I’ve just come back from this year’s Festival of Romance, held in the centre of Bedford at various venues (all thankfully within walking distance of each other) and it’s been a great weekend – mostly because our own Liz Fenwick won the Reader Award for Best Romantic Read with her novel A Cornish Affair! It was extra exciting because I got to read out the result and present her with the award, which felt very special :-) So huge congratulations to Liz from all of us!
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| Liz and Christina at the Romance Fair |
I should really
start at the beginning though - here in the UK we are not spoilt for choice
when it comes to romance festivals and/or conventions, like authors are in the
US for example. Here, the FoR is
it. Literally. So as an avid romance/romantic fiction fan,
as well as an author, I was very keen to be there and support it – any event
that celebrates romance sounds great to me!
And it was huge fun – a varied programme of events, talks, workshops
and, of course, the awards ball.
The
festival kicked off on Friday night with an Art and Romance Evening at the
newly opened Higgins Museum, where attendees were given a quick tour before the
serious business of author readings began.
There were some fascinating pieces of furniture – both Georgian/Regency
and Arts & Crafts painted pieces – all of which I would have loved to own! The readings were by authors of historical
novels and I was one of them. We’d come
dressed in period costume and my outfit was that of an ordinary woman of the
1640s. Not very easy to wear while
reading anything out loud, I have to say, as the bodice was kind of tight!
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| Liz and the other shortlistees in her category |
Saturday
was super busy, with a Romance Fair running all day where we set up stalls to
sell our books and various other bits and pieces. Several talks and author panels, plus
readings from authors, went on during the day, and some of us were also running
workshops.
The finale
was the awards ball though, where the winners and runners-up were cheered on by
an enthusiastic audience. And this was
when our Liz triumphed – woohoo!
I do hope
the Festival of Romance can keep going as we need more romance/romantic fiction
events in the UK and I’m already looking forward to next year’s!
