1 plus 0 equals 10 in RTG maths

Hi, I’m Judith Ashley, author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, romantic women’s fiction with light paranormal elements. My stories show you what life could be like if you had a place like The Circle where you are unconditionally accepted, supported and loved. And where, with this support, you make choices to overcome the darkest nights and choose love and light.

Running through my mind as I start this post are the words to a song from many years (maybe even decades ago). One is the loneliest number. Many of us who live alone have experienced loneliness which is not the same as being alone either for the first time or in a vastly altered way. However add a 0 and 1 becomes 10!

We’ve seen many changes this past decade with the most challenging ones this past year. Connecting, engaging with others has undergone significant changes. And yet through it all, there have been some consistent touchstones or anchors. I see Romancing The Genres as being one of them.

Ten years! A decade!! Who knew when we launched May 1, 2011 we’d still be hanging out with each other so many years later.

We’ve logged 2928 blog posts from authors around the world.

Those posts have garnered 17,694 comments and 530,689 page views.

Genre-istas live in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States (east to west coast with a couple stops in between).

And the Blog Queens, Sarah Raplee McDermed and Judith Ashley, couldn’t have done it without the support of the Genre-istas. Blogging isn’t always fun nor does the due date always coincide with our lives. Then there are those pesky monthly themes the BQ’s dream up each year.

Of the original 20 Genre-istas, five are still here. Of course the BQ’s, Sarah and Judith. Also celebrating 10 years are Barbara Binns, Paty Jager and Diana McCollum.

Celebrating our 10^th Blog-O-Versary would not have happened without you stopping by, leaving a comment or just reading our posts – taking away what will make your day a bit better. In that vein, you are definitely invited and encouraged to join us each day and help us celebrate.

We’ll all be talking about celebrating or what can happen in a decade or something connected – at least in our own minds.

If you are not yet on my mailing list, you can sign up for Choices here. I’ve created a new free offering that includes the novella Sarah’s Ankh along with the first chapter of Lily: The Dragon and The Great Horned Owl. I hope you enjoy them.

Look for my next non-fiction Yes, You Can Create The Life You Love by late spring aka early summer. And if you need guidance on handling stress, Staying Sane in A Crazy World is available as are all of my books at your favorite e-book vendor. Be sure to ask your local library if you’d prefer to read my books through that resource.

Learn more about Judith's The Sacred Women’s Circle series at JudithAshley.net

Follow Judith on Twitter: JudithAshley19

Check out Judith’s Windtree Press author page.

You can also find Judith on FB! 

© 2021 Judith Ashley

Celebrating Friendship by Lynn Lovegreen

Happy BlogOVersary for Romancing the Genres! I’m Lynn Lovegreen. I am honored to be part of this group, and pleased to host today’s Blog-Versation celebrating friendship. I'll post an example answer to the question, and then you can provide an answer. I'll check back every so often and comment, and maybe you'll have a comment to add to mine, or someone else will. This way, we’ll have a virtual conversation.  

What is your most cherished friendship?

Friendship is precious. We all have different kinds of friends, whether it’s childhood friends, workplace friends, or longtime neighbors. My favorite category is intergenerational friends. Some of my friends are much older or younger than I am. People who grew up in a certain time period have a different take on things than I do. That leads to great conversations and new insights.

One of my most cherished friendships was with a lady old enough to be my grandmother. We started off knowing each other slightly, as she worked with my mother. Later, we were in the same group that met for a monthly lunch and Benita couldn’t drive anymore, so I became her chauffeur. It didn’t take long before I was taking her home and staying for coffee, then hanging out with her on a regular basis. Benita taught me much about life, and her advice was always spot on. We shared an unconditional love for each other that lasted until she died. I’m so grateful for our time together.

Your turn now! What is your most cherished friendship? Or, what does friendship mean to you?

Lynn Lovegreen has lived in Alaska for over fifty years. After twenty years in the classroom, she retired to make more time for writing. She enjoys her friends and family, reading, and volunteering at her local library. Her young adult historical fiction is set in Alaska, a great place for drama, romance, and independent characters. See her website at www.lynnlovegreen.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.

End Of An Era

Hi everyone! 

I am Young Adult and Middle Grade author Barbara Binns, writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for adolescents and teens. As my tagline says, I write Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them.  

This year marks the 8th anniversary of the Romancing The Genres blog. That makes it my 8th year of my nearly uninterrupted writing a monthly post for this blog. I've been a part of things right from the start.

2019 also marks the 21st anniversary of the Arlington Almanac. This journal is sent to residents of Arlington Heights and some surrounding towns. That means people in this predominantly white Chicago suburb gets to read diverse stories about people in Chicago written by me.

I have crafted short stories/flash fiction for the Almanac four times a year for the past eleven years. That means dozens of well received stories of diversity.  This was so important to me, that I have frequently found myself agonizing over a way to tell a new story in the space of 800 words or less only days before the magazine’s deadline.

Never again.

Just a few weeks ago I received this letter along with my quarterly check:

Hey Ms. Binns 

Hope all is good with you!

