A New Future for Passionate Ink!
When I first dove into writing romance, I never imagined a career without the Romance Writers of America. And now, after 7 years as a member, and 3 years as a member of the Passionate Ink Chapter, I find myself sharing some pretty stunning news: Passionate Ink members have voted to disaffiliate from the organization after 16 years (we were founded in July 2005 by Sylvia Day!)
ON THE ROMANCE WRITERS OF AMERICA
Rather than dwell on the reasons for the vote, we’ll be focusing on the future and what’s possible for Passionate Ink as an independent organization. Success for RWA members and Passionate Ink authors is not mutually exclusive — and many of our members will continue to remain members of RWA so they can continue to take advantage of its great resources (including other chapters!).
So of course we wish every romance author the greatest of success, whatever their genre, and whichever organization they choose to join. We’re not going far, and we look forward to being partners as our paths cross in the future. Our doors are always open — and we’re sure we’ll be cross-promoting chapter events, educating on how to write steamy sex scenes, and bumping into each other as attendees at RWA Nationals.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR PASSIONATE INK
We remain committed to ensuring advocacy, growth, and success for romance authors who write HEA/HFN endings with well-developed, richly drawn characters and plots that revolve around the protagonists’ erotic growth on their path to fulfilling romantic love. We realize this means a lot of things to a lot of people, and this can be highly controversial for many romance authors — so we’ll be very prescriptive in what our own goals and definitions are now that our organization is separate from RWA.
The Board is currently evaluating our charter, our commitments to membership, and looking at everything from our pricing structure to our member services and where we can do even more for our members. We are collaborating with our members and taking the time to get this right; while we can’t share specifics now, we will soon.
We look forward to partnering with RWA and relevant organizations in the future to forge meaningful and mutually beneficial alliances, deepen publisher accessibility and relationships, and accelerate author education and enablement across the spectrum of romance to meet our membership’s needs.
Stay tuned for more news to come!
Sincerely,
Ashley Bostock
President, Passionate Ink, 2021
April 22, 2021 2:12 pm
I let my RWA membership lapse years ago while regretting that I also had to leave Passionate Ink. I’d love to rejoin PI when the separation becomes a reality.
April 22, 2021 4:50 pm
And we’d love to have you!
April 29, 2021 9:13 am
Yes! Thanks to the Board for this decision. I did not want to rejoin the RWA, but am always happy to be a part of PI. Kudos to all of you.
April 29, 2021 12:27 pm
I remember when PI was founded, and I was happy to join. When I let my RWA membership lapse, I was sorry that I couldn’t stay with PI. Now I’m back again and looking forward to participating once more.
May 19, 2021 6:26 pm
Happy to see this news although I’ll continue my RWA membership. It will be interesting to see how this group evolves as a separate entity.
October 28, 2021 12:15 pm
Yay!!!!