Exciting news!

I won Best Debut Author in the AAR Annual Readers Poll! They asked me for a reaction, and I don’t think I can say it better than I did there:

I’m so thrilled and proud to be chosen by AAR readers, especially in a year with so many fantastic debuts! [No, but really. I’m trying not to be annoyingly self-deprecating, but when I look at some of the debuts from this year, it’s hard for me to believe that this actually happened.] Like most romance authors, I’m a reader too, and one of my favorite things about the romance genre is how it functions as a community. AAR is in a class by itself when it comes to fostering that and keeping it going. I can’t even express how huge an honor it is that so many of you liked my book. Thank you to everyone who voted (even if it wasn’t for me)!

Seriously, guys, the wonderful reception that In for a Penny has found has been beyond anything I expected. Thank you all so much for everything.

Also, I’m sorry the blog has been a bit slow recently. To tide you over until actual content appears (and I do have some planned, I’ve been researching and found some great stories and quotes I want to share with you all), here are a couple of links:

1) A blog post by Kat Latham about the ways I convey accents and class differences in language use in In for a Penny. This is something I thought about a lot while writing the book, so I was thrilled when Kat e-mailed me to say she wanted to make this post, and she has a ton of really smart stuff to say. I really recommend both this and her earlier posts on writing accents to anyone who’s thinking about writing a character with distinctive speech patterns.

2) Kate Beaton writes a Doctor Who comic without ever having watched Doctor Who. Amazingly, she hits the nail right on the head. With bonus Wellington!

19 thoughts on “Exciting news!”

  1. Hurray!! And Kat Latham’s blog post was very interesting — I recognized that the characters *had* different accents but not how much information that implied.

    1. Thanks! And yes, it amazes me how much British people think about their accents even today…not that we don’t make class/cultural judgments based on accents in the states (watching any TV show set in the South confirms that), but it seems more codified and pervasive in the UK.

      1. That’s really true. When I first moved to London, I was surprised by how much information some British people assume they know about other Brits just based on what they sound like.
        And I’m glad you liked the post, Matti! Thank you!

  2. Congratulations (again!).
    It doubtless says…something…about me, I’m not sure what, that I look at that Kate Beaton comic, laugh and laugh, and then think, “COULD you actually kill someone with a basketball at sufficient velocity? Where’s a MythBuster to answer these questions when I need one, huh? And what time-traveling villain would use such a ‘weapon’ against Wellington?” (It’d have to be a time traveler since I know off the top of my head that Wellington died of old age almost exactly 40 years before basketball was invented, so all that probably says I’m a giant geek with an absurd level of recall for historical detail of almost no relevance to my daily life. But I like that about me.)

    1. I guess you could put a bomb inside the basketball? But I agree that this is an interesting question. When we are NYT bestsellers you want to go halves on a research assistant to figure out these sorts of pressing questions for us?

  3. I am very behind, but yay, this is brilliant! And so very totally deserved. Just yesterday I was recommending In For A Penny to someone who was sick of all marriages of convenience/arranged marriages being to abusive husbands.
    I’m so happy for you!

    1. Thank you! ♥ And if she wants more happy marriage of convenience stories I can recommend plenty, it’s a common romance trope (and easily one of my favorites)!

  4. Congratulations, Rose! It’s a well-deserved honor. And thanks for linking to my post. I’m glad you enjoyed it! I’d been struggling to figure out what to approach writing accents before I read In for a Penny, but your novel truly is a masterclass in subtly portraying characters, and using accents and speech patterns to make the characters and story deeper. I loved it.

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