Wanted to let you know how much we appreciated all your stories that you’ve sent us over the years. We’ve decided that the upcoming Spring book will be our last edition.

The End of an Era for us.

For me too.

This is it. No more deadlines or letters of praise from Mindy and Jim, the publishers. No more checks either.

I met them a dozen years ago at a writer's group held at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. Jim loves to write, and he is amazing at political satire. So biting and pointed is his satire, that his wife, the publication's senior editor, often refuses to publish one of his stories. They invited some of the other authors present to submit to their publication. At first, I thought it would be impossible. Over the years, I developed a love-hate relationship with the Almanac.  My first story was a memoir type piece about my daughter. That also generated my first piece of fan mail from someone who had had a similar experience with her own child. I have no idea how many stories I have completed for them since then.

Over the years, writing regular flash fiction has taught me  how to write tight. I can now do what I once considered impossible, tell a complete story, beginning, middle and end, in under 800 words. BTW, their limit was supposed to be 750 words, but they never got upset at me when I went over. I only had them refuse one story and that was more for being a little too political than for length. I've written about diverse characters, locations and situations. They told me they loved everything they wrote.

PS, I never confessed this to the publishers, but I guess it's okay to do it now. Those letters of praise meant more to me than the checks that came with them. I might have done it for those alone. From a letter last summer:

Hey B. B. 

Happy Summer, if it ever stops raining! I'm sitting at the Library where I met most of the writers who adorn our little book. Thank God for Libraries! And thank you for your summer story!

One thing I liked most was that the Almanac became a vehicle for me to introduce a largely white audience to diverse stories.  My 2018 holiday story covered a Chicago family celebrating Kwanzaa.  The 2014 story dealt with an overweight teen girl shopping for a baby shower present for a relative and being mistaken for a pregnant teen (An incident that really happened to my daughter once.)  I've given them stories about a child watching his father die of cancer, a white minister dealing with car trouble in the middle of the night while driving through "the ghetto", and my most resent story for the almanac, a black man in prison during a riot helping rescue a prison guard left behind the lines. I've never shied away from diverse stories, and my audience and my editors have always approved.

Not intending to be caught in a vise by another deadline, I had already sketched out the idea for my next story. It was going to be awesome, about kids dealing with the threat of bullying. Now that story will forever be an idea.

I wish Jim and Mindy the best. They are approaching seventy, and it's time for them to rest. It's just that I will miss them and the lessons they taught me, that I could do more than I ever thought I could.

https://www.almanaclocal.com/

8 Crazy Things by Paty Jager

Blaze

Being the first Monday of each month, I usually have the privilege of starting the month off with the topic picked by the Blog Queens.  This month is Crazy 8s Blog-o-Versary. Yes, this blog has been going for 8 years and I've been with it every step of the way. It's been fun and I enjoy sharing things with those who follow the blog.

So to start off my 8 Crazy Things:

1) I have been a member of this blog for 8 years!

2) I have published books in 8 different genres.
Contemporary and historical western romance, Native American historical paranormal romance, Action Adventure, cozy paranormal mystery, police procedural

3) I have been a published author for 13 years.
Crazy to think I've been publishing that long when it feels like just yesterday that I held my first book in my hands.

4) I will have 40 published books by next month.
Book three in the Silver Dollar Saloon series will put me there! Crazy!

5) I love living in a rural area.
Living rural means less interruptions of people stopping by and lots of creative scenery.

6) I'm an introvert and my husband is an extrovert. He goes a lot of places alone. ;)

7) I'm excited to be taking my 2 mystery characters to interesting settings. (more on that later)

8) I had a new website made this year and I love the way it looks and how easy it is to navigate.
https://www.patyjager.net

That is my list of 8 crazy things. This month will be busy for me. I have an event with 4 other awesome authors at the Asotin Library in Washington. The event is in conjunction with Cowboy Poets and Country Songwriters event it's being called Women Write the West and I'll be discussing voice and word choice. Should be fun. And I will do my usual three day sale event at the Sumpter Flea in Sumpter, Oregon over Memorial Weekend.

Have a great May!

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 39 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest   / Bookbub

Seven Year Itch by Paty Jager

I am proud to be a part of this wonderful blog put together by our blog queens- Judith Ashley and Sarah Raplee. I was one of the first bloggers and was honored when they asked me to join. Over the years there have been some great posts from awesome writers, our monthly contributors and spectacular guest bloggers the blog queens have rustled up.

To commemorate the 7 years this blog has been in existence, the topic this month is to blog about something that has happened to me in the last 7 years.

What hasn’t!

It was 7 years ago that I took the Indie Author plunge. I had 10 books published with a small press when other writer friends started suggesting and pushing me toward an Indie career. At first, I was scared and dubious I could handle all the hats it takes to be an Indie Author. But gradually, I came to cherish the ability to put books out when I wanted, get book covers I loved, and to price books and have sales how I wanted.

With Indie publishing comes deadlines, publishing, marketing, and the ever-present social media.

