Breaking news, look at the RITA 2009 finalist list
Holy Cow look who made the 2009 RITA Finalists for Paranormal Romance
The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter
Harlequin Enterprises, HQN (ISBN: 0373772467)
Tracy Farrell and Margo Lipschultz, editors
The Healer by Sharon Sala
Harlequin Enterprises, HQN (ISBN: 978-0-778-2544-4)
Leslie Wainger, editor
If for some unknown reason you don’t know what the RITA Awards are all about: Romance Writers of America biggest awards!!!
RITA awards are presented annually to the best published romance novels of the year. The award itself is a golden statuette named after RWA’s first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and has become the symbol for the best in published romance fiction.
Oklahoma v. Texas in our Hearts
What’s the deal with all the Oklahoma Romance Writers putting Texans or Texas in their books (and titles). Ok, I know it’s a big state with a big ego and probably any romance reader from there is going to jump at an opportunity to read anything with Texas in it. But give those Okie boys a chance.
Georgina Gentry has a whole series: To Love a Texan, To Tame a Texan, To Tease a Texan, To Tempt a Texanvand finally, To Wed a Texan.
Not bad looking I concede.
And there’s plenty of single titles with those Texans. Carol Finch’s Texas Angel. Please there are no Texas Angels. An
d Gina Robins’ Texas Temptation. Lisa Wingate is Texas Cooking. Peggy Moreland has Slow Waltz Across Texas and even Merline Lovelace has Texas Hero and Texas …Now and Forever.
And standing lonely on the bookshelf I found the Oklahoma Man by Delayne (Deborah) Camp. Come on Okie writers of the romatic, give those Okie boys a chance.
Not feeling the romance…
Romance, Valentine’s Day, Bah Humbug. Nothing like working at your husband’s flower shop on the “love” holiday to put you out of the romantic mood. Late hours, endless phone calls, desperate boyfriends and spouses trying to get in their last minute order. He’s promised me sushi and wine to keep me going. I happened to look at the newspaper at the shop and saw an article by Sonya Colberg of NewsOK about our own ladies of Romance. (And I’m glad it hasn’t been very long ago that I pointed out the funny videos by Jill Monroe, Gina Showalter and Merline Lovelace.)
So while I’m trying to get myself through another year of frenetic shopping by guys buying for their special honey, you might want to pick up one of the titles from these spinners of the romantic tale and get in the mood yourself. I’ll have to catch up with you when I get these customers moved along.
Oklahoma Romance Writers or OK-RWA
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
Back to the Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry certainly knows how to evoke setting, Salem comes alive, today and Salem of the witch hunts. Women and needlework, the telling of our stories, lacemaking comes front and center in the lives, secrets and betrayals of this New England family and those whom they touch.
In a library book I picked up, Lace: The Elegant Veil by Janine Montupet and Ghislaine Schoeller, it states the first American lacemaking center was located in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a town founded by colonists in 1634. These colonists came from places in England, where bobbin lace was made and so brought their craft to America. Needlework was the bridge between the past and the new future. The ladies on Yellow Dog Island, use the lace to remake their lives, to forget the past and accept a new future.
The Lace Reader is a wild mix of a story; mystery, historical, fortune-telling by lace, romance, abuse, religious zealots, family secrets and recovery. Narrative changes tense and people with frequency. The end sweeps the reader along like the tide, pulling and pushing the reader with it.
Occasionally its seems too much, like everything has to be included or lost, it does have plenty of surprises along the way but like gazing through the lace some characters lose definition. However I think it’s worth the read, and would recommend picking it up, and I would certainly read the next one, since Barry intends to make this a trilogy.
Reading, T.G. & Y. and Romance
I believe in reading, not just the truly important works, or the socially significant ones, just the action of reading. So as I write in this blog sometimes you will just get titles or authors I’ve just picked up and read. My grandmother used to read westerns, I mean boxes of westerns, she and the next door neighbor ( a long distance truck driver) would swap them by the boxes full. So whenever I would go down to the T.G. & Y. (an earlier Oklahoma Walmart type store, where I spent a great deal of my childhood), 
Gran would say get me a few. While I was there I usually picked up some comics for myself as well, or a paperback or two. And so I just read, it’s hereditary and learned behavior. Not every book I mention will you want to read, some I’ll really go on about, some mention in passing.
Just read and the good will come to the top, the bad will be easily forgotten and you’ll enjoy yourself along the way.
P.S. Just finished a Jane Ann Krentz, romance lovers you can’t go wrong with her books. AKA Amanda Quick and Jayne Castle.
