It is with great delight and much cyber-squeeing that we congratulate our own Trish Morey on her 2012 RITA final with her novella, THE STORM WITHIN!

The RITAs are the Romance Writers of America's award honouring romance fiction published in 2011.  According to the RWAmerica website, more than 1,200 novels and novellas were judged in twelve categories in 2011.

Hence, the excitement!

If you aren't familiar with the RITAs, think the Oscars of published romance.  

It's kinda huge.  

Head over to Trish's blog to hear her final "call story", wherein a family member is sure that early-morning calls must be telemarketers and not heralds of great news from RWAmerica...

Here's the cover of the book you need to get your hands on, in the US Presents version:

And the Australian/NZ/UK Version, titled A Royal Wedding:

From Trish's blog:
I loved writing this story, a dark little Gothic number with a scarred Count living in a crumbling castle atop a craggy island riddled with old pirate tunnels and lashed by storms. What a setting! So much fun to be had when this reclusive Count is shattered out of his contempt for the world by Dr Grace Hunter,  a young and talented conservator. I am so thrilled to bits that this story has finalled in such a prestigious contest.

Huge congratulations to Trish!

Lillian Grant's Siren BookStrand release Speak To Me of Abduction recently received an awesome 4.5 stars out of 5 review from BookWenches.  

Here's a snippet:

If you are looking for a story featuring a little bit of glamour, a fair share of danger, and love scenes that are hot enough to make you squirm, then I recommend you give Speak to Me of Abduction a shot. Ms. Grant has penned a very readable, enjoyable story here. And if you enjoyed these characters, you’ll be happy to know that Ms. Grant has just released Jonathan’s story. I can’t wait to see what kind of situation he finds himself in next.


Read the full review at the July reviews page at BookWenches.

Amy T Matthews' End Of The Night Girl was very favourably reviewed by Gillian Dooley on Writer's Radio/Radio Adelaide.  

'I can see I'm going to have trouble reining in the superlatives for this review. How can anyone
complain about the state of Australian fiction when novels like Amy Matthews' End of the Night Girl are being written, winning awards and getting published? Let's just hope they're also being bought and read widely, and will find their way onto curricula in universities - because novels like this have limitless capacity for stimulating deep thought and intelligent discussion.
End of the Night Girl is a novel of ideas in the best possible sense. It's a
novel that asks questions it doesn't know how to answer about the most profound issues humans have ever faced.
It's also witty, dry, unsentimental and sharply observed.'

This year, the Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) celebrates it's 20th anniversary.  To commemorate this occasion and just to generally party, The RWA held 20 Years of Romance Covers contest.

We're very pleased to announce that two of our members made the top fifteen!  

Trish Morey (THE STORM WITHIN, in A Royal Wedding) and Tamara Gill (A Captain's Order, A Duke's Command) will now have to wait until the RWA 20th Annual Conference "From Here to Eternity" to see if they took out the top spot--the best cover of the last 20 years.  

Congratulations, everyone!

Here's another cover from Trish -- this one for the April 15th UK release of Royal Wedding, an anthology featuring The Storm Within.  Trish's contribution features 'a dark, scarred Count living in self imposed exile in his island castle, that is, until an unassuming conservator comes calling.' 

What a gorgeous colour that blue is.  Makes me feel like donning a sarong, grabbing a drink with a little umbrella in it and running to the nearest sun lounger.  If that weren't encouragement enough, there's also cover sparkle!  

Congrats again, Trish.