As part of our third anniversary celebration, I wanted to recognize and thank some of the first people to help spread the word about the blog and build a community of blog readers. I can’t thank them enough and I thought this would be a good time to check in with what they are doing now. Please forgive me for all the many, many friends of the blog I wasn’t able to mention. You’ve all been great!! Please add your updates to the comments!

Tia Nevitt

Tia was one of the first people to champion the blog. At the time she was blogging about SciFi and Fantasy debuts and her endorsement gave SG/SFP Rom a huge boost. Since then she’s become a published author with two short Fantasy Romance books available from Carina Press. I posted about her first book,  The Sevenfold Spell, in the post: Can a plain girl find love in a fairytale? when it was released. Her newest book is The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf.

The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf

2nd volume of Accidental Enchantments

Prince Richard is cursed. Enslaved to a magic mirror, he must truthfully answer the evil queen when she uses it to call on him. To keep from betraying innocents, Richard wanders the countryside and avoids people.

All her life, Gretchen has been teased for being small. When she hears of a hidden farm populated by little people like her, she sets out to find it—and is welcomed by the mostly male inhabitants. Lars in particular woos her with his gentle kindness and quiet strength.

Danger looms when Gretchen meets a runaway princess and offers her shelter at the Little Farm. Wandering nearby, Richard instantly falls in love with the beautiful princess, and is later compelled to tell the queen that she is not the fairest of them all. Enraged, the queen vows to find them and destroy them.

If either Gretchen or Richard are to have their happy endings, they must team up to break the mirror’s spell before the queen kills them all…

Genre – Fantasy
Rating – PG-13
44,000 words

Tia’s Website

Tia’s Blog

Heather Massey at  The Galaxy Express

Heather and I are both proponents of SciFi Romance and we both believe in promoting the genre we love. This made us natural allies. Her frequent links to SG/SFP Rom have contributed both to the size of our readership and the quality of our community.  She brings an analytically eye and an entertaining sensibility to genre discussion. She also went from blogger to published author in the time I’ve known her. I blogged about her first novel, Once Upon a Time in Space, in the post: Can a SciFi Romance make visions of space going galleons dance in my head? It was quickly followed by more great SciFi and Steampunk/Clockpunk Romance.

Her newest free ebook is Wilbert E. Hornbeck’s Fantastic Adventure. It’s available at Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Wilbert E. Hornbeck’s Fantastic Adventure

In 1897, boiler inspector Wilbert E. Hornbeck discovers a mysterious airship near Springfield, Missouri. Even more wondrous are the pilots–a nude man and woman of incredible beauty.

Who are they? Why are they here? Determined to find answers, Wilbert spies on the couple as they lustily cavort in the forest. The voyeuristic scene excites him beyond measure. But when they take him prisoner, Wilbert’s life takes a turn for the fantastic.

Tags: UFO erotic romance; m/f/m menage; steampunk

You can find out more about Heather, her books, and her insight into the genre on her website and blog.

You might also want to check out the list of  $.99 and free SciFi Romance e-books she maintains as The Galaxy Express.  It’s a risk-free way to try SFR?

Julia Rachel Barrett

Julia is another long time friend of the blog. Julia is a fabulous author with books that span across SFR, PNR, contemporary romance, and erotic romance. I blogged about several of her books, including Captured, and have read many more. To date, my post on Captured continues to be one of the most visited posts on  the blog. Interesting how many people search for “alien abduction”. 

Currently, Julia is working on a Scottish ghost story, a post-apocalyptic Science Fiction and a cookbook! Her website is going through a makeover but I encourage you to go visit and to look up her back list.

You can find out more about Julia on her website.

Maria Zannini

I actually met a lot of SFR fans hanging out at Maria’s blog. I was thrilled to blog about her novel, True Believers. Her latest novel is Mistress of the Stone.

Mistress of the Stone

A young woman at the helm of a pirate ship braves ghouls, ghosts and werewolves to find her father–or avenge his death.

Luísa Tavares has a list of sins the length of the Antilles, but there’s no time to repent for them now. When a pockmarked Frenchman hands her Papa’s ring—still attached to his severed finger—she orders the Coral back to the Caribbean, despite her father’s earlier warning never to return.

It’s Luísa’s luckless fate that the only man who can help her is a blasted Inglés pirate hunter who’s more dead than alive and locked in a curse he doesn’t want lifted. Worse, his feral sensuality sparks a hunger she can’t ignore.

Xander Daltry hadn’t planned on kidnapping this wild woman—or succumbing to his uncontrollable desire for her. But he needs Luísa and the moonstone she wears around her neck to rescind a witch’s spell. His sister, long dead, and others like her have been cursed to remain in the mortal plane for eternity. Only the stone can set them free.

The only way to convince the reluctant pirate queen to help him is to withhold one small bit of the truth. For if she learns who really betrayed her father, the longing in her fiery eyes could easily turn to murderous wrath…

You can find out more about Maria and her books on her blog. She also blogs at the Frugal Living blog and is the designer behind Book Cover Diva.

Jackie Burris

Jackie is one of the truly wonderful people I’ve met through the blog. She is a dedicated book blogger. Her blog, Housewife Blues & Chihuahua Stories, recently turned four years old. Jackie has recently become addicted to the New Adult and YA authors that are doing some amazing things of late, but she continues to support a variety of authors through her blogging.

Thomas. L. Evans

Thomas and I started blogging around the same time. We discovered each other’s blogs a little later than some of the others I’ve mentioned, but I credit him with keeping me laughing through the difficult phase most bloggers go through when the blogging becomes more difficult. It’s like you’ve said all the easy things and you have to learn to dig a little deeper. I will admit to occasionally throwing things into posts that I knew would give Thomas fuel for his comments, just to see what he’d say.  I blogged about his debut novel, Strings on a Shadow Puppet in the post When is a book like a seven layer cake? and he liked what I had to say enough to use an excerpt as his amazon blurb.

Strings On A Shadow Puppet

In a war between democracy and civil rights, which do you choose?

Strings on a Shadow Puppet is the exciting debut novel from Thomas Evans that combines the thrills of military science fiction with the thoughtful intrigue of espionage and mystery. With sympathetic characters, dark conspiracies, and enough fast paced combat to keep any action junkie on the edge of their seat, Strings on a Shadow Puppet will keep you turning the pages until the last plot twist is revealed.

“The ability to control one’s own future is not a privilege, it’s a right!” The image of the figure who spoke was carried across all the comms channels by a hacker signal. It was an extreme ectomorph, tall and ultra thin, with slanted eyes, swirling dotted tattoos, an extended cranium and high curling hair. “The ability to select one’s own government, is not a privilege, it’s a right. Democracy is the only form of government that ensures these privileges remain rights — inalienable human rights. Rights that cannot be controlled by the privileged few, nor shared with bug-eyes, slimies or others whose alien ways corrupt human society! I am the Dalang, Speaker of the Wayang Liberation Front, and this is not the last you will hear from me! Long live the Federalist Revolution!”

“Strings on a Shadow Puppet thoughtfully questions notions of social class, democracy, and freedom, in a way that is, frankly, very timely… we all know spying is part of our world today, but what are the costs to the people living with the reality of it day in and day out. What drives them? And what costs do they pay? Do we all pay? For me, this is where the author exceeds my expectations of the genre.”

Available at Amazon and other major e-retailers.

You can find more about Thomas on his blog.