The winners of this year's Festival of Romance Awards were announced yesterday evening at a gala occasion in Bedford to open the weekend-long Festival of Romance. The winners were:

Best Romantic Read:

Dearest Rose by Rowan Coleman

Best Historical Read:

The Silent Touch of Shadows by Christina Courtenay

Best Short Romance:

Dancing with Danger by Fiona Harper

Best Ebook:

Miranda's Mount by Philipa…

Fancy A Little Bit of Fun?

Come to Safkhet Publishing’s booth on November 17 at the…

A market research company is looking for women who are active romance readers (6+ books per year) and who own an eReader (Kindle, iPad etc) to take part in some research about enjoyment of the genre. The focus group is being organised by SCB Partners and participants will discuss what they love about reading romantic fiction.The focus group takes place this Tuesday evening, 30 October, in Hammersmith, London and those taking part will…

The Festival of Romance taking place in Bedford next month is providing a unique chance for writers to pitch their novels live to a panel of publishers. On the panel listening to and giving live feedback to the pitches will be editors from Mills and Boon who publish across many genres and romantic fiction…

Bestselling Irish author Maeve Binchy has died peacefully in hospital yesterday following a short illness. The 72-year-old author sold more than 40 million books worldwide during her career and touched on relationship issues that struck real resonance with her readers. Several of her books were adapted for the screen including the Circle…

The Queen's Secret

Victoria Lamb…

Hi all!

I'm currently planning some new content for my female fiction website, Trashionista, and wondered if any of you lovely ladies here fancied taking part in some features?

Over the coming months I'll be looking for authors to submit writing-relateing tips, stories about their own experiences in writing and publishing and quite possibly some 'yay or nay' features/debates.

If anyone is interested in taking part, please let me know! Just thought I'd give…

An American blogger has landed her first book deal with erotic fiction publisher Xcite Books after winning a competition to find new talent. Xcite Books launched its first ever writing contest at the Festival of Romance in the UK last October in the hope of finding a writer and book that embodied the spirit of erotic…

Snowbound on the Island, my short seasonal novella, was published a few days ago and is…

In a blog published today by the Telegraph newspaper, Scottish author Allan Massie pays tribute to the "extraordinary talent" of the late romance author Penny Jordan who died recently. Penny Jordan wrote over 190 romance novels during her long career. Writing mostly for Mills and Boon, she was one of the world's best known romantic fiction…

A US writer of science fiction and fantasy has launched a scathing attack on romance novels. Cale McCaskey, who describes himself on his blog profile as a "sexy, single, white male" claims that romance novels are "purposely meant to be a lessor work."  "If an author classifies their own story as romance, that tells me that even they don't think much of it," writes McCaskey in his blog, dated…

Select an exciting read for your Christmas Kindle, put your feet up and enjoy Alina and Harry's trials as they fall in love. Who would ever have thought that her father would threaten to kill Harry simply because his name was Scott? or that the infamous Border Reivers would get involved? But…

Hope that it's OK for me to post this, here, but it's a great comp, just right for writers of romantic fiction. And who can resist the lure of money and chocolate?

Choc Lit are looking for short stories of up to 1,500 words in which the central theme is chocolate – eating it, drinking it, cooking with it, or anything else. Let your imagination take…

The inaugural Romance Reader Awards were presented at a gala ball on 22 October attended by authors and publishing executives in the romantic surroundings of Hunton Park in Hertfordshire.

The Romance Reader Awards winners were presented with trophies from sponsors Total-E-Bound and Choc Lit. The winners were:

 …

We're delighted to be welcoming Mills and Boon to the Festival of Romance on Saturday 22nd October. In the meantime Mills and Boon would like to let you know about their New Voices Competition:

Mills & Boon have launched their second global search for fresh writing talent to join their…

For immediate release

Shortlists for Brand New Romantic Fiction Awards Announced

26 September 2011. The Festival of Romance is delighted to announce the shortlists…

Hi

first blog post from me, and it's just a basic introduction.

My penname is Erastes and I write gay historical fiction. I started to write in 2003 when I discovered fanfiction (something that I'd never heard of before that) and in a few months I realised that I also wanted to write to sell, and I began "Standish" -a gay Regency.

Standish got published in 2006, and in those 3 years I'd been passing it around to try and sell I'd been writing short stories and…

What is the future of book formats? We know that ebooks and download audio books are growing in popularity but paper book formats are going through troubled times. This is a really interesting article by Emily Rhodes for The Spectator on the rarity of hardbacks now by women writers. According to Ian McEwan "when women stop reading, the novel will be…