Category: News

2019 RITA Award Winners

Posted July 27, 2019 by Holly in News | 2 Comments

NEW YORK, NY —Romance Writers of America (RWA), the trade association for published and aspiring romance fiction authors, announced the winners of the 2019 RITA® Awards on Friday, July 26, at a black-tie awards ceremony at its 39th Annual Conference in New York New York.

The RITA® Award is the highest award of distinction in romance fiction and recognizes outstanding published romance novels and novellas.

Up to 2,000 romance novels and novellas from 13 different categories are judged each year in the RITA® competition. After the first round of judging by fellow published romance authors, the competition narrows to approximately 100 finalists. Then, final round judges, also published romance authors, select one winner in each category from among the finalists.

The 2019 RITA® Award winners are:


Romance Novella: Bad Blood by M. Malone

Contemporary Romance Long: Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan

Young Adult Romance: My So-Called Bollywood Life by Nisha Sharma

Historical Romance Long: A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy

Romantic Suspense: Fearless by Elizabeth Dyer

Paranormal Romance: Dearest Ivie by J. R. Ward

Erotic Romance: Three-Way Split by Elia Winters

Historical Romance Short: A Duke in the Night by Kelly Bowen

Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements: The Saturday Night Supper Club by Carla Laureano

Contemporary Romance Short: The Bachelor’s Baby Surprise by Teri Wilson

Contemporary Romance Mid-length: Advanced Physical Chemistry by Susannah Nix

Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance: How to Keep a Secret by Sarah Morgan

Best First Book: Lady in Waiting by Marie Tremayne

The list of winners, along with author photos and book covers, can be found on the RWA website at www.rwa.org.

Romance Writers of America’s mission is to advance the professional and common business interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy and by increasing public awareness of the romance genre. Romance fiction is a $1 billion industry, and it’s a consistent, top-performing category on the best-seller lists. To learn more about romance fiction and RWA, visit http://www.rwa.org or call 832-717-5200, Ext. 128.

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Updated: #cockygate Part 2: #Cocky Author Files Lawsuit (includes link to full summary)

Posted May 30, 2018 by Holly in Discussions, News | 12 Comments

Note: This is a pinned post. Scroll down for additional content.

Update June 1, 2018: Thanks to Euna Park for the updates she was able to post on the court hearing this morning in NYC. The judge denied FH the temporary restraining order she requested for the publishing of books with the word “cocky” in the title and removed Kevin Kneupper from the lawsuit. Kevin being removed from the lawsuit has no bearing on his trademark case. That is separate.

FH’s lawyer is really claiming that the word “cocky” is synonomous with FH in the romance genre. Wow. Considering nobody knew who she was before all of this came to light, that’s overstating the shit out of things. I mean, sure, NOW that might be true but not in the way I think her lawyer meant.

Author Liv Morris also attended the hearing and had this to say about the Cocktales: The Cocky Collective:

This is more great news for Team Romance. I’m super glad to see that Cocktales will be able to continue to sell books. I really love how supportive our community has been over this whole thing. It makes me so glad to be apart of such an awesome community.

Here is a list of links that Courtney Milan provided that includes all, or well, most documents pertaining to the lawsuit:

Defendants Joint Memo in Opposition to Preliminary Injunction & TRO
Tara Crescent Affidavit
Crescent Exhibit D
Crescent Exhibit G
Declaration for Jennifer Watson
Declaration for Penny Reid
Plaintiff (FH) Reply to Memorandum of Law in further support of Plainitffs Motion
Full Transcript of Preliminary Hearing on June 1, 2018

Here are some other posts that went up in the last couple of days:

Authors Guild and RWA Prevail in Court Defending Authors in “Cocky” Trademark Dispute
Judge Denies Injunction Request in Cocky Trademark Dispute
RWA’s Update on Recent Trademark Proceedings
The Cocky Trademark Author Writes an Open Letter to Herself in Response to Cockygate
How an Author Trademarking the word “cocky” turned the romance novel industry inside out

Marc Whipple has a great running commentary on the entire #cockygate on his blog so be sure to check that out too.

Posted on May 30, 2018: Rowena and I have been on vacation so while we’ve been keeping up with the latest nonsense with #cockygate, we haven’t had a chance to update until now.

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Updated: #Cocky Romance Author Trademarks word, Starts #cockygate: A Summary

Posted May 7, 2018 by Holly in News | 61 Comments

Update May 16, 2018: Kevin Kneupper received Notice of Institution in the “cocky” trademark challenge.


Which basically means the challenge has been filed.

In other related news, the website cockyandproud.com popped up recently, claiming to support 3 of the authors Hopkins targeted. Dusk Peterson on Twitter questions the legitimacy of the site, especially since they’re using affiliate links to make money, which they claim will be donated into gofundme (or similar ventures).

Notice from cockyandproud.com


Apparently three of the authors say they have no affiliation with the site. If you want to support them, buy their books on Amazon.


I hate to say it, but people can be assholes. Please make sure you aren’t getting taken advantage of

The crazy video Hopkins posted is up at Vimeo if you want to watch it. I’m not sure what to tell you about it. You’re welcome? I’m sorry? Good luck?

More links:

Vox.com: How an author trademarking the word “cocky” turned the romance novel industry inside out
Slate.com: Who Owns Cocky?

Update May 11, 2018: I had very limited access to the internet the past couple days, so I’m a little behind in updating this post. Faleena Hopkins deleted her Facebook account, along with the 1:42:00 video we linked to below. It may crop up again, but if you didn’t see it, you didn’t miss anything. I promise. The video is back up at YouTube. I embedded it below. The video is down again. You can read Jenny Trout’s live-tweeting of it for a summary.

