Exciting Workshops and More to Come in 2025

If you weren’t hear for our May Workshop you missed out on listening and watching, Scott “Scooter” West – Talk about old weaponry, how he makes his own swords and participates in Renaissance Festivals and how to write about them in your Romance stories. Our members can view the video on our “Members Only” website. There is another perk for joining our group. Not only do you get free access to our monthly workshops, FREE ADs for you and your books in our newsletter but we have a who online library with videos of past workshops, lists of writing resources you can find online and even member services that they offer at a discount for other members. CLICK HERE to become a member.

In June we had an in-person for the members but the Speaker, Pat Haggerty, bringing us up-to-date on AI with his workshop, “AI-Powered Romance: Enhancing Your Writing with Generative AI” which was quite a lively discussion but very thought provoking as well. Discover how generative AI can revolutionize your romance writing process in this engaging workshop. Whether you’re an aspiring author or a seasoned professional, you’ll learn how to harness the power of AI to spark creativity, overcome writer’s block, and streamline your creative workflow. Members will have access to the Zoom recording on our MEMBERS ONLY website.

Coming up in July we have Gainesville Author Susie Baxter coming over to the West Regional Library, 1425 Chaffee Road, Jacksonville, Fl 32221 (and on Zoom) “Historical and Memoir Writing with Accuracy“ In this workshop, you will receive prompts, handouts, exercises, and other tools aimed at helping you create a compelling memoir by writing about one experience at a time. Non-Members who are unable to attend in person as a Guest there is a small fee for Zoom Access – CLICK HERE

NERFA – National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award Winners Will be Announced Soon

We had a great selection of romance authors submitting their stories in the genre categories and the finalists were chosen this month. Now these stories are will our final judge panelists and will be deciding on the winners in each category before the announcement date on July 8th – CLICK HERE to see the finalists and this will be the page the WINNERS will be listed as well. Each winner will receive a lovely statute from First Coast Romance Writers within a few weeks after the announcement and we hope they will send up pictures or video of them so that we can share those with our judges and readers.

Have You Visited Our Online Shop Recently?

Part of FCRW’s mission to assist authors in learning not only about writing their stories but also the entire publishing journey, from creating book covers, social media and digital marketing and on to the actual publishing process. We also help them with finding reputable resources to help them with editing, website building, digital marketing calendar and finding Alpha, Beta and ARC readers! To help our organization with financing these workshops, website and online resources our members donate short stories and novellas for our anthologies and “Shared World” series.

We opened an online shop to not only sell the eBook versions of our anthologies (you get higher royalties if you sell your books yourself). The authors receive the rights back to their stories after 6 months to a year (for our Pinevale Valley Series) in which they are free to create a new book cover and sell their stories or use as giveaways on their websites and newsletters. Amazon recently decided that any story published in an anthology did not qualify for stand-alone publication and be a part of the Kindle Readers program. Our board and members are in the process of updating the policy to accommodate the authors who would like to get into the KDP Select program. This means our old eBook versions of our anthologies will be taking out of publication. So Visit our website today and get eBook versions of all of our anthologies before they are gone! You can still get any paperback versions of our anthologies WORLDWIDE.

Now we have partnered with PrintFul.com to share our member’s romance genre designs with quotes and encouraging or funny sayings about writing, the romance genres and more. The revenue from these sales will help us pay for getting bigger and better writing workshops in the future. We only get between 10% to 20% of any sales and PRINTFUL takes care of the creation, shipping, tracking and returns if necessary. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR. We have updated our website’s policies and procedures as well to reflect this new change.

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What was in the June 2025 Edition:

Reader’s Corner – Join us at the Literary Indulgence Book Festival June 28th
Author Spotlight: Tropes & Tips – Featuring Author Leah Miles
Books by Friends of FCRW – Come see what we’re writing!
NERFA 2025 – Congratulations to the Finalists!
FCRW’s Anthology Projects – Be a part of our Halloween Ghost Anthology!
Upcoming FCRW Hosted Workshop – Featuring Author Susie Baxter

You read are previous newsletters – Just click on the picture below – and sign up if you haven’t already!