New York Adventures in Travel...by Kristin Wallace

Since this month's theme is "adventures in travel", it seems the perfect time to talk about my trip to New York City in July. 

First, I attended the Romance Writers of America (RWA) national conference. I got to spend quality time with my closest writer friends, celebrated my birthday, learned tons of information, and celebrated the best in romance fiction. 

Then my parents flew up and we got to spend a few extra days in the city. We did the tourist thing on one of those big double-decker buses and saw more of the city than I have before. I marveled at the architecture. (The buildings are one of my favorite things about New York. We have NOTHING like them in Miami.) We toured The Met Museum where I went ga-ga over the room of Impressionist paintings by Monet and Rembrandt, most of which I’d only ever seen in books. Plus, a super cool exhibit celebrating the history of rock & roll, with guitars that were owned by some of the best rock musicians of all times like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

However, the highlight was a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I’ve been to New York four times, but this was the first time I actually made it. We did a guided tour so we had someone explaining more of the history of both places for our small group. I’ve always been fascinated by the history of Ellis Island especially. This processing center welcomed 12 million immigrants from 1892 – 1954. Our guide told us that about 40% of Americans today had ancestors who came through Ellis Island. The photos below show Ellis Island as it was when the processing center was being used vs. today.

The bravery of those men and women can’t be understated. And once they got to the mainland, things certainly did not get any easier. On our tours, we saw neighborhoods where many of the families settled, the former tenement buildings that housed multiple families, sometimes in a single apartment. 

 

What an inspiring trip and a chance to check off two items on my bucket list. 

(I’m curious. Can any of you trace relatives through Ellis Island???)

Kristin Wallace is the USA Today Best Selling Author of inspirational and sweet contemporary romance filled with “Love, Laughter and a Leap of Faith”. Her latest book, SECOND CHANCE HERO, part of her Palm Cove Tales series, is available now. 

AMAZON  /  APPLE BOOKS  /  B&N   /   KOBO 

RITAs So White

Hi everyone! I am YA, and now MG author Barbara Binns , writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for adolescents and teens. My tagline tells you what I am about - Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them.  My newest book, Courage, is middle grade fiction that will be coming out this summer from Harper Collins.


If you care about romance (and I bet you do, that’s why you love reading this blog) you know that it's a billion-dollar industry that outperforms all other book genres. It's also an industry plagued by an inclusion problem.

Especially when it comes to books by black authors.

The RITA Award, the top honor for romance writers, is presented by RWA, the Romance Writers of America. After announcing yet another slate of finalists for the 2018 RITA with a disappointing lack of diversity, the  RWA issued a statement admitting the organization has a problem with diversity. In its 36 year history, the nearly all white RITA contest judges have somehow never considered a book by a black author  worthy of a RITA. Click HERE to read the RWA Board’s statement.

In 2017, Bea and Leah Koch authored a report on diversity in the romance genre. The Koch’s run The Ripped Bodice (http://www.therippedbodicela.com/), a romance bookstore in Culver City, LA. They found that fewer books by authors of color were published by the leading romance presses in 2017 compared to the previous year, despite an increase in the numbers of romance books published. Few of those authors of color (AOC) were African American.  Click here for a PDF copy of the report.  The Koch's noted that, “Clearly there is plenty of room to pull up more chairs as long as the people sitting in those chairs are white.” And now both Kimani Press, Harlequin's African American line, and Crimson Romance, a Simon & Schuster line featuring a larger than average percentage of AOC among it's authors, are closing.

Riptide is a New Jersey-based publisher (noted on the report as having 4.8% of their books written by AOC in 2017). Queer romance writer Cole McCade, once one of those authors, described Riptide as “at all levels hostile to me as a person of color”. Click here to read details of his experience,  including an email from Riptide editor Sarah Lyons stating: “We don’t mind POC But I will warn you – and you have NO idea how much I hate having to say this – we won’t put them on the cover, because we like the book to, you know, sell.”

Riptide has since accepted Lyons’s resignation. Which does nothing to change the overall attitude.

Take a look at your own recent reads. Do any of them have a black hero or heroine? Were any written by a black author? People like Brenda Jackson, Rochelle Ayers, Alyssa Cole, Piper Huguley, Farrah Rochon, and Rebel Miller. 

Black romance authors write historical fiction, contemporary, dystopia, suspense, paranormal, LGBT, and sci-fi romance. They write about cowboys, gangsters, billionaires and preachers. They write about black love and interracial, multicultural love. They write romance that is inspirational, or clean or sizzling with sexuality. They write long novels and short novellas.

