A few weeks ago, the Romance Writers of America announced the finalists for the 2012 RITA awards. There are eight nominees in the Paranormal Romance category (including 2 from Harlequin — Lord of the Abyss and The Restorer):

• Archangel’s Blade by Nalini Singh (Berkley Publishing Group Sensation; Cindy Hwang, editor)
• Changeling Moon by Dani Harper (Kensington Brava; Alicia Condon, editor)
• Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison (Berkley Publishing Group Sensation; Cindy Hwang, editor)
• Envy by J.R. Ward (NAL Signet; Kara Welsh, editor)
• Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh (Harlequin Nocturne; Tara Gavin, editor)
• The Lost by Caridad Piñeiro (Grand Central Publishing Forever; Selina McLemore, editor)
• Nightfall by Ellen Connor (Berkley Publishing Group Sensation; Cindy Hwang, editor)
• The Restorer by Amanda Stevens (Harlequin MIRA; Denise Zaza, editor)

The winner will be announced on July 28, 2012, at the RITA and Golden Heart Awards Ceremony at the 2012 RWA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. But until the lucky recipient is announced, we want to know which book YOU would choose as the winner! Cast your vote in the poll below and tell us why you liked it in the comments:

For the full list of RITA categories and finalists, click here.If you’re looking to read any of Harlequin’s nominated books, remember that many can still be ordered from Harlequin.com in print, and ebooks are always available from Harlequin’s ebook store or your favorite ebook store.

Luckily, authors Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe–experts when it comes to hot vampires, shifters, and more–have a new book full of romance tips for your, ahem, unusual relationship: Dating the Undead. And they have some recommendations for the perfect gift to give the immortal guy in your life this Valentine’s!

Vampires: Flowers. Yes, we said flowers. While he can buy these for himself, he probably won’t, and when we took a recent Vampire survey, an overwhelming number said they missed the smell of a sunny day. Flowers are a great way to let him know you understand!

Werewolves:Nothing gives a great shine to a Were’s coat like a genuine boar-bristle
brush. And if you’ve never helped your guy with a little hands-on grooming before,
you’ll soon see why this gift is fun for both of you.

Dragons: The Howlex Draikon. This watch sports five-and-a-half carats of the kind of sparkle that’s a guaranteed Dragon-magnet. We know how much Dragons like bling, so why not reward that great guy with a watch he can stare at to his fiery heart’s content? Be sure to engrave the back with a special message just for him! (“Light my fire” has been done to death—you can come up with something better than that!)

Zombies: There’s a whole new line of fun t-shirts out there just for Zombies. Our favorite is the one with the saying, “If you can read this, thank me for not eating your brains.” Silly, sure, but that’s the kind of humor Zombies appreciate. And it makes perfect lounging-around-the-house wear.

Angels: Name A Star. Sure, naming a star after him through the International Star Registry might sound a little corny, but just because he comes from heaven doesn’t mean he owns a piece of it. He’ll appreciate the thought behind this sweet gift, too.

Demons: Hellsbane Bubble Bath. Nothing gets rid of that sulphury Demon smell like Hellsbane. And while the gift alone might not be the sexiest thing, sharing a hot bath sure is!

For more immortal gift suggestions and other tips about how to handle your immortal hottie, pick up Dating the Undead by Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe, on sale now!

What other gifts would be perfect for an immortal lover for Valentine’s Day?

Want to meet authors Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe? Want to get your copy of their new magazine-style book Dating the Undead autographed? Live near Oklahoma City?

If so, you are in luck! Tomorrow, Gena and Jill will be doing a Dating the Undead booksigning Full Circle books. Here are the details via Gena’s website:

Time: January 10, 2012 from 6:30pm to 8pm
Location: Full Circle books
Street: 1900 NW Expressway
City/Town: Oklahoma City

Gena will also be giving away poster sized covers for The Darkest Seduction and Wicked Nights by raffle for those who stop by the event.

Plus, check out this  special Author Talk video where Gena and Jill, along with their friend Sheila, talk vampires, werewolves and dragons and Dating The Undead.

More about Dating the Undead:

They’re drop-dead handsome–and we’re not kidding!

Welcome to the first and only guide devoted to loving the immortal man in all of his furry, feathery, fiery glory. Here is a forbidden-fruit salad of features, fiction, fashion, and more, including:

–Lipstick on His Collar
Is your immortal just a little bit…immoral?

