Tuesday, May 28, 2019

8 Crazy, Awesome Memories by Sarah Raplee

Memory #1:  Eight years ago, Judith Ashley and I metaphorically held hands with eighteen other dedicated writers and jumped into the virtual world of blogging. Some of us were published authors and some were not-yet-published.  We were various ages, nationalities, and ethnicities from around United States and the English-speaking world. Many of us (including me and Judith, the "Blog Queens") were new to blogging.

SARAH and JUDITH
We had one thing in common as writers:We all wrote romantic fiction of some kind, whether Young Adult, Science Fiction, Romantic Suspense, Paranormal, Women's Fiction or any other sub-genre or cross-genre combination.

We called our brand new group blog Romancing the Genres. Here we are, eight years later, publishing our 2,395th post! It's been a wild ride.

Memory #2:  After about a year, we decided to add a 'sister blog' where the Genre-istas, as we call ourselves, would offer free flash fiction stories to our readers. The writers would retain all rights to the stories. Later, we decided to recruit non-Genre-ista writers to offer stories as well. We called the free reads blog Free Reads from the Genre-istas and Friends. (Eventually, we retired the sister blog.)

Memory #3:  Eventually, we decided to close our sister-blog. We went on to open the RTG Facebook Page and to host a number of Facebook Parties and Events. Judith and I had to learn about Facebook, with much help from Marcia king-Gamble and other knowledgeable Genre-istas.

Memory #4:  About this time, I published the short stories "Enchanted Protector" and "Curse of the Neahkahnnie Treasure" in an anthology with Judith Ashley and Diana McCollum, LOVE AND MAGIC.


Memory #5:  I also published a flash fiction story, "The Telltale Heart", in the Windtree Press anthology GIFTS FROM THE HEART.
Memory #6:  Genre-ista Michelle Monkou was approved to do weekly re-caps/reviews of the hugely popular STARZ Outlander television series based on the Romantic Time Travel Books by Diana Gabaldon.

Memory #7:  I published my first novel, BLINDSIGHT, a romantic suspense with paranormal elements.

Last, but not least, Memory #8: In 2018, RTG teamed with the authors and organizers of the historical twelve-book/twelve-author project, 
12 awesome authors...books...12 decades...12 love stories...



I look forward to making many more crazy, awesome memories in the years to come! ~Sarah Raplee

7 comments:

Judith Ashley said...

Loved this stroll through the last 8 years with you, Sarah. Certainly captured some of the Best Moments and at times The Craziest Ones.

Sarah Raplee said...

I had fun writing this post, Judith! It's been such an adventure.

Paty Jager said...

It's been fun being part of this great endeavor you and Judith built.

Marcia King-Gamble said...

Hard to believe 8 years have passed and there have been wonderful blogs and some great events. I remember the chats featuring literary personalities like Kathryn Falk, founder of Romantic Times and the RT conventions., Dianne Moggy VP of Editorial at Harlequin, and NY Times Bestseller Carla Neggers. Fun times.

Diana McCollum said...

It's been a great eight years! Such a great group of authors who belong to RTG. And the guests that the blog queens come up with have been informative and charitable with there time. Great going ladies.

Lynn Lovegreen said...

Thanks for all the great memories--I'm proud to be a genre-ista!

Maggie Lynch said...

Amazing legacy of blogging. You should both be very proud of having started this AND keeping it up. I'm sure it's a lot of work but certainly something many of us look forward to reading.