If none of these books or authors are on your shelves or TBR lists, maybe that’s why even bestselling black authors get little respect from romance publishers or RITA judges who have never felt the urge to open one and discover that love is love, no matter the outer wrapper.

We black authors also write YA. 

My own experience comes from the publication of my first novel, Pull, a YA romance. My publisher daringly placed my African American lead on the cover. Shortly after publication, I attended a romance book fair in Milwaukee where I was the only author of color and one of only a few YA romance authors. Meaning my book was one of the few that young people had to chose from. On two occasions, white teens came and looked at my book. They picked it up, read the back cover (the publisher had an enticing blurb there) and even opened the first chapter. And, if I do say so myself, I had a great opening hook, a reach out and grab the reader first page. Those kids went off to get their parents and drag them back to buy the book. The white parents took one look at me and the book cover, and took their kids away. One even told their child in so many words, “This book is not for you,” without ever looking beyond the black boy on the cover. Before reading a single word, they decided the book was untouchable.

I can’t help wondering how many RITA judges have that same attitude. Do the words on the page written by a black author have to be twice as good as others to get past that initial prejudice? I left RWA a few years ago because I saw the signs and signals and grew tired of being quietly excluded. (And because I primarily write YA, and have now slipped into Middle Grade with my newest book, Courage) I am now part of SCBWI - Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

The children’s book industry has been addressing the inclusion issue for several years, thanks to the work of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp) to document and track diversity and inclusion, childrens book publisher Lee and Low (https://www.leeandlow.com/), WeNeedDiverseBooks (https://diversebooks.org/) and similar initiatives that keep the issue in the forefront. As a result, SCBWI is well into the process of addressing them with initiatives at both the individual chapter and national levels. I'm proud to say the Illinois chapter, which I belong to, is at the forefront of the diversity and inclusion efforts.

All is not lost in RWA land. In a few weeks, I will be at the 2018 Spring Fling conference (http://chicagospringfling.com/) in Oak Brook, Illinois. This writer’s conference, given by the Chicago North chapter of RWA, has brought in the incomparable Beverly Jenkins, a historical fiction author with over thirty novels published, to be one of their featured speakers. Ms. Jenkins may never have won a RITA, but over her stellar career she has been a bestseller and won numerous awards, including the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award.

Later this year I will be speaking at Romance Slam Jam Booklovers Convention (https://rsjconvention.com/) for black readers and authors. It’s a place where no one will wonder if a black author really knows how to write well, or chose to move to a different table when one sits among them.

I’m human. I like being welcomed.




One more thing:

My next book, Courage will be released at the end of July by Harper Children's. And they dared put a black child on the cover. Its written for young people in 3rd to 7th grade.  If you want to give the young people the gift of inclusion, take this book about six children of various backgrounds and races as they explore friendship and empathy, and what it means to display true courage. (And, they will also learn a little about diving.) You can let Harper Collins know publishing diverse books is important by preordering Courage at
https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Barbara-Binns/dp/0062561650

Happy New Year Dear Readers! by Gina Fluharty

Happy New Year Dear Readers!

This month’s theme is about First Book and the road to publication. I have a secret: Technically, this published First Book is actually the second in my Preternatural Portland series. Which seems off but hey, it was the best book I’d written so far and it was the one that got the ‘YES!’ from a publisher. I really needed that ‘YES!’

Writing is the toughest job I never want to quit. And after writing for a few years and hearing a string of ‘no’ from several publishers on two separate works, the ‘YES!’ from Loose Id was exactly what I needed to hear. Not to keep going, not to keep writing, not to feel worthy. I needed to hear the ‘YES!’ to feel like I finally, maybe, know what I’m doing. I needed the ‘YES!’ so that I didn’t feel like a fraud as president of Rose City Romance Writers, the local chapter of Romance Writers of America. I needed that ‘YES!’ so that I knew how to build another better book.

I’m sure none of you are unaware that writing is often lonely, difficult to figure out how to do well, time consuming, and somewhat difficult to manage while working a full-time job. I don’t know many writers that can claim this occupation as their sole means of income but I aim to be one of them.

So how did I get here? How did I get that very-important (to me) ‘YES!’?

For one, belief in myself and my willingness to commit to this dream I’ve always had. My mom was a huge influence in my love of the written word. My earliest memories are of us reading together. That shared love of books and my admittedly twisted imagination lead to me telling myself stories in order to get back to sleep after a nightmare.