Some days there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. I want to make my word count, get a book ready to publish, and market. And while I’m doing this I’m also managing a household and helping with the ranching.

Even though I’m behind already this year with my projected books and releases, I wouldn’t change a thing about the path I’ve taken to be a published author. I now have 32 books, 8 novellas, and a dozen short stories published. I enjoy writing my Shandra Higheagle Mystery series, collaborating with other authors in box sets, and coming the end of this year, a shared world series.

I’ll have the first e-novella of my Tumbling Creek Ranch series, a contemporary western romance to give to one person who leaves a comment. What has been a big event in your life the last 7 years?

8 Seconds to Love

Book one of the Tumbling Creek Ranch series

Lacey Wallis has put blood, sweat, and tears into her dream of making it to the National Finals Rodeo and isn’t about to let an injury stop her. However, she didn’t expect the ER nurse to be the man she had a crush on years ago, or to discover that crush hadn’t been one-sided.

Jared McIntyre lived through loving and the death of one thrill-seeking woman, and wasn’t about to let that happen again. Especially not to Lacey. But that would mean he’d have to allow himself to love again.  

Which will it be, a life-long dream, or the love of a lifetime?

Universal  link: https://www.books2read.com/u/b5M1Ep

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 32 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. This is what Mysteries Etc says about her Shandra Higheagle mystery series: “Mystery, romance, small town, and Native American heritage combine to make a compelling read.”
blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest   / Bookbub

Marvellous Magical May #anniversary #bookoversary #unlockALS

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories to engage your emotions. And welcome to marvellous magical May!

May has always been one of my favourite times of the year, significantly because of three things. The first of May marks Beltane, the pagan start of summer and usually the point where the British weather takes a marked change for the better...well, sometimes. This year the first of May was actually a glorious day sandwiched between two very wet, windy and cold days - one extreme to the other! And how terribly British to talk about the weather. :P

May also sees my wedding anniversary, and this year is a landmark one - 25 years! I've now been married more than half my lifetime, a sobering thought. And it turns out that in real life, hubs is decidedly more romantic than me with a dinner booked at the pub where we went for a drink on our first date together (a fact I did not remember! I did remember the film we went to see though...)

The 7th of May also marks my sixth anniversary as a published author with my debut novel Keir, and this month I'm  taking part in a charity event that features Keir alongside a collection of other fantastic blue cover books in support of ALSA. Please go check out our page on the ALSA site HERE: http://webgw.alsa.org/site/TR/Endurance/GoldenWest?team_id=367681&pg=team&fr_id=12950

Landing page (Lea’s site) 

http://www.leakirk.com/supporting-als.html

Blue Book Cover Brigade Team Page on ALSA Site http://webgw.alsa.org/site/TR/Endurance/GoldenWest?team_id=367681&pg=team&fr_id=12950

ALSA Twitter: https://twitter.com/napaALSride

ALSA Facebook Group:  https://www.facebook.com/RidetoDefeatALS/?hc_location=group

The fact that RTG also celebrates its Blog-o-versary this month is just another reason to party, and I hope you'll swing by throughout the month to join us. Have a marvellous magical May!

Celebrating Two Big Blog-o-Versaries by Kristin Wallace

This is a big month on Romancing the Genres as we celebrate the RTG Blog-o-versary. I can actually celebrate an anniversary myself…as of April I’ve been a RTG author for exactly one year! So, I get to celebrate TWO blog-o-versaries!

As I write this, I’m trying to think of all that has happened since last April.

-Number of books published…four (the last release in April was my TENTH published book.)

-Other books written (but not yet published)...one

-Works in progress…two

-I signed with a new agent, Melissa Jeglinski of The Knight Agency.

Other significant happenings…

Both of my parents retired, and last September they moved away from Miami. We have lived in the same city since I graduated from college, and it has been a big adjustment not seeing them all the time.

My church began a community dinner theatre. I’ve always loved acting. I was a theatre major in college. My church formally had a black box theatre about 15 years ago, and we did productions like The Mousetrap, Beauty and the Beast, Harvey, and The Imaginary Invalid. But that troupe disbanded and I hadn’t been on stage since. Last summer, the dinner theatre became a reality again and the first production was in July, Oh, What a Tangled Web where I played a mom…to two teenagers! Then we did a really funny Western melodrama in February, The Vile Veterinarian, where I played a diva opera singer named April May June. It has been really fun exploring my acting side again.

So, that was my year…it went by SO FAST! What significant things happened to you in this last year? Any big changes? New beginnings?

Kristin Wallace is the USA Today Best Selling Author of inspirational and contemporary romance, and women’s fiction filled with “Love, Laughter and a Leap of Faith”. She is the author of two best selling series, Shellwater Key Tales (sweet contemporary romance) and Covington Falls Chronicles (inspirational romance). Her tenth published novel released April 24^th, Last Stop At Paradise, Book 3 in the Shellwater Key Tales.

For info on all of her books, visit Kristin Wallace Author

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