Romantic Novel of the Year Award

It's that time again - the Romantic Novelists' Association have just announced their shortlist for this year's Romantic Novel of the Year award. Six books have been selected from a long list which included best-selling authors such as Penny Vincenzi, Janet Macleod Trotter, Lisa Kleypas and Lilian Harry.

This year's shorlist is made up of five established writers and an up and coming writer. It includes Wales' answer to Catherine Cookson, Catrin Collier, with One Last Summer, a saga set in Russia. I've read a couple of Catrin's books and they were wonderful. Full of period detail, authenticity, tragedy, survival and romance, of course!

Previous winner Maureen Lee has also made the shortlist with The Leaving of Liverpool. I've read Maureen's previous award-winning book, Dancing in the Dark, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The third saga on the list is by new writer Catherine King. Her book is called Silk and Steel and again, it looks really good.

Next, we've got two chick lit titles - Adele Parks, Young Wives' Tale and Freya North's Pillow Talk. I never read anything by Adele; and the one book by Freya North I read, I couldn't get past page 12.

The last shortlisted book is by another previous winner - Jojo Moyes' Silver Bay. I read her first book Sheltering Rain and I had enjoyed it and this looks good too.

Best of luck to all the shortlisted books, and massive congratulations to them all. I look forward to the short list of the category romance books soon!

Resolutions, Anniversaries and Catching Up (again!)

I hope you've all had a great Christmas and I wish each and every one of you a wonderful 2008 that is full of joy, success, good health and happiness. As I take the Christmas decorations down, and begin to get back to normality, I've realized that, once again, this blog has been left to gather dust, so one of my resolutions this New Year is to update this blog more often.

I have to say that in recent years, now that both my children have grown up, Christmas has lost some of its magic for me. It's also becoming a tad too commercial for my liking, which probably explains the reason why I still hadn't bought anything on Christmas Eve and why my cards arrived after the New Year!

But, as Christmas is over, now we can look forward to a whole new year. I hope all my blog readers have a peaceful 2008 - and I hope that you'll be hearing a lot more from me!

Oh, and 2008 is the centenary of M&B! Now, as you've probably gathered, I'm a massive M&B fan, so I can't wait to see what this wonderful publisher have in store for us this year! I am sure it will be good!