Fast forward to the next crucial step: Support. I had the great fortune to fall in love with the most fantastic person currently in existence. His unwavering support allow me to write stories that hopefully, make the reader know what it is to be loved wholly and passionately without reservation.

Finding Rose City Romance Writers and RWA were absolutely necessary pieces that shortened my journey considerably. Without RCRW, I wouldn’t have known about various writing books like Save the Cat! By Blake Snyder and The Emotions Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi. Without my Roses, I wouldn’t have companionship, support, and the joy of being with people that love the HEA as much as I do.

Because that’s what this is all about, yes? Happily Ever After. Our quest to write it, read it, discover it in real life. Our chance to escape into a world that it not our norm. The ability to not leave our environment but still get to taste something from another galaxy, smell leather and metal on a medieval battlefield, hear the exotic music of the rain forest, see the world from someone else’s point of view. To fall in love every time we visit the blank page or crack open a book from a debut author.

www.GinaFluharty.com on Twitter @GinaFluharty

Embrace the beast within.

Gina Fluharty never met a piece of profanity that didn’t taste like sin-soaked heaven. She’s lived in a lot of places: Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Small Town America, but nowhere has called to her like Portland, OR. It’s there that she wrestles all of her personal demons and turns them into playmates. After all, why exorcise such good source material when she can use it as research instead?

Writing Lessons of a Lifetime by Kristin Wallace

The theme on Romancing the Genres for August is “life-changing events”. It took some thought to come up with mine. What one event changed my life? Truthfully, every event changes your life in some way. I don’t have a husband or kids…things that many might say changed their lives...so it’s hard to pin down.

Then I thought about my writing journey and how long it took to become a published author. My true success began the day I went to my first Florida Romance Writers (FRW) meeting in 2005. FRW is the Southeast Florida chapter of Romance Writers of America. 

When I joined FRW, I had been “writing” for a long time, but it never went anywhere because I had no idea what I was doing. Joining FRW literally changed my life. Now, I am not a natural “joiner”. I’m a classic introvert. I HATE walking in to a room full of strangers. But I walked into that room…and I stayed.

I learned how to write a novel. Each month I would learn something different, from crafting sentences, to dialogue, to marketing, and the ins and outs of publishing. I would often go home thinking I would NEVER get it. There was so much to learn! But I did learn it.

I also gathered a wonderful group of writer friends whom I adore. There were mentors, critique partners, people who would share their expertise, those who encouraged when needed. I can honestly say I would not have a writing career without FRW and the many people who have taught me what it means to be an author.

Kristin Wallace is the USA Today Best Selling Author of inspirational and sweet contemporary romance filled with “Love, Laughter and a Leap of Faith”. Look for her latest release coming SOON! A 2-book box set containing LEFT TURN AT PARADISE and COMING HOME TO PARADISE, Book 1 and Book 1.5 of the Shellwater Key Tales. Find out more about her books at Kristin's Website

You can also connect on social media: Facebook Twitter Instagram

Romancing the Writer in Me/ RWA Conference 2015

By Marcia King-Gamble
www.lovemarcia.com

http://amzn.com/B013U5ADOY

I grew up in New York, so naturally when this year's  Romance Writers of America's  conference  was held there, I couldn't miss it.  Now be warned,  I am a lousy conference attendee, and I rarely show up for  anything - keynote speeches being the exception and only if they are scheduled  after nine. Yet there isn't a conference that I've attended where I did not end up accomplishing something big,  and that includes selling a  few books.

Every agent I've ever had, I met at  a conference. Every editor I've had the good fortune to work with, started off as a chance encounter  Mind you, what works for me may not work for you, but  do not underestimate the power of networking. Combined with  your awesome talent, networking can and does open doors.

If you are the gregarious type, then by all means use that asset.  For someone like me, far better suited to yucking it  up in a bathroom or coffee shop, sitting through a workshop can be difficult.Workshops of course do serve their  purpose. Writers need to keep up with what's going on in the industry. I call it Minding Your Business

So I did pop in on one or two workshops and left with several kernels of wisdom. However, what works for me best, is getting out and about, meeting people. Weeks before I leave for a conference, I reach out to people and I set up appointments. This year I was super organized and those appointments found their way to an app. I even had a little buzzer alert me when I was at the ten minute mark.


