A big thank you to Brook Cottage Books for inviting me here today, helping me to celebrate my second novel making the final of the Maggie Award for Excellence.
Probably the best phone call or e-mail a writer can receive – after the one from a publisher who wants to publish your book – is one to say that it has made the grade in a competition. In this case it was a little while coming as the finalists were published and my book was not among them – but then I got that all important e-mail. There had been a glitch in the scoring and I was on the list after all! It’s a wonderful feeling to know that readers - librarians and booksellers - liked your book enough to put it in the final of a contest like the Maggie Award.
What is the Maggie? It’s the annual contest of the Georgia Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. It’s been going for over 30 years and is highly respected in the world of romance writing in the US. It’s exciting and a great honour, as a Welsh author, to be chosen as a finalist.
And the book? It’s called Out of Sight Out of Mind. It’s what is known in the US as a romantic suspense – a romantic thriller in the UK - with a paranormal twist. Not vampires and werewolves, but a heroine who can read minds and a hero who has an unexpected connection to her, through her work. It’s set in London, where I used to live, and in Wales, where I live now. Some of the scenes in Wales are real places, some are imagined ones – that’s is one of the beauties of being a writer – you get to invent your perfect beach, your perfect seaside cottage and your perfect hero – and the reader is free too, to put their favourite beach, cottage, hero, into the picture. Actually, Jay, the hero of the book is not exactly perfect – he has some very dark things in his past and meeting him draws Madison, my heroine, into danger. And that’s why it’s called romantic suspense …
The contest winner will be announced at the Moonlight and Magnolias convention on 11th October. I’d love to be there, but Georgia is long way to travel from Wales! Maybe one day I’ll make it, as the convention sounds like great fun.
Will I win? Of course I hope so, but if I don’t, the experience of being a finalist has been a huge thrill. I’m grateful to the judges who chose me and the organisers who made the contest happen.
And of course thanks to JB/Debbie for inviting me here to Brook Cottage Books to share the excitement and tell you about Out of Sight Out of Mind.
Out of Sight Out of Mind – published by Choclit
Twitter @evonnewareham
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