The nine categories for the Romantic Novel Awards to be presented in May 2024 for books published in 2023 will be:

• The Fantasy Romantic Novel Award: For romantic novels with elements where the reader needs to suspend disbelief, including magical realism, fantasy, science fiction, the paranormal, timeslip (in which a character moves between time periods) time travel novels and books with ‘ghostly’ elements.

• The Jackie Collins Romantic Thriller Award: For stories featuring a substantial thriller, suspense, mystery or crime story, alongside or fully entwined with a romantic story. The romantic element should still be very strong throughout but the main storyline may be less of a traditional love story.  Novels set in any time period can be entered for this category.

• The Debut Romantic Novel Award: For the best romantic novel by a first-time author. Entries may represent any aspect of the romantic genre. This is an excellent category for new writers or unestablished to shine amongst their peers.

• The Christmas/Festive Holiday Romantic Novel Award: For the best romantic novel set in the winter festive season featuring Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yule/New Year etc.

• The Shorter Romantic Novel Award: For shorter romantic novels, serials or novellas. These may range from magazine serials, short stories of no less than 30,000 words to shorter novels of no more than 70,000 words approximately. Entries may represent any aspect of the romantic genre and can be set in any time period.

• The Romantic Saga Award: For novels predominantly set in the past (pre 1970), usually featuring characters overcoming social pressures or hardships alongside or fully entwined with a romantic story thread. These may be part of a series but must be able to stand alone for readers who won’t have read the ones that went before.

• The Jane Wenham-Jones Award for Romantic Comedy: For romantic novels which are consistently funny. Can be set in any time period.

• The Historical Romantic Novel Award: For stories set in the past showing historic worlds, where romance forms a substantive and crucial part of the story. Romantic novels predominantly set pre-1980.

• The Contemporary Romantic Novel Award: For stories about the here and now, where romance forms a substantive part of the story; any novel set predominantly in the last 50 years.

Please consider all categories carefully to decide where your novel will best succeed.