 Here's my story, over eighteen years ago, I met my first editor at a  conference. I was totally clueless as to her identity and I don't recall if she ever did provide  a title, but a connection was made. It may have to do with me not being awed. Remember I didn't know who she was. We fell into easy conversation, none of which centered around publishing.  At that time, the line I would eventually end up writing for wasn't in existence, but six months later it was, and guess who my editor was, and guess who got a two book contract? I also met my first agent this way.

At these events you'd be amazed who you meet. We all have our idols and writers whose voices we love. Just  fancy rubbing elbows with the incomparable, Nora Roberts and RWA's president, Cindy Kirk, whom I was fortunate enough to work with on a Harlequin Mediterranean Night's series eons ago.

 

Back to the RWA 2015 Conference. My goals this year were to meet with my agent -  since face to face beats e-mails any day. I also wanted to pitch a story that has sat in my computer gathering cobwebs and catch up with industry friends.

I did all that, the added bonus being Restaurant Week in The City, and the perfect opportunity to sample some very nice places at a very nice price. Below is a picture of author friends at one of my all time favorite restaurants, Gotham Bar and Grill.

        LR authors Mary Leo, Carla Neggers, Joan Johnston, Laura Castoro Parker (AKA D.D. Ayres,) Sandra Kitt and me!

Years ago, someone gave me  a sage piece of advice that stuck - talk to everyone. That advice held true in a bathroom. There I was, applying lipstick, and chatting up a very nice woman who turned out to be an editor for a house I once wrote for. She liked my writing voice and invited me to submit to her.

During my pitch to an editor, I found common ground. His stepmother was an "Island Girl,"  and so am I. The story I was pitching happened to be set in the islands. He asked to see it. Kismet?

A meet up for coffee, with shop talk off limits, turned into a conversation about a current project and an opportunity that could be huge. A stop to support a friend at a book signing, led to a potential collaboration of sorts.    


While I didn't get to collaborate with the talented lady below,  I  enjoyed meeting Jude Deveraux - the epitome of graciousness.

What I am saying, is that some of your best connections are made in places you least expect it.  Just like any business, people hire the people they like. So be  your most charming and don't judge the "book" by the cover.

Speaking of covers, here is the cover of my latest novella scheduled to be released this week. Please check Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple. Reviews are very much appreciated!

Marcia King-Gamble is  a Caribbean/American national bestselling author with over thirty two books to her credit.

Young Adult Romance and the RWA Rita.

Hi everyone!
I am YA author B. A. Binns. For the end of 2013, I thought I would talk about being a YA writer in this time of change. 

NEBULA^® is to Science Fiction as RITA^® is to _________

If you know the answer is Romance, feel proud. Not many people outside the RWA world does, and most of those are related to romance writing, publishing or reading.  I have no trouble finding librarians who know about the Nebula or Hugo or Edgar. Seldom do I find one, even in my own library, who knows what a RITA is. Even many avid romance readers have trouble naming more than one Rita winner. But ask a mystery fan about the winners of last year's Edgars and you usually an enthusiastic list.

In a recent library display of award-winning books I saw six Hugos and eight Edgars. And one Rita. Gosh it felt good to see at least one.

My bet is that is one of the things RWA hopes to alter with their changes to the 2013 RITA contest that include a focus on romance and a the requirement of a higher number of entries for a category to proceed.

RWA established the RITA awards to promote excellence in the romance genre. I belong to a number of writers groups and email loops that have voiced their dismay about changes in various award categories to ensure alignment with that purpose. RWA did not understand YA, many said. There was talk of a growing alienation between RWA and it's YA writing members.

Those protests grew especially loud last week when word came that the Young Adult category of the Rita awards was cancelled due to lack of entries.  Many complain that this proves the RWA was wrong to require the YA novels entered in the Rita to have romance as the primary focus.  Many of those protesters also admit they chose not to enter their books in the 2013 Rita and somehow the cancellation of the category because too few books were entered is proof they were right.


While I am sorry the category had to be cancelled this year for lack of entries, I applaud RWA for saying that all categories, including Young Adult, must make romance a preeminent ingredient to be eligible for a romance based award.  As someone said, many great books will be excluded from consideration because of this.  That is possible, even likely. But many deserving YA romances will win awards here where they could not anywhere else. And that is RWA's mission, to enhance the romance genre, in Adult and in YA.

I think it is fitting that the 2014 RWA RITA Awards ceremony Emcee is Simone Elkeles, winner of a Young Adult RITA for her teen romance, Perfect Chemistry.  

