RITA Award Finalists, the Long and Short of It

The finalists in Romance Writers' of America's 2007 RITA Awards were announced this week. There's been an amount of blog talk recently (and not so recently) about the relevance of the RITAs to readers. Apparently most readers couldn't care less, but to the authors this is meaningful, a thrill, an honour, so congratulations to all listed finalists with a special shout-out to my Aussie friends Barbara Hannay and Sara McKenzie and RITA goddess Marion Lennox, already a two-time RITA winner and is a double-finalist again this year.

I'm also thrilled to see my friends and fellow Desirables, the mega-talented Kristi Gold and Emilie Rose and Cindy Gerard and Roxanne St Claire amongst the finalists. (Readers, anyone on the list whose books you love and adore???)

If you've taken the time to pore over the list of finalists, you may have noticed what appears to be an oddity. Like, why are books from the same Harlequin/Silhouette series finalists in both Short and Long Contemporary categories? What gives? What is the difference?

The difference between the two categories comes down to word count or length of the books. Books of 70,000 words or less are eligible for Best Short Contemporary. This covers series such as Silhouette Desire, Harlequin Presents, M&B Modern Extra, the Harlequin Romance and Medical titles with premises and/or sensuality that don't fit the Best Traditional Romance guidelines. Category romances of more than 70,000 words go in the Best Long Contemporary Romance section. In the past this included Harlequin SuperRomance, Silhouette Special Edition, Silhouette Intimate Moments and Harlequin Intrigue (although some authors choose to enter Best Romantic Suspense.) Harlequin Blaze has always straddled the two categories, with finalists in previous years in both long and short categories. Harlequin American -- I'm not sure.

But last year there was a shortening in word count requirements for many (all?) of the longer series lines. So, some books published late in 2006 became eligible for the "short" category, while longer books from the same line published earlier in the year were over 70K and so "long" contenders. Hence, finalists from Special Edition and Intimate Moments--as well as Blaze--appear in both long and short categories, and the list of eight short category finalists includes just three books from what used to be considered "short" lines. All clear as mud? No? I don't blame you.

An RWA committee is currently looking into the contest and the relevance of all categories. I'm hoping they don't combine all category romances into one section, although that is a possibility. I'd love to see both short and long contemporary categories retained, but with a cut-off that doesn't straddle any series word count...which isn't an easy ask given the range within any one line. Looking at the current guidelines, I'd say the cutoff should be 55-56K. But then I write for one of the shorter of the short lines and so I might just be a wee bit biased...not to mention rather glad I didn't enter this year.

Labels: awards, RITAs, RWAmerica