14 Mar Essex author Kate Johnson scoops Romantic Novel Award
A double first for novelist Kate Johnson, from Stanstead Mountfitchet, who was named winner of the first Paranormal or Speculative Romantic Novel Award in the RoNAs (the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s annual awards) for Max Seventeen, and is also the first self-published author in the award’s 57 year history to win one of the prestigious RoNAs.
She received her trophy from television personality and cookery writer Prue Leith during a star studded event in Central London, compèred by author and broadcaster Jane Wenham-Jones.
A panel of independent judges read the seven category winners’ novels before meeting to debate the finer points of each book. The panel included Matt Bates, Fiction Buyer for WHSmith Travel; journalist and novelist Fanny Blake; Ron Johns, bookseller and publisher; and Caroline Sanderson, Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Worcester and Associate Editor for The Bookseller.
The judges said of Max Seventeen, “This novel has great energy and passion and presents a real antidote to traditional romance novels, as well as being enormous fun. The author has created a vivid world, which was hugely ambitious and imaginative, and a romance with plenty of action, twists and turns.”
David Headley, Managing Director of Goldsboro Books, commented, “The diversity of this year’s winners, including for the first time, a self-published author, confirms romantic fiction as an exciting and still innovative genre, which continues to delight readers.”
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