RWA wants to specialize in Romance, just as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America hand out juvenile and/or young adult awards to novels that have those genres as their main core  while being designed to appeal to teen and young adult readers. 

Here's the good news. There are other awards out there for YA books that do not require a heavy dose of science fiction or fantasy or mystery or even romance. My 2013 novel, Being God, was nominated for the 2012-13 Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award by some of my favorite people, Indiana readers.   It has also been nominated for the 2013 Cybils Award, the Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards and in the Young Adult category of the SPARK Award created by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators to recognize "excellence in a children’s book published through a non-traditional publishing route.".

I have discovered that I have to play to have a hope of winning, but I also need to carefully select the games, and contests, I enter. 

Don't Go It Alone

By Mercer Addison

Author, Heather Graham actually started me writing.  Not that she sat beside me and encouraged me or even knew that she did.  She didn’t.  My writer’s journey started over 16 years ago, on a treadmill, reading one of Graham’s medieval paperbacks I had picked up in a used book store.  While reading Graham’s worn and creased book, I thought that writing was an easy thing to do.  I figured I could write just as well or better than HG.  I visualized my hero scaling a wall to save the damsel.  I thought I was going to write a best seller, retire before I turned fifty-five, and say hello to Florida!  Thus, I let my gym fees expire, and started writing my own medieval and doing it alone.



Mercer Addison

I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote (on my first book).  Ending up with over 180,000 words, (possibly more), I titled it, Twice the Pleasure, and later thought of it as Twice the Length it Should Be.  What was wrong here is that I didn’t bother to learn how to write, or even craft a story that an editor wanted.  I knew nothing about formatting a manuscript, plot, GMC, word count (limiting it), characterization, and the dreaded synopsis.  

I’m not sure how I found Romance Writers of America, stumbled onto it somehow.  Get it? Romance?  And this was another mistake of mine, not knowing diddly about writing a romance, of which none of my stories were at the time. 

I can’t even remember how Rose City Romance Writers (with emphasis on the third word) came into my life; think it was through RWA’s list of chapters.  So I joined RCRW.  A fellow chapter member, and my very first critique partner, pointed out to me that I had over 50 different POV’s in my story’s first chapter alone.  I even switched POV between sentences and paragraphs.  Yikes!  I just wanted every one of my characters to voice their own opinion.  What in the heck was POV anyway?  Another blaring mistake exposing that little old me didn’t know the craft of writing. Thus, in the year 2000, I went to my first RWA conference in Washington, DC.  There, I learned about POV by taking a workshop on POV.  Novel idea!  Just want to say that in the ensuing years I’ve been writing, I did learn my craft, I entered so many contests I was known as a contest slut, I won many first places, and I also have an agent. 

I have witnessed many changes within the publishing community and self-publishing is one of the biggest.  Along with my despair of ever being published with the big four, or even with an e-publisher taking me on, I decided to do it myself.  My age is also one big catalyst, as I wanted to see my name in print before I croak or lose my mind, whichever comes first.  With the help of fellow chapter-mates, forums on RWA, and workshops, I’ve been able to learn how to self-publish my work, Even Nectar is Poison, of which is not a romance, but a good old-fashioned love story. 

My journey is a good example of why we need to dispel the notion of the lonely writer plugging away and all by their lonesome.  Because if you’re going to go it alone, you’re going to make many mistakes, you’re going to miss out on working with your peers.  You’re going to miss out on a great many opportunities that each and all of us need to be successful.

And this is where I say, it takes a village folks, it takes a village.

 

Learn more about Mercer Addison at www.MercerAddison.com

Homegrown Charity

Homegrown Charity

by Diana McCollum

This month at Romancing the Genres the suggested subject is:  A Shout Out to Charities.  There are charities for everything imaginable.  Charities to help with disasters such as the Red Cross, Charities to help animals:  cats, dogs, horses, big cats & exotic animals kept as pets that need rescued.  There are charities to help specific causes:  homelessness, the environment, Doctors with Out Borders etc. 

There are world charities.  You can donate to feed the world, to build wells in Africa, to educate the illiterate in third world countries, to help fund the orphanages in other countries. 

If you can think of a cause, there’s probably a charity established for it.  There are many choices to donate your spare change towards.

Helping charities with donations of money or time is a wonderful thing.  I believe that when one gives freely to help others, it will come back ten-fold.  Karma, you know?

