Monday, July 31, 2006

Celebration!

The RITAs, the Romance Writers of America's awards for best books of the year, as judged by their peers, were presented last Saturday night. It's always a gala occasion and the sequin fallout in Atlanta must have been something to behold.

Even better to behold were a couple of the winners -- Marion Lennox for writing the Best Traditional Romance of the Yearand Liz Fielding for the Best Short Contemporary! Both Marion and Liz are second-time winners, too, which tells you something about the level of quality of their books.

My dear friend Anne Gracie, whose own wonderful The Perfect Rake, was also a RITA finalist this year, was on hand at Marion's for a champagne celebration and has sent me a wonderful photo of RITA, Marion, Mitzi (the one with all the hair) and Anne herself (as she says, "attempting to steal RITA). I do notice that it is Anne who is holding RITA while Marion gets to prop up the champagne swilling dog. But now that the celebration is over, I have been assured that RITA is still in Marion's possession. Wish I'd been there!


If you haven't read The Marriage Miracle, Liz's winner, or Princess of Convenience, Marion's RITA winner, track them down. They are great reads.



Congrats to both Marion and Liz and all the winners of this year's RITA competition. And to all the finalists, congratulations, too, because you all wrote terrific books.


The virtual party at Lucy's blog has ended as all good things must. We have come back to earth and are hard at work again. I'm happy to report that the 146th take was the one I'd been waiting for -- the one that means Spence and Sadie are finally off the blinkin' airplane -- and we can get on with the story. (I hope).

In the meantime, there is still a day to sign up to win a copy of The Great Montana Cowboy Auction. So if you haven't dropped me a note at anne.mcallister(at)gmail.com or signed up on the comments page here, please do so and I'll put you in the drawing. The winner will be posted the evening of August 1st, and she will have 24 hours to contact me. If she doesn't, another winner will be chosen. Gunnar is getting excited about this because he is the one who gets to pick winners.

3 Comments:

Blogger anne frasier said...

ah, lovely rita.

i'll never forget watching the 1999? award ceremony online with a chopped image that loaded a few pixels at a time. no sound. from the bottom. up, up, up. to see my friend anne mcallister standing there at the podium accepting my award! my god! it was surreal!

31 July, 2006  
Blogger Anne McAllister said...

You think it was surreal, Anne! Try being the one who was up there accepting it -- and the editor not convinced that I had been deputized to do so. And who was that editor, anyway???

31 July, 2006  
Blogger anne frasier said...

i can't even remember her name. hmm. that's gonna keep me up tonight.... i think they hired her right out of high school....

the editor who'd actually edited the book was i think sharon morey. sp? but she left, and i got passed to this infant.

31 July, 2006  

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