Stuff On Sundays: The 2013 Harlequin Summit

The room Bree and I shared

I was fortunate to be invited attend the Harlequin Summit this past week at their Sydney offices. Just over 30 book bloggers gathered from all over Australia. Several had come from as far away as Perth to attend the Summit, there were also a few from Queensland and Victoria and some a little more local. I shared a room with Bree from All The Books I Can Read – she had flown in from Melbourne and I endured a five hour coach ride from the mid north coast. We stayed nearby in a bed and breakfast type accommodation and talked books and blogging.

The Summit began at 4pm with an introduction to key personnel before moving into a preview of Harlequins’s upcoming print schedule.

Featured titles for the MIRA imprint included Saving Grace by Fiona Mccallum (April), The Returned by Jason Mott (September) which sounds awesome and October Dreams by Rachel Johns (October) – the first in a rural romance trilogy.

From Harlequin Spice you can expect Deeper by Megan Hart and The Mistress by Tiffany Reisz – the third in her erotic trilogy

Young Adult fans can expect a plethora of new releases including  Wicked Kiss {Nightwatchers #2}  by Michelle Rowen  (March), The Goddess Inheritance {Goddess Test #4} by Aimee Carter  (March), With All My Soul {Soul Screamers #7} by Rachel Vincent (April), The Eternity Cure {A Blood of Eden Novel #2} by Julie Kagawa (May), Dare To You  {Pushing the Limits #2}by Katie McGarry (June), Ink by Amanda Sun (July), Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend by Louise Rozett (July), Banished by Nicola Marsh (August) and Enmity by Evelyn Andrews (September)

Escape – Harlequin’s digital only imprint – plans to continue releasing around half a dozen titles a month. You can see the latest HERE

Harlequin also introduced their new onsite community page which will feature social media streams, videos from Harlequin TV, trailers, book extracts, photo’s and more – make sure you check it out!

After a short break, we were introduced to international bestselling author Rachel Vincent. She was very personable, despite her jet lag and minor crises since landing which included frying her phone and her flat iron. She talked mainly about the upcoming release of With All My Soul, the final book her in her Soul Screamers series but I couldn’t resist asking a few questions about her Undone series (she feels like Shadow Bound was the best book she has written so far) and a few questions were asked about her popular Shifter series (don’t expect a reprise) as well. Rachel revealed she is currently writing a book for a new adult paranormal romance series and a book in a new to her genre, she gave no real details though – just teased us a little.

After the discussion Rachel offered to sign books for us. I had my copies of Blood Bound and Shadow Bound signed, as well as the advance copy of With All My Soul gifted from Harlequin.

Rachel Vincent and I

We all milled around for a little while chatting and exclaiming over our gift bags which included print copies of Saving Grace by Fiona Mccallum, The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa, Wicked Kiss by Michelle Rowen and With All My Soul by Rachel Vincent, as well as a cute key shaped USB with the entire Escape line on it (and the entire Soul Screamers series) , a magnetised calender and an umbrella printed with the Harlequin insignia.

At the Chelsea Hotel

Afterwards all who were able to wandered down the road to the Chelsea Hotel where we took over the upper level, put names to faces and chatted for a few hours,  Rachel Vincent also joined us for a short while. I didn’t get a chance to talk with everyone but it was great to say hello to Monique from The Book Mystress, Stephanie from ReadinASingleSitting and Kat from BookThingo. I also discovered a few ‘new to me bloggers’ like Maree from Maree’s Musings and Jasmine of Fiction in Fiction in Fiction and enjoyed meeting with Kayleigh of Nylon Admiral, Belle of Belle’s Bookshelf, Nikk of Sapphired Dragon, Katrina of PageFlipperz , Hannah of The Girl in a Cafe and Mandee of YAVeganNerds. There were more but I can’t list them all!

In all it was a great evening, my only complaint was that it wasn’t long enough!Thank you Harlequin for a great event!

I would love it if other Australian publishers followed Harlequin’s lead and held similar events for book bloggers.