What I don’t like and don’t contribute to are the enormous amount of mailed solicitations for donations.  It irks me to no end the mailers I receive for donations.  Sometimes, I receive the same charity mailer two or three times in the same month!!  Those charities should use the money spent on paper, printing and postage to help their charity.  Or send one instead of several. 

One letter requesting donations should do it.  Either the person receiving it will donate, or they won’t.  Why waste money sending the same ad over and over to the same person?

I believe that charity begins at home.  By home I mean, the country, the town, the community, and the neighborhood I live in.  There are so many homeless families in America.  

There are still illiterate people living here who need help to learn to read and write.  Many adults and children go to bed way too often without ever having a meal.  The foster care system is over crowded with children many who are waiting to be adopted. 

This year through Romance Writers of America, I donated to Literacy.  Why?  Because reading and being able to comprehend opens up worlds of information for everyone.  When one reads a book one can relate to, it might help with a problem he might be facing.

Reading can take you away to far-away places.  Reading can inspire one to higher goals.  Learning without being able to read?  While not impossible, without the skill of reading, learning can be very hard.

 This year I donated to the Bethlehem House in Bend, OR.  Bethlehem House is a place for homeless families to transition back into a home of their own.  The children attend school and there is counseling to help the jobless find jobs and get back on their feet.

I volunteer my time at the local hospital.

We are all caretakers of the world we live in.  Let’s begin at home, wherever in the world that may be, and make a difference.  One small act can spread further than you ever dreamed.

Do you have a favorite charity?

Authors: Unorganized Labor

Unions—organized labor—championed the creation of Labor Day and its celebration of workers. While authors are workers, too, we’re a pretty unorganized labor force. We spend most of our days staring at computer screens in self-imposed solitary confinement—a definite hurdle to organizing fellow wordsmiths to bargain for improved pay (advances and royalties) or contract terms. As a result, we either sign with an agent or become our own negotiators or publishers, for better or worse. 

Yet we do join professional organizations, often flocking with other authors who share our interests. We become members to network, improve craft, gain/share publishing industry information, and, to a limited degree, to use our organizations’ clout to impact the marketplace. For instance, the founding of Sisters in Crime was driven, in large part, by the desire of women mystery authors to ban together and push for book review equality and visibility.  

Here are just a few of the dozens of genre-oriented organizations available to authors. Where I could find current membership statistics, I included them:

·        Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI): 22,000 members worldwide

·        Romance Writers of America^® (RWA^®): 10,250 members worldwide

·        Sisters in Crime (SinC): 3,000 members worldwide

·        Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA): 1,800 members worldwide

·        International Thriller Writers (ITW): 1,300 members worldwide

·        Historical Novel Society (HNS): 985 members

·        Mystery Writers of America (MWA): couldn’t find membership stats

·        Association of Christian Writers (ACW): couldn’t find membership stats

I’ve been a member of SinC since 2003 and RWA since 2005. I just joined ITW. While I have no first-hand knowledge of the other groups listed, it’s probably fair to say the Boards of all these organizations are struggling to adapt to dramatic industry changes—e-books, new distribution channels, self-publishing options, small press growth, and bookstore declines to name a few. In addition, a trend toward genre blending makes it difficult to say whether someone writes romance, mystery, paranormal, suspense or thriller novels.  

Some organizations have long based membership eligibility (or status within the group) on traditional publishing criteria, e.g. the author had to sell to a “recognized” publisher and needed to earn a set dollar amount as an advance and/or in combination with royalties for full “professional” membership status. Selection by a “recognized” publisher implied the work met professional standards. Many groups are backing away from such criteria as more and more talented authors choose to self-publish or sign with e-book or niche publishers to reach their goals. I’m all for this move toward more egalitarian membership standards. In fact, I love the fact that SinC membership is open to readers as well as authors. Our local SinC chapter certainly benefits from this membership mix.

Then there’s the matter of defining genre. A current controversy within RWA relates to a decision to eliminate the Novel with Strong Romantic Elements (NSRE) from its two premiere contests—the Golden Heart^® for unpublished authors and the RITA^® for published authors. Many members of RWA’s Kiss of Death chapter (to which I belong) have expressed dismay at this decision, especially given that so many of today’s best-selling novels combine romance with other genres from paranormal and mystery to inspirational and young adult. Why exclude members from key recognition opportunities if romance is an important element in their craft and their novels might encourage others to read books with romance?

Do you belong to a genre-oriented writing organization? If so, what kind of membership standards do you want it to adopt? What kind of support do you look for from your writing groups--craft, marketing, legal/contract expertise, other?