–Angel in the Kitchen
Heavenly dishes that don’t take an eternity to prepare

–A Kiss Is Not Just A Kiss
Immortals we crave divulge their lip-smacking turn-ons

–Undead & Well-Read
What’s hot between the covers this month

–A View from a Guy
Zombie Jack’s turn

–Immorstrology
Our indispensable guide to heavenly bodies

All Things Urban Fantasy is holding their third annual paranormal cover art awards! Until December 29, vote for your favorite UF covers of the year here.

Included among the nominees are the following Harlequin titles:

• For Best Foreign Cover, the UK edition of Rachel Vincent’s Blood Bound (Mira Books)
• For Best Steampunk, The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross (Harlequin Teen)
• For Best Duo or Group Cover, Laurie London’s Bonded by Blood (HQN Books)

To cast your vote, click the button below!

RT Book reviews has announced their Reviewers’ Choice Award nominees for 2011! Congratulations to the following Harlequin paranormal authors nominated in various categories:

Best Vampire Romance:

• Twilight Fulfilled by Maggie Shayne

Shapeshifter Romance:

• Body of Sin by Eve Silver

Best Urban Fantasy:

• Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield

Best Harlequin Nocturne:

• Lord of the Wolfyn by Jessica Andersen
• The Beholder by Connie Hall
• Ashes of Angels by Michele Hauf
• Fallen by Michele Hauf
• Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh

Best Science Fiction & Fantasy:

• Cast in Ruin by Michelle Sagara

Best Digital-First and Indie Press:

• Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas

Career Achievement Award:

• Maggie Shayne
• Nalini Singh

Winners will be announced in the May 2012 issue of Romantic Times, just before their conference April 11-15. For the full list of categories and nominees, click here.

Are you attending New York Comic Con this weekend (Oct. 13 – 16, 2011)? So is Harlequin and Carina Press!

Stop by our booth, #2021, for a ton of goodies, author appearances and other things to do such as:

• Enter to win a Kobo eReader Touch Edition and a library of 50 free eBooks from Carina Press
• Friday is zombie day! In homage to Sophie Littlefield’s post-apocalyptic zombie series, Aftertime, we have makeup artist Edward O’Rourke.on hand to “zombify” attendees
• Meet authors on Saturday, October 15! Luna author C.E. Murphy will be signing in the booth from 11-12, and Harlequin Teen author Julie Kagawa who will be signing from 2-4 pm.
• On Sunday, steampunk yourself with items from our costume trunk for a photo.
• And all week, pick up stickers, book samples, and more!

Here’s a sneak peek of what our booth looked like after set up last night (can’t wait to see it teeming with readers!):

Be sure to follow @HarlequinBooks and @CarinaPress on Twitter for more news from #NYCC (pssst, that’s the Twitter hashtag for the event ). Hope to see you there See you there!

One of my friends mentioned to me the other day that she hates when paranormal romance authors have “destined mates” in their books. Color me shocked. Really? I write those kind of mates all the time. I do it with my shapeshifters, with my vampires, with my demons, with all kinds of supernatural beings. I don’t always write the fated mates, but quite often I do. I had to ask my friend why she hated destined mates so much, and she told me that authors use it as an insta-relationship maker and they bypass all the hard parts about falling in love. Poof! True love, the end.

Okay, I can understand why that would be frustrating, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater!

When it comes to destiny in my stories, I take a page out of Robin D. Owens‘ book. She posted on her blog at one point (back when I first started writing) that magic should have consequences, that it shouldn’t make everything easy and solve all the hero and heroine’s problems. With my characters, I take it a step further and usually make the paranormal destiny part of the problem they have to overcome. When my people find their fated mate, it’s usually the most inconvenient person I can think of for them. The person who will make the heroine grow the most, because the hero embodies her worst fears and makes her confront the parts of herself that need to change.

In the case of my current book, WANTON, I took my widowed heroine, a woman who thought she’d never have a mate again, who’d given up too much of herself to please her deceased mate and was just learning to know herself again. What did I do to her? Oh, yeah. I gave her another mate. So she has to deal with being strong enough not to give herself away too easily, to remain her own person, but still be part of a couple. She has to learn to trust herself and trust her mate, all while her instincts are urging her to give in and mate with the guy already.

I admit, part of the fun of destined mates is getting to torture my characters a little more, but it’s also about the fantasy that there’s a True Love for each person. Most people can only guess and hope they picked correctly, but that’s the excitement of paranormal. My characters can have their True Love staring them in the face and they know it for sure. No guessing, no hoping, but something powerful inside them claiming the truth. It’s both an exhilarating and terrifying thought, isn’t it? Now, what if that person were the Romeo to your Juliet? Your greatest enemy? Or what if you’re terrified of deep water and he’s a merman? The possibilities are endless.

