Saturday, December 30, 2017

Romancing The Genres
Wishes You 
A Happy New Year!!!


In February 2011 Sarah Raplee and Judith Ashley concocted the idea of a group blog for romance writers. It was important that the writers cover the various sub-genres of romance and come from various parts of the country.

With those specs in mind, they sent out invitations until they had 20 romance writers sign on. Initially RTG covered from Alaska to the Carolinas and included Canada.

Currently RTG authors (Genre-istas) call Australia, Canada or the UK as home. Within the United States Genre-istas range from Alaska to Florida, Oregon to the Carolinas with a couple of Mid-west stops along the way.

Genre-istas write in a wide variety of genres including romantic women’s fiction, mystery with romance, contemporary romance along with contemporary Caribbean romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, sci-fi romance, military romance, fantasy, historical, time travel romance, inspirational romance, young adult and western. Whew!

Even though we did commit to being focused on diversity, over the years our definition of ‘diversity’ has changed.


We started with one writer outside the U.S., Opal Carew. When Opal left, we invited Madelle Morgan who has been with us ever since. PippaJay who writes sci-fi romance and lives in the United Kingdom joined us in 2012.

Historical romance author, Bronwen Evans, from New Zealand was one of our early international authors. Although we’ve not had another New Zealander we have had several Aussie authors. Currently Cassandra O’Leary and Michelle Somers represent our ‘Down Under’ colleagues.

B.A. Binns and Lynn Lovegreen write for younger audiences. If you have young people (mid-grade, high school, college) check out their books!

Florida is well-represented with Marcia King-Gamble and Kristin Wallace.

When we first started out, authors stretched from the west to east coast with the majority in Oregon and Arizona. Linda Lovely and Robin Weaver represent The Carolinas.

Mid-West or middle of the U.S. authors are B.A. Binns, Ishabelle Torry and Lyncee Shillard. B.A. writes young adult and middle-grade and is passionate advocate for diversity in books, especially for young readers. Ishabelle writes fantasy, historical and time travel romance while Lyncee write contemporary romance.

M.L. Buchman joined us in 2013. Matt writes military and contemporary romance along with a bit of sci-fi. Matt may be the most prolific author/Genre-ista at this time.

Matt and Courtney Pierce, who writes Baby Boomer romantic fiction, are Oregonians.

A new comer, joining us in December 2017, is PatriciaSargent. Patricia is part of The Decades Project: A Journey of African-American Romance. Check back the first Tuesday of the month throughout 2018 to see what decade is being featured. Here is a link to the first post of the first featured author, Lindsay Evans, whose novel is set in the 1900's.

You may be wondering if that is everyone – no it isn’t.

From the beginning (2011) Historical and Contemporary Western Romance and Mystery author, Paty Jager, has lead off the first Monday of each month. Also with us of the second Friday of each month is Diana McCollum. Diana writes romantic suspense with paranormal elements and paranormal romance.



And of course the Blog Queens or BQ for short have been here from the beginning. Sarah Raplee writes romantic suspense with paranormal elements and also paranormal and steampunk. Judith Ashley writes Contemporary Romance or Romantic Women’s fiction.

In addition to writing their own posts, the BQ’s check for spam and porn (although Blogger does an admirable job we both live in fear that some porn spam comment will make its way through to be published). We also put together monthly themes for the Genre-istas to write about (or not). January’s theme is “If I Was A Millionaire”—should be interesting reading!

Saturdays RTG hosts ‘guest bloggers’ and the BQ’s decide on the monthly topics and invite guests (as well as make sure the guest posts are published). Our January 2018 guests will be sharing Author Milestones.

When we started out, neither Sarah nor Judith had any idea we would still be going strong (stronger than in 2011 for sure) 6+ years later. Most of the original Genre-istas were unpublished. That has changed as each of us has at least one book available in e-book if not also print and audio.

We were so excited when we had 1000 page views. Current stats are 340,666 page views; 12,086 comments; visitors from Germany, Ukraine, Ireland, Romania, France, South Korea as well as the Australia, Canada the United Kingdom and the U.S.

Judith and Sarah invite you to stop back frequently and get to know the amazing authors who make up Romancing The Genres, a truly international group blog.

You can follow up on Twitter @RomanceTheGenre and we're on Facebook
RomancingTheGenres. So check us out!!!

14 comments:

Lynn Lovegreen said...

Happy New Year, and thanks for including me in this fantastic group!

Judith Ashley said...

Lynn, your contributions to RTG since you joined us in 2013 (I think - could be 2012) are one of the reasons we've grown as much as we have. You've posted on time, responded to requests and input from the BQ's and commented on other Genre-ista's posts. Thank You for all your support.

Paty Jager said...

This has been a great group blog. The Blog Queens have done a good job of kerping it current. Thanks for inviting me.

Judith Ashley said...

Thank you, Paty! You were one of the first published authors to sign on with us and we've all benefited from watching you write and publish more books. Very inspiring!

Marcia King-Gamble said...

Happy, New Year all. Soooo happy to be a part of this talented author group!

Judith Ashley said...

Thanks Marcia! We're Very Happy you are a part of RTG also.

Cassandra O'Leary said...

Thanks for the mention! I have enjoyed getting involved with this group in the last few months as one of the Aussie members. Happy new year everyone.
😊😎🎉

Judith Ashley said...

And we're delighted you could join us, Cassandra.

Madelle Morgan said...

Thank you Judith and Sarah for all your hard work in keeping this blog going for so many successful years.

It's been very exciting to watch the genre-istas grow as authors over the years. Collectively the stack of published books is getting quite high!

All the best to everyone in 2018, from frigid Canada. (Visiting Australia looks pretty good to me right now.)
Madelle

Judith Ashley said...

Wouldn't that be a fun trip(s). We Northern Hemisphere Genre-istas could visit our Southern Hemisphere colleagues and vice-versa! So glad you're part of the team, Madelle.

Maggie Lynch said...

I love this blog and I'm so proud of you for keeping it going. I also love the diversity of people and locations. It's great to have a world wide perspective, and one of the very few male romance writers.

Huge congrats and Happy New Year to all the Genreistas!

Judith Ashley said...

Thanks for stopping by and your kind words. The BQ's can only do so much to encourage diversity and promote understanding and this is our way. Just think if the world operated as a romance novel, there would still be drama but in the end we'd all live happily ever after with the loves of our lives.

Sarah Raplee said...

2018 is going to be a fun ride!!!

Diana McCollum said...

Thanks for the mention! you two do an awesome job on managing the blog and coming up with terrific subjects to cover each month. Happy New Year!