Amazon responded to RWA’s request that no further titles be removed while this matter is being resolved. They agreed.


Prior to that, authors and readers noticed reviews featuring the word “Cocky” were being removed from both Amazon and Goodreads. I haven’t seen anything from Amazon or Goodreads direct about that, but reviewer Lillie tested the system by posting two reviews – one with the word “Cocky” and one without. The review with cocky was held for 13 hours, while the one without posted immediately. Oddly enough, she noted the review with cocky went live right about the time Amazon announced it would honor RWA’s request. If I were a suspicious person….

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Bookish Thoughts: Santino Hassell, Sarah Lyons and Riptide Publishing, Crimson Romance and RWA Awards

Posted March 16, 2018 by Holly in Discussions, News | 1 Comment

A lot has happened this week in Romanceland.

Santino Hassell Dropped by Publishers

As we mentioned in our statement earlier this week, last week the romance community exploded with the news author Santino Hassell was maybe not everything he’d been purporting himself to be. At that time we were still sorting through everything, but we felt the allegations were serious enough that we didn’t feel comfortable promoting his books. Since our statement, both Riptide Publishing and Berkley have dropped him. He posted a second statement on his website, explaining his side, though again it didn’t really feel like a true apology. “Sorry I’m an asshole” isn’t really the same thing as “I’m sorry I hurt everyone by being an asshole.” Or maybe that’s just me.

If you haven’t had a chance to sort through the whole thing, here’s a list of links:

For the most part, this played out on Twitter. A lot of authors and readers were pretty fierce in their initial defense of SH, including Megan Erickson, who co-wrote the Cyberlove series with SH, and Sarah Lyons of Riptide Publishing. When more and more stories started coming out (with proof) and the depth of the deception was made public, the apology posts started to pour forth. There wasn’t a whole lot of people who weren’t affected by this and we can’t stress enough how sad we are that our community has taken a hit like this.

Isobel Starling commented to let us know Amazon is offering no questions asked refunds for any SH book you’d like to return, no matter when you bought it.

Sarah Lyons Resigns from Riptide Publishing Amid Claims of Inappropriate Behavior From Authors

Author Xen Sanders/Cole McCade recently posted about his experiences with Sarah Lyons. He details extremely inappropriate behavior and abuse in her role as Editorial Director for Riptide Publishing. She resigned as ED shortly thereafter.

It’s really disappointing to see this happening in our romance community. It’s such an ugly situation especially since, for the most part, this community was formed as a safe haven where we could discuss romance, a genre often looked down upon. It’s truly appalling to see someone in a position of power in this industry hurt others like this.

Riptide has since posted a Pledge for the Future, promising reform:

Crimson Romance is Shutting Down

Crimson Romance announced on Twitter their intention to shut down. This comes just days after The Ripped Bodice published their annual Diversity in Romance Study (view the study here), which named Crimson as a leader in publishing diverse romance. I haven’t seen an official announcement outside of Twitter, but PW says S&S attributed the closing to:

“changing consumer reading habits and the continual evolution of the marketplace.” The publisher said these factors made continuing with the business “unfeasible.”

It’s disappointing to hear about any romance imprint closing their doors, but when the imprint closing down is one responsible for publishing such a large number of diverse romances, it hurts even more.

RWA Award Recipients Announced

In one of the only bright spots of the week, RWA announced the winners for this year’s RWA Awards.

The full list:

RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award: Suzanne Brockmann
RWA Emma Merritt Service Award: Leslie Kelly
RWA Service Awards: Xio Axelrod, Robin Covington, Katie Dunneback, Sarah Hegger, Jeannie Moon
RWA Vivian Stephens Industry Award: Pamela Jaffee, Avon Books
RWA Cathie Linz Librarian of the Year: Fran Cassano, North Bellmore Public Library
RWA Steffie Walker Bookseller of the Year: Crystal Perkins


 
Congratulations to all of the winners, we’re super thrilled for all of you! We’re sure there will be plenty of celebrating in Denver this year and we hope you guys have the best time. Hugs from Book Binge!

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A Statement About Santino Hassell

Posted March 13, 2018 by Holly in Miscellaneous, News | 14 Comments

Recently some allegations have come out about MM author Santino Hassell. It seems he was caught catfishing. There are a good number of reviewers and authors who feel betrayed by Santino Hassell.

For those of you who aren’t plugged into the online romance community, let me sum up: MM author Santino Hassell cultivated an online persona and became friends with a goodly number of other authors and readers. He presented himself as a bisexual single dad with serious health problems and massive medical bills. He asked for readers to donate to help with said bills so he’d be able to continue writing. It was then revealed that he was married, and did not in fact suffer from liver cancer liked he previously claimed. It seems there is also some question about whether or not he’s bi-sexual or if he said so to take advantage of the LGTBQ community. This is a brief summary and I’m sad to say there are a lot of accusations against him, including deceit, abuse toward readers – specifically those in the LGTBQ community – and much more.

If you want the full story, the entire thing is laid out here on Tumblr: The Santino Hassell Debacle. Riptide Publishing has broken all ties with Santino Hassell. Santino Hassell posted an apology, though, as far as I can tell, it admits no wrongdoing and only asks that other authors aren’t abused because of the allegations against him.

To be honest, Rowena and I are still sorting through the entire mess. Not everything is clear to us at the moment (there is just too much to get through and we haven’t had time to read through it all. As a result we don’t fully understand all that’s happened yet). However, we at Book Binge do not condone the abuse of readers, nor do we support those who Catfish, Doxx or deceive readers for personal gain. We have removed all Santino Hassell content from this site and will not post any in the future. Our hearts go out to those who have been victimized and hurt by the actions of this author.

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