What’s so special about 2020 for those of us who love books? It’s the 10th anniversary of the first UK Meet for one thing. My goodness, how we’ve grown and developed from a dozen authors in a room in Ely having a chinwag, to the weekend event we’ll be having in September of this year.
For another thing, it’s the 60th anniversary of the Romantic Novelists Association. A number of UKMeeters are, or have been, RNA members. I bet that when the organisation was first formed in 1960, the membership wouldn’t have expected that romance stories that didn’t feature a man and a woman would one day be welcomed into the fold. Hell, 1960 was the year Penguin was up in court over Lady Chatterley’s Lover – with the famous trial quote, “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”
How we’ve moved on. Nowadays the RNA has a newly-founded Rainbow Chapter with the tagline “Love stories are for everyone,” which is open to all with an interest in LGBTQIA+ romantic fiction.
On the 9th February during Romance Reading month the RNA would like to provide an opportunity for readers to share their favourite LGBQTIA+ novels to @RNAtweets using the following hashtags. #DiamondRainbowReads #RNA60
The UK Meet team would like to encourage everyone to take part and to spread the word. Feel free to add #ukmeet to make sure we don’t miss your tweet!
Let’s show how many people read (and write, and love) our genre.