About 7 months ago I entered Little Gems, Romance Writers Australia’s annual contest for sweet romance short stories, and my historical romance short, What Mari Found, placed second. The prize included publication in the annual RWA Little Gems anthology, along with 13 other talented writers. Today is release day 🙂
I’d intended to write some kind of meaty blog post about the experience of writing to the constraints of the Little Gems contest, and of subsequently being published in the anthology, but here we are on 12 August and…nada. Maybe I’ll still get around to it. I think it’s worth writing about.
For now, happy release day to everyone with a story in the anthology— Heidi Catherine, Courtney Clark Michaels, Frances Dall’Alba , Imelda Evans, Fiona Greene, Jillian Jones, Jeff Kenneally, Caitlyn Lynch, Fiona Marsden, Jane Newton, Rosemary Pearse, and Stella Quinn.
Also—thank you to Romance Writers Australia for providing such a great opportunity. to get romance shorts stories out into the wild.
If you’re interested in an anthology of sweet romance shorts by Aussie writers, here’s a few places you can buy ebook copies of Onyx: RWA Little Gems:
Shannon McEwan 
Congratulations! How wonderful to see your story in print! That’s great news 😊
Thanks, Marie 🙂 Would you believe that the most exciting part has been creating author pages on Amazon & Goodreads. It’s given me a bit of a visualisation boost – today a short story in an anthology, tomorrow … *insert wild imaginings of authorial success*. The contest really is a fantastic opportunity. RWA has exclusive right to the story for one year – after which they retain non-exclusive right to publish the story – and I can do something else with it. Pretty nice.
Amazon and Goodreads author pages… That hasn’t even sunk into my conscious- until now. What a fantastic motivation boost for you!
Gosh just saw your lovely inclusive post. Congratulations Little Gem buddy xx I didn’t think about author pages on Amazon and Goodreads ….
Thanks for dropping by, Stella, and for the nice words.I know that there’s a good argument that you don’t need a goodreads or an Amazon author page if your only publication is in short-story anthologies. Still, as soon as I put up the good reads and Amazon pages, my webpage became easier to find using google. I also reckon – having watched people struggle to come to terms with social media/web stuff AFTER they’e been published, that there’s something to be said for learning the ropes while no-one’s really paying attention to you 🙂 Six of one, half dozen of the other. I didn’t enter Little Gems this year (meant to…), but I still think it’s a great thing to do.