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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 third draft of my new historical fiction and set it here in the good old US of A in the late 1800s.

I was fortunate to spend a few days in Santa Fe in June and visit the library, some local bookshops, the History Museum, the Indian Arts and Cultrual Museum and the Wheelwright Museum, where I met a wonderful docent who was very accessible, and answered my many questions and gave me some valuable handouts.

I had given the manuscript the once over lighthly with a quick read and some corrections and sent it to two beta readers.  When I got the mss back I  went through it again with more of their corrections–mostly of the clarification type and some typos and misspellings. So let’s consider this a thrid draft.

The manuscript is currently out with three more readers.  When I receive their critiques back in August , I will begin work again on a new revision.  In the meantime I am doing continued research and reading.

Then I will  read through once more and work to stregthen individual scenes and dialogue, and concnetrate on plot and story development.   Then I’ll slug through another draft.   I think perhaps then it will be ready to submit.

It’s great to be back, pounding the keys and working on what I love. I hope to have a close-to-final draft by the end of this summer,  so that I can revise it all over again!

This past winter and spring found us in Cuba, Brazil, the Amazon River, and Poland.  This fall we hope to be heading to Cabo San Lucas, and 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