So You Want to Write Romance

Thank you to everyone for a fantastic event on May 25! Check back later for news about our next free virtual event.

And a special thank you goes to our featured speakers: Romy Sommer, K. Bromberg, Belle Calhoune, Reese Ryan, and Alana Quintana Albertson!

• Introduction from RWA President Clair Brett
• Introduction to Romance with Romy Sommer
• Author Panel: How I Got Started with K. Bromberg, Belle Calhoune, and Reese Ryan
• Keynote with Alana Quintana Albertson (Q&A to follow)

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Featured Speakers

Alana Quintana Albertson, Keynote Speaker

Alana Quintana Albertson is a Latina bestselling romance and mystery author (#3 in entire Amazon store) with over one million views on her Se7en Deadly SEALs romantic mystery serial on Radish. Her own voices, Latine rom-com series, Love and Tacos, has been optioned for television.

Alana holds a Masters of Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University. She’s the former President of Romance Writers of America’s Contemporary Romance, Young Adult, and Chick Lit chapters.

A recovering professional ballroom dancer, she lives in Poway, California, with her husband, two young sons, and seven rescue dogs.

When she’s not spending her time saving dogs from high kill shelters through Pugs N Roses™, the rescue she founded, she can be found needle pointing while binge-watching episodes of Pitch, Wednesday, You, or the Americans.

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K. Bromberg, Featured Speaker

New York Times best-selling author K. Bromberg writes contemporary romance novels that contain a mixture of sweet, emotional, a whole lot of sexy, and a little bit of real. She likes to write strong heroines and damaged heroes, who we love to hate but can’t help to love.
 
A mom of three, she plots her novels in between school runs, sports practices, and figuring out how to navigate parenting teenagers (send more wine!). More often than not, she does all of this with her laptop in tow, and her mind daydreaming of the current hero she is writing.
 
Since publishing her first book on a whim in 2013, Kristy has sold over two million copies of her books across twenty different countries and has landed on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers lists over thirty times. Her Driven trilogy has been adapted for film and is available on the streaming platform Passionflix as well as Amazon.

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Belle Calhoune, Featured Speaker

Belle Calhoune is a Publishers Weekly best-selling author of inspirational and sweet romance.

Raised in a small town in Massachusetts, Belle had the pleasure of growing up right across the street from a public library. Married to her college sweetheart, Belle has two lovely daughters and two very spoiled dogs.

She has achieved RWA Honor Roll status, was a finalist in the Holt Medallion Contest and is a recipient of the Angeline Bishop award for multicultural series. She writes for Harlequin Love Inspired and Grand Central Forever. Her book, An Alaskan Christmas, was made into the movie Love, Alaska by Brain Power Studios.

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Reese Ryan, Featured Speaker

Reese Ryan is the author of twenty published works of romantic fiction and counting. Her stories feature a cast of flawed, complex characters. She presents her characters with family and career drama, challenging love interests, and life-changing secrets while treating readers to an emotional love story with unexpected twists.

Born and raised in the Midwest, she now resides in Central North Carolina. She treads the line carefully between being a Northerner and a damned Yankee, despite her insistence on calling soda pop. She gauges her progress by the number of “bless your lil’ hearts” she receives each week. She is currently down to two.

Reese, an advocate for the romance genre and diversity in fiction, is the past president of her local Romance Writers of America chapter, a panelist at the 2017 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and the 2018 Donna Hill Breakout Author.

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Romy Sommer, Featured Speaker

Romy Sommer is the author of six contemporary romance novels published by HarperCollins London, and she has also indie-published a further eight books under her own name and a pseudonym.

She founded ROSA (Romance writers Organisation of South Africa) and, through her experience as its first chairperson, discovered a love of mentoring aspiring writers which led to a new career as a writing coach.

Romy lives in sunny South Africa with two daughters, six cats and a bearded dragon.