will receive admission to Write Better Faster 101, offered by Becca Syme and Better-Faster Academy! The first, second, and third place winners in each category will receive a web badge, as well as a printed award certificate. Winners will be announced on the NERW website and on NERW’s social media accounts. Questions? Please contact contest@nerw.org.
CONTEST CATEGORIES
Contemporary Romance: Long (above 80K words)
Contemporary Romance: Short (40K-80K words)
Erotic Romance
Historical Romance
Paranormal/Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Time Travel Romance
Romance Novella (20-40K words)
Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements
Romantic Suspense
To Enter: Please visit the the contest entry page.
For more information, please follow this link. Or, you can email the contest coordinator at contest@nerw.org.
Please feel free to share this information.
