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2017 

Lemon Blossoms, Book #2 of the Wayfarer Trilogy is a FINALIST in the Foreward Reviews Book Contest

 In America, Book #3 of the Wayfarer Trilogy is a FINALIST in Chanteicleer Media’s Chatelaine Book Awards

FLASH!

 The Secret Language of Women is a Gold Medal winner in the IPPY Independent Publishers 2016 Book Awards 

The Secret Language of Women was a finalist in the Foreword Reviews 2015  Indie-Fab Book Awards!

 

~~~ A huge thanks to everyone!

 

So here’s my latest new book news: I finished the first draft of my new historical fiction and set it here in the good old US of A in the late 1800s.

I have given the manuscript the once over lighthly with a quick read and some corrections.  Had one beta reader,  and went through it again with more of her corrections–mostly of the clarification type and some typos and misspellings.

Now I’m working on stregthening and re-writing and revising individual scenes that I felt were weak or not quite polished to my liking.  I await a second reader’s valued opinions and suggestions.  She is one to slash through pages of my work, scribbling the word DELETE all over my pages.  Then I”ll slug through another draft.   Nowhere near ready to submit, but it’s great to be back, pounding the keys and working on what I love. I hope to have a close-to-final draft this summer and will send to two other beta readers, who will concnetrate on plot and story development, so that I can revise it all over again!

Today was an interesting day.  An editor who has published one of my poetry collections, said to let her know how the submission of the new novel goes, because I am in her words, “a top notch writer .”  Oh did that ever make my day! while here I am slogging through word choices and voice! If that sounds like a conceit–believe me, it ain’t! Anyway, it’s nowhere near ready to be submitted.

This past weekend my husband Felipe, world traveler extraordinaire, and I celebrated our 50th Wedding Aniversary at the beach for the weekend with family and friends.  Heaven on earth!  No writing only reading and swimming and playing with our grandchildren: Giuliana, Filippo Luca and Isabella and our friends’ daughter Eva Grace!

This past winter and spring found us in Cuba, Brazil, the Amazon River, and Poland.  This fall we hope to be heading to Japan, with Heaven’s blessings.

Of late, in between reading and writing, I’ve been having fun on TWITTER. Keep that under your hat.

Older News

I am blessed at having had John Dufresne for my advisor and mentor since I attended FIU’s Creative Writing Program and earned my degree in 2001 with a collection of short stories, now  published as The Other Side of the Gates.

I couldn’t be more proud or thrilled than to say that John has again endorsed my new novel In America , Book #3 of the Wayfarer Trilogy.

This novel took me a year to write as I was under contract for it with Turner Publishing.  I consider it a great personal feat of accomplishment as I could never believe an author could take ONLY one year to actually write and revise and publish a novel.

Thanks to all those lovely souls above me and thanks to the wonderful friends who read and critiqued the manuscript for me, especially  two members of my writing group: Marni Graff and Melissa Westemeier.  My beta readers were: Mona Birch, Rosalie Muskat and the best rain-dancer in all of Florida, Jane Brownley!

As always, I extend gratitude and blessings to John and all those who read the book in part or in whole.

Here is John Dufresn’es blurb for In America:

I’ve just read Nina Romano’s heartfelt third installment in the lavish Wayfarer Trilogy, a hefty, eager, and absorbing novel, In America, and I can’t get the marvelous Scimenti family out of my head. Romano loves her characters and makes us love them, too. I even loved Al Lentz and he’s as shifty as a ten-speed clutch. Here is a story about the past that haunts us and love that redeems us, a story of an Italian-American family in Brooklyn during the Depression that is full of honesty, charm, grace, and good humor.

~~~John Dufresne,  Louisiana Power and Light, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, Love Warps the Mind a Little,  No Regrets, Coyote, and I Don’t Like Where This Is Going