One Last Time: Part 2 - by Sarah Raplee

In yesterday's Part 1 post , Judith reminisced about how she and I started RTG, how we couldn't have done this for fourteen years without all the contributions of our amazing Genre-istas, and how we became a community of colleagues and friends over the years.

In Part 2, I want to remember some of the things we did that we couldn't have imagined in the beginning.

For example, Judith and I often met at a little cafe and candy shop called Moonstruck Chocolate in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Early on, we came up with the idea of doing an Author Reading Event with local Genre-istas for Valentine's Day. It was a great success!

When the Outlander television series (of Diana Gabaldon's famous Time Travel Romance Books) aired, we recruited Author Michele Monkou to write weekly episode reviews for us.

Decades: A Journey of African American Romance

When Romance Author Patricia Sergeant told us about a year-long effort by twelve black Romance Authors to each write a Historical Romance book set in consecutive decades of Black history, we jumped at the chance to feature them as monthly Guests for a year. I love learning about history, and I learned a lot that I didn't know about our own country's history and the challenges overcome as well as the contributions made by Black Americans over 120 years. That knowledge has given me a better understanding of where we are today in this complicated country.

We launched a sister blog, Free Reads from the Genre-istas, that lasted a couple years. Those who wanted to could post free short stories, flash fiction, and poetry there to share with readers. Some of our stories later made it into anthologies.

These are just a few of the ways Romancing the Genres has more than met our original expectations. One of the statistics Judith forgot to mention is that we have had visitors from all over the world, and not just the English-speaking world: Russia, Japan, the European Union, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Malasia, Vietnam, Argentina, El Salvador - the list goes on and on.

We wanted to be an inclusive, international blog for writers and readers - and we've achieved that goal.

That should make all our hearts happy.

Happy reading and Writing, 

Sarah Raplee and Judith Ashley