While I don’t think that fated mates should solve all the issues in a relationship (more likely, I’d want it to make trouble, but I’m evil like that), I do think that like any other relationship in a romance novel, we as readers should believe that they would have chosen to be together without the whole destiny bit. We have to believe they really love each other, that they’re a good fit for each other, and they really will live happily ever after. That’s romance, right? It doesn’t matter what species the character is, we want the real deal. True love, the end.

Last week I blogged about Harlequin TEEN’s new Steampunk series The Steampunk Chronicles (lead by the prequel ebook The Strange Case of Finley Jayne and book one, The Girl in the Steel Corset) by author Kady Cross – as well as the series’ awesome book trailer.

Today I have even more steampunk goodies to share — this time from Harlequin’s digital first imprint, Carina Press. In the last week of April, Carina Press released a slew of Steampunk books for our own “Steampunk Week”, including a free ebook Photographs & Phantoms by Cindy Spencer Pape. We also made this awesome video to highlight them and the genre. Take a look:

Learn more about the books featured in this video (plus a couple additional titles), click the links below:

• The Mysterious Lady Law by Robert Appleton
• Badlands by Seleste deLaney
• The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale by Christine Bell
• Photographs & Phantoms by Cindy Spencer Pape (FREE!)
• Island of Icarus by Christine Danse
• Steam & Sorcery by Cindy Spencer Pape
• Like Clockwork by Bonnie Dee
• Journeyman’s Ride by Marie Hart
• Alchemy of Desire by Crista McHugh

If you’ve been anywhere near the YA section of a bookstore lately, you might have noticed a new trend cropping up: stories based on Greek mythology, especially the myth of Hades and Persephone. In the past few months, they’ve been growing like weeds on the shelves.

Why is that? I have no idea. No one told me Meg Cabot was writing a Persephone story when I started THE GODDESS TEST in 2007, and I’m sure no one told Gwen Hayes  either. The Jungian theory of the collective unconscious aside, I chose to write about the myth because it fascinates me, and I wanted to explore Hades’ side of the story. But I didn’t want to write the same story everyone knew—where was the fun and creativity in that? Instead I needed to find a balance between honoring the traditional myth of the Lord of the Underworld kidnapping an innocent girl while she played and putting a new spin on it.

I had decisions to make. Did I want Hades to be a villain, love interest, or both? What about Persephone? And most important, how could I make my story original and worth reading without straying so far from the myth as to be unrecognizable?

Eventually I opted to forego retelling the myth and instead wrote a sequel of sorts that takes place in present day. In THE GODDESS TEST, Persephone left Hades, and he can’t rule his realm alone anymore. Now he must choose: find a replacement or forfeit his reign and therefore his immortality. Enter the test to find a new Queen. But the candidates keep dying, and Kate, the book’s protagonist, is his last chance—and unfortunately for her, Hades is still in love with Persephone.

The difference between THE GODDESS TEST and the other Persephone tales out there is in the choices each writer made. Is Hades a villain? Is Persephone a victim? And in my case, is she a character at all? But the beauty of adaption is that even though our novels each deal with that myth, we’ve all put our own unique spin on it, making them very different stories.

It isn’t the source material that makes each book worth reading. After all, who wants to read the same story again and again? What makes a retelling compelling is the unique elements the writer brings to the table, and no matter how many retellings of Persephone’s tale pop up, none of them will be the same.

What are some of your favorite adaptations and retellings?

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The Romance Writers of America have announced the finalists for the 2010 Rita Awards! Harlequin is fortunate to have a number of our paranormal and fantasy authors nominated this year. Congratulations go out to:

Sins of the Heart by Eve Silver (HQN Books) – Paranormal Romance

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa (Harlequin Teen) – nominated in 2 categories, Best First Book and Young Adult

Renegade Angel by Kendra Leigh Castle (Harlequin Nocturne) – Contemporary Series Romance: Suspense/Adventure

“Love Me to Death” by Maggie Shayne in Heart of Darkness (HQN Books) – Romance Novella (Maggie is also a double nominee with her novel Kill Me Again in the Romantic Suspense Category)

The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn (MIRA) – Novel with Strong Romantic Elements

Click here to read the full list of nominees, along with the Golden Heart awards nominees for unpublished authors.

If you missed any of these books, remember they are all available digitally wherever ebooks are sold!

What was your favorite paranormal read of 2010?