Write Romance for Adams Media

Adams Media Romance Guidelines

A new direct-to-ebook romance imprint is launching soon!  Adams Media is open to romance submissions in five popular subgenres: romantic suspense, contemporary, paranormal, historical, and erotic romance. 

Within those subgenres, editors are pretty flexible about what happens. It's romance, so there must be a happily-ever-after, but this publisher is open to how your characters get there.

"You won't come up against preconceived ideas about what can or can't happen in romance or what kind of characters you can or can't have," says Jennifer Lawler, editor. "Our only rule is everyone has to be a consenting adult. Other than that, we're looking for smart, savvy heroines, fresh voices, and new takes on old favorite themes."

The publisher is looking for full-length novels, and while they prefer to work on the shorter end of the spectrum (50,000 words, give or take), they are not going to rule you out because you go shorter or longer.

If you have a finished novel for submission, please just drop editor Jennifer Lawler a line at editorcrimson@gmail.com with a brief description of your work (no attachments)

Update to our Contest page

Please note that the Contest page on our website has been updated to include formatting requirements for all entries. Please check them out, and make sure you are familiar with the Ts and Cs, as entries that do not follow the guidelines will unfortunately be disqualified.

For the dedicated followers of Harlequin / Mills & Boon

Harlequin have announced an editor chat and fast track for their Romance line. This is the line available here in South Africa as Mills & Boon Cherish with some cross-over with Mills & Boon Riva.

You can read more about the Romance line and the fast track here.

The online chat will take place on Wednesday 14th March at 10am UK time which is midday (12pm) SA time. If you have any questions for the editors, please join in the chat if you can.
This is the link where the chats usually happen.

Harlequin also ran a chat with the Desire editors last week. You can read the transcript of the chat here.

Elinor Glyn - the 'It' Girl of '20s romance writing

A handsome young Englishman enters his sedate Swiss hotel room only to find an exotic Balkan queen stretched out on a tiger skin with a lush red rose clamped between her teeth, just waiting to seduce him into a marriage of convenience.

The scene, from Elinor Glyn’s 1908 book Three Weeks, scandalised Edwardian readers and cemented her notorious legacy as a trash novelist. With titles like Glorious Flames and The Flirt and the Flapper, Glyn’s more than 40 novels exerted a huge influence on romantic and erotic fiction of the time and helped boost her career as screenwriter and director in silent era Hollywood.

She coined the popular expression ‘It’, that elusive and alluring quality of absolute sex appeal. ‘It can be a quality of the mind or a physical attraction,’ she said and these beguiling properties were bestowed on ‘20s actress Clara Bow, forever remembered as the ultimate It Girl in a movie of the same name. Hollywood gossip has Glyn reportedly teaching Rudolph Valentino how to kiss while he filmed Beyond the Rocks with Gloria Swanson, a movie based on her 1906 novel.

She was born Elinor Sutherland on 17 October 1864 in Jersey on the Channel Islands, but her family moved to Canada when she was a baby. She was brought up by her grandmother, of Anglo-Irish aristocracy, who instilled in her a sense of style and upper-class breeding. With her green eyes and flame-coloured hair, Glyn could easily have been a character in one of her own scandalous books.  After her marriage to wealthy but spendthrift landowner Clayton Glyn hit the rocks, she took to having affairs with various English aristocrats. In fact, Three Weeks was rumoured to be inspired by her affair with Lord Alastair Innes Ker.

She died in London on 23 September 1943. In 2002, Johanna Lumley played the novelist in the film The Cat’s Meow, as a guest on tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s yacht the night Thomas Ince died. Her career as a novelist is now largely forgotten and, reading her books out of historical context, her prose seems positively tame. However, Elinor Glyn pioneered mass-market women’s fiction in the early 20^th century and she was one of the first female directors in early Tinseltown. 

Elinor Glyn is just one iconic romance novelist of our times. Which author has most influenced your career as a writer?

Short story submission call

The Wild Rose Press are looking for short stories across all their lines.

If you were inspired to write during the holiday season, and have a short story with a Christmassy theme, deadline for the 2012 holiday season is March 13.

We all have crazy lives, and it's hard to find time to write, but short stories don't take as much time as full length novels, sho why not give it a try? Take some time out just for you - even if it's only 30 minutes a day and write. Don't let yourself get out of the habit of putting something on paper (in the computer) every day.

This from Rhonda Penders, editor-in-chief of The Wild Rose Press:

Those of you who say you can't write short - I say you can't because you never tried. Seriously. I'm a long writer, always have been but writing the shorter story is sometimes very freeing. You can accomplish a lot when you are forced by page number restrictions.

A short story doesn't necessarily have to be only 12,000 words - a short story technically is anything under 65,000 words. No they don't go to print but they make some seriously good sales on the Kindle and other devices. Also, short stories tend to get picked up by our reviewers ten times quicker than the full lengths. Reviewers, like all of us, are pressed for time. Given the choice to review a 20,000 word story or a 85,000 word story - they are going to go shorter.

So make it your resolution this year to write at least one short story or maybe 2 or 3 and get them submitted. Several of our lines have series running right now - hopefully that will get your creative juices flowing with some ideas.  

Important note from TWRP: all non US authors need to file paperwork to obtain a US Taxpayer ID number before we can publish their manuscript. We can contract them, and we need to before they can even apply, but we can’t publish anything without that number.(See our blog post on how to apply for an ITIN).

Rhonda Penders is judging the Unpublished category of our first ever ROSA contest. You can find out more information about the contest here.

Pitch to Presents

The Harlequin editors in Richmond are running a pitch contest for their Presents line (published in South Africa as Mills & Boon Modern). If you'd like to enter, you need to act quick as the pitch closes on Monday 27th February.

Aspiring writers can pitch their previously unsubmitted manuscripts to the editors. They're looking for strong Alpha males, exotic settings, and feisty heroines who challenge these heroes.

To enter, you need to write a blurb (the back cover copy) of about 80-100 words, and also provide an extract of 200-250 words. The blurb should be as catchy and enticing as possible, and the extract can be from any part of the story, preferably a scene with intense emotion and sensuality to showcase your writing.

Email your blurb and extract in the body of an email to Harlequin Hosty Rae at doeraemi@gmail.com, including 'Pitch to Presents' in the subject of the email - and don't forget to include your full name.
No attachments please.

The editors will then choose 5 entrants who will have the opportunity to pitch in an online chat with the editors on 15th March. Winners will be announced a week before.

Entrants MUST be able to use the Harlequin chat room at the given chat time on 15th March, as another venue or option will not be offered, and if you are selected and don't pitch, you'll have cost someone else an opportunity.

Your manuscript does not have to be complete, and you can enter even if you have another submission already in with the editors, however this must be a new story that is not currently under consideration, and which has not been published elsewhere.

Further information is available here and here.

Good luck, and let us know if you're entering.

Next Johannesburg Get-together

We're meeting near Cresta on Thursday, 1st March 2012. If you'd like to join in, drop me an email on romy@romancewriters.co.za.