Romancing the Genres: outlander

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.