“Why I Listen to Romance Audiobooks” Winners!

Thanks to all who participated in our Valentine’s Day event by sharing with us why they listen to romance audiobooks. We have been poring over submissions this past week and decided with so many great entries, we had to do more than just name first, second, and third place winners. We’ve added a few Honorable Mentions and created a special award category for those four entrants who braved social media and submitted their entry via Tantor’s Facebook page or Twitter feed.

 

Our Winners

First Place – Beth Willis

Wins $100 in Tantor Audio Titles

Second Place – Celine

Wins $50 in Tantor Audio Titles

Third Place – Cris

Wins $25 in Tantor Audio Titles

Two of these three winners have agreed to record their entries with Tantor. We’ll feature those recordings at AudioGals at a later date.

 

Honorable Mentions and our Social Media champs each win a Tantor title of their choice.

Honorable Mentions

Jackie Izawa

Jacqueline

Diana Neal

Social Media Champs

Gaele Hi

Melanie Cremins

Terry Poindexter

Amber – buriedbybooks

 

And…Our Valentine’s Day Event Continues

We’ll continue our Valentine’s Day event throughout 2013 with a few prizes sprinkled along the way. AudioGals will occasionally publish a Why I Listen to Romance Audiobooks submission. If you see your entry, contact the Gals within 48 hours of its publication and you too will receive a Tantor title of your choice.

Our many thanks go out to our sponsor for this event, Tantor Audio.

 

Now for the winning entries!

Today you will see the first, second, and third place winning entries. On Wednesday, we’ll feature our Honorable Mentions and Social Media Champs.

 

First Place Winner – Beth Willis

At 50+ years old, I have just recently returned to romance fiction after over 25 years. It feels like, after many years in which my life was no longer my own, I have come full circle back to my Self.

Like many girls, my daydreams were filled with hopeful expectations of True Love, passion, and happily-ever-after scenarios. As the responsibilities of adulthood took over, there was less and less time for the woolgathering with which I entertained my self and planned my future. I stopped reading romantic fiction. I stopped daydreaming.

During my 30s and 40s, I read from other genres: mysteries, spy thrillers, modern fiction, fantasy, biographies, and non-fiction. Because real life hadn’t turned out for me in any way like that of romantic heroines, I think I unconsciously rejected Romance fiction as being irrelevant to my life.

It wasn’t until I turned 50, a milestone which causes many of us to “take stock,” that I realized I had stopped dreaming. I hadn’t stopped making goals for myself or to aspire to things — I had begun many new, exciting and fulfilling activities over the years. But I no longer indulged in daydreaming. It made me so sad to realize this about myself.

Two years ago, I got a smartphone. Last year, I subscribed to Audible. During one of their $4.95 sales, I decided to purchase a romance novel. It took me back to my high school years, when I read romance novels exclusively. I felt like a girl again!

I don’t read/listen to romance novels exclusively now, but I make romances part of my regular listening habit. And I find I am woolgathering once again! I find myself wearing dresses more often, and putting my hair up.

I’m grateful to romance writers for the way their works remind me of the essential aspects of being a woman: compassion, inner strength, selflessness, and HOPE.

 

Second Place Winner – Celine

I started listening over seven years ago when I started a job doing date entry. It’s a great job in many ways but it’s not very interesting and working in a concrete building with no windows is rather bleak. I started listening to audiobooks to pass the time. I initially tried the type of books I’d read up until that point, classic literature and some mysteries. The problem with those books was they were often sad which, combined with the setting in which I was listening, often depressed me.

I had always been a bit of a snob about the romance genre even though I always latched on to any romance there was in any book I read and I loved romantic comedy movies. After reading a good review of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Match Me If You Can in a magazine, I decided to give it a try. I was instantly hooked. The humor, the characters, the romance, and the way they worked out their differences to get to their happily ever after just brightened my workday. Next I tried the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich after a recommendation by a friend and then I started actively started searching for romances that sounded appealing to me. I started listening only to contemporaries but eventually I decided to give some of Lisa Kleypas’ historicals a chance since I had liked her contemporaries and found I loved them. Adding historicals to my repertoire gave me so many more options that I didn’t get around to trying paranormals (a genre I really wasn’t sure I’d like) until I kept reading so many great things about Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series that I felt I had to try it. Of course, I fell in love with that series and I’m looking forward to exploring the paranormal romance genre more thoroughly.

In 2012, I listened to 172 audiobooks – about 80% of those were romances. So far in 2013 I’ve listened to 40, 36 of which were romances. In short, I listen to romance audiobooks because great writing, interesting characters, and a happy ending brighten my day during those times when reading a regular book is not possible.

 

Third Place Winner – Cris

I may be a bit of an oddity in that I only listen to audiobooks of books I’ve already read– so I don’t listen in lieu of reading and keeping my TBR queue manageable! I read romance