Category Archives: Announcement

Romance Writers of America (RWA), the trade association for published and aspiring romance fiction authors, announced the winners of the 2019 RITA^® Awards on Friday, July 26, at a black-tie awards ceremony at its 39th Annual Conference in New York New York.

The RITA^® Award is the highest award of distinction in romance fiction and recognizes outstanding published romance novels and novellas.

Up to 2,000 romance novels and novellas from 13 different categories are judged each year in the RITA^® competition. After the first round of judging by fellow published romance authors, the competition narrows to approximately 100 finalists. Then, final round judges, also published romance authors, select one winner in each category from among the finalists.

The 2019 RITA^® Award winners are:

Romance Novella: Bad Blood by M. Malone
Contemporary Romance Long: Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan
Young Adult Romance: My So-Called Bollywood Life by Nisha Sharma
Historical Romance Long: A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy
Romantic Suspense: Fearless by Elizabeth Dyer
Paranormal Romance: Dearest Ivie by J. R. Ward
Erotic Romance: Three-Way Split by Elia Winters
Historical Romance Short: A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen
Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements: The Saturday Night Supper Club by Carla Laureano
Contemporary Romance Short: The Bachelor’s Baby Surprise by Teri Wilson
Contemporary Romance Mid-length: Advanced Physical Chemistry by Susannah Nix
Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance: How to Keep a Secret by Sarah Morgan
Best First Book: Lady in Waiting by Marie Tremayne

The list of winners, along with author photos and book covers, can be found on the RWA website at https://www.rwa.org/Online/News/2019/RWA_Announces_2019_RITA_Winners.aspx.

You may have noticed an influx of newsletters from your favorite authors or sites which talk about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance concerning consent for email newsletter subscriptions. This also deals with how I store your information and how I use it.

I do not share the information you share with me when you sign up for my newsletter with anyone. You may unsubscribe at any time using the “unsubscribe” function at the bottom of every newsletter. I have implemented a two step verification in which you MUST give your consent to receive my newsletter.

The GDPR mainly pertains to European subscribers. If you reside in Europe, please unsubscribe then resubscribe to the newsletter so you and I are both in compliance with the new GDPR regulations.

In other areas of privacy: I clearly state in contests and/or giveaways who is sponsoring the giveaway. If I am hosting the giveaway, I delete your information after the contest has concluded. If an author or publisher is sponsoring the giveaway, I CLEARLY state this in the giveaway post. In this instance, I forward your information to the author or publisher so they can send out the prize you have won. I then personally delete your information after I have sent your info to whomever is sponsoring the giveaway.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to e-mail me at bookreviewsandmorebykathy @ gmail .com

Thank you!

I am sure everyone who reads gay romances is aware of the situation with Riptide Publishing so I will not rehash it here. Several authors have chosen to sever their relationship with the publisher while others have decided to stay the course for now.

For now, I am honoring my commitments to the blog tours I agreed to host before this situation arose. At this point, my last scheduled tour with them is April 12th.

Keeping my scheduled dates is NOT a decision I take lightly nor should it be construed as ignoring the very real problems that exist within the publisher. I am hopeful Riptide will be able to fix the issues that have lead to this crisis. However, at this time, I am not signing up for any other tours with them until they have fixed the problems that have created a toxic environment for authors and to some extent, readers.

Thank you for your understanding.

The gay book world has been rocked by a scandal involving popular author Santino Hassell. I have personally not been affected so I will refrain from commenting except to say that I DO believe the victims who have come forward about their experiences at the hands of the person calling themselves Santino Hassell and some of this person’s defenders. As a reader, I am heartbroken that an author whose books I greatly enjoyed is NOT who or what they portrayed themselves to be and has, in fact, possibly written novels based on other people’s life experiences without their permission or acknowledging that these works are based on real life events that were relayed to them by other individuals.

Although I am not directly affected by these unfortunate events, I have participated in blog tours featuring the releases of Santino Hassell’s novels. As of today, ALL of these promo posts have been deleted. While I have not officially reviewed any of Santino Hassell’s novels, I did read a novel for a book challenge and I am deleting the content from these posts as wells.

Both Riptide Publishing (read their statement HERE & Tumblr post HERE) and Dreamspinner Press (read their announcement HERE) are no longer selling Santino Hassell’s novels and all contracts have been canceled. As of this writing, neither Berkley Publishing, who have published Santino Hassell’s novels through their InterMix imprint nor St. Martin’s Press (who has a contract with Santino Hassell for a not yet released series) have made statements about their relationship with Santino Hassell.

Since I have no firsthand knowledge of the events nor any involvement whatsoever, I will not provide any details of what has occurred beyond my comments in this post. However you can find out more information by searching for “Santino Hassell catfishing” on Google or Twitter.

In closing, please be very careful in your interactions with people in the cyberworld. Do no take people or authors at face value, be suspicious of anyone who is trying to gain your sympathy and be cautious of donating money or giving gifts to people you have not met in real life. A healthy dose of skepticism might just save you from being duped by someone who is unscrupulously manipulating you for financial gain.