In romance, we don't like it with somebody messes with the HEA.

I debated on the H for a little bit...thought maybe I'd do historical. I even thought about doing hockey.

But then it dawned on me...romance is all about the HEA. In a pin campaign celebrating the romance genre, how can I not include something that talks about the HEA?

Book genres are defined by certain characteristics.

Mysteries will have mystery.

Historicals will be set in the past.

Murder mysteries will involve murder.

And romance will involve a couple (**or throuple/more) falling in love and finding their HEA or HFN (Happy for Now).  Romance lovers want that satisfying conclusion at the end, knowing the people they've come to know will find their person(s) and make it work.  Things don't always work out in life and there aren't always HEAs.

But we can find them in some places - and a romance in one of those.

Every once in a while there's a kerfuffle in the online spaces known as romancelandia where a writer-typically newish to the romance genre-will announce they're putting a 'new' spin on the romance genre.  This 'new spin' is a 'love story' without the HEA.

Romancelandia has spoken out, loudly, against this every time somebody tries to reinvent our quite lovely wheel.

A few years ago, during one of these blow-ups on twitter, one of these writers was insisting nobody could tell her what to write.

That's true. But likewise, she can't insist her 'love story without the HEA' is still a romance and think romance lovers are gonna be cool with it. Which is pretty much what I said. And I added something along the lines of "This is romance. It's HEA or GTFO."

When I was going through my ideas for the various letters, I kept going back to H and realized why.  Because...well, we're talking romance.

It stops with the HEA.

And that's how I wanted to end this first pin campaign...with the HEA.

That being said, I'm going to have all pin designs, A-H, available for backers.  G is mocked up and I'm discussing it with the artist, so you'll see the final in an update before I send out surveys.

The H...or the HEA, is already done.

Smoke tests are going out for the surveys!  Since I'm sending it on the edge of a weekend, I'll wait until next week to send the surveys out.

If you want to add additional pins or stickers, the survey is your chance.

You can also add:

Stacy finished the design for G!

I love it!

This, like the rest of the pins, will be one of the options available for pin backers!

I'm wrapping up the pledge manager on my end and hope to have it wrapped up in the next couple of days.

We did it!

We did fall shy of the $2000 goal I'd hoped for, but since I really wanted to share the H out of this project...well, I'm doing it.

All pin designs will be available via the pledge manager so you can add them to your order.

I'm working on it now and will have it finished as soon as I can...might take a few days or a week, but not too longer. Once funds clear, I plan on placing one pin order design from my chosen manufacturer to make sure the pins looked the way I like.

If so, we'll move forward from there.

THANK YOU AGAIN for your support!

Yes. Yes, we did.

I'd planned on doing a frog prince sort of thing for fairy tales, but the polls said you guys wanted F for Fantasy.

Behold...

Since these are going to have glitter accents, I think I'm going to have the dragon done in red.  I might have the lighter gray in red, too.

I haven't decided.

But I love how he turned out!

If you haven't checked out the tiers lately, make sure you do so! Also remember if you upgrade your tier and you're getting one of the pin tiers, you get a free pin!

By request, I added a couple of tiers for just the pins to the add-ons page.

In the event we don't reach the goal for G by the end of the event, I'll be making G available on the pledge manager! H is already finished and I'll share it with the masses when the time comes.

Back now to get the freebie stickers and freebie pin!