Romy Sommer

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls . - Joseph Campbell

I've announced the winners over at my Rae Summers blog. Congratulations to Jennifer Mathis and Rachel Lyndhurst . They both win Christmas tree decorations courtesy of The Rainforest Site. The Rainforest Site is offering all Christmas ornaments at half price, so check out the sale!

Whatever you do, do it with all your heart and soul. - From Bernard Baruch (courtesy of a Huletts sugar packet)

The day job just got really busy. Since I've had a quiet run for the last two months I've almost forgotten how to do the job! I'll be absent for the next week or so until I get on top of the workload. Have fun while I'm gone!

My alter ego (Rae Summers) is participating in a blog tour with nine other authors from The Wild Rose Press for the next four Wednesdays. Please visit my other blog and support me on the tour. Today I'm hosting my lovely crit partner, Sally Clements . The tour is Christmas-themed so you'll be able to get holiday ideas, recipes, as well as pick up some new holiday reads. Each blog is also running a tour contest, which means that you have ten chances to win! For more information on the participating authors, the prizes they're offering, and who is visiting where and when, click here: http://rosestour.blogspot.com/ To find out more about the contest I'm running, click here , and to see what I have to say about my TBR pile, drop by PL Parker's blog .

I'll admit to feeling a tad disappointed when I saw The List on the New Voices contest site and not only did I not make it, but none of my CPs or online friends did either. (And by the way, you were all fantastic!) On the plus side, this contest has been an awesome experience for me, because it introduced me to a whole new bunch of aspiring South African authors. For more information on the South African entrants and other entries set in Africa or with South African characters, you can view the list here: http://saromancewriters.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-voices-entries.html Our country is a little backward when it comes to genre fiction, and until now most romance writers battle away quietly on their own while lots of fuss gets made about literary authors and poets. So we're not going to win any Booker or Nobel prizes (which have both incidentally been awarded this last week, in case you've missed the news) but we are steadily growing in numbers and in strength. Just w...

While over 800 aspirant writers anxiously await The List (for those who aren't as obssessed by the New Voices contest as I am, this is the list HMB have promised us of entries they want to see more of), I have a question to pose:  If HMB does not request your contest entry, do you plan to stick it in a bottom drawer or to sub this story elsewhere? Of course, I'm one of the 814 hoping this is not a situation I'll have to face, but even so I know exactly what I'd do: the bottom drawer. Why? Because when I do sell to HMB one day (and I'm determined to!) I want to have a whole bunch of manuscripts ready to be re-worked and re-submitted. I'm hoping that by then I'll be more experienced and know how to 'fix' them, so that instead of making just the one sale, I'll be able to sell a whole bunch more to my dream publisher! But I also realise that there are times when submitting to A.N. Other publisher might be a better option for a manuscript. If...