I am not going to lie, the outcome of first round judging for the contests I entered was surprising. Let’s be super honest for a second, I entered a romance between two women and considering how hard it is to get romance readers to actually read f/f, my hopes were minimal. My hopes had briefly been buoyed by my critique partners, but then I was left alone with my thoughts for months, and now some more months as the final judges read things.

This is not going to be a lecture on why f/f romance struggles to get attention or all of the reasons romance readers have given for not reading f/f. It’s messy and confusing, and would make a very complicated flowchart.

But I am going to pause and say that I’m super thankful to the first round judges at OCCRWA’s Orange Rose Contest and Georgia Romance Writers’ Unpublished Maggie Contest for giving an f/f historical romance a chance. I didn’t expect to final in any contests, and so for you, I have updated my website.

Also, I’m terrible at titles. Terrible. While it exists as Miss Lonely Hearts right now, in my brain, it’s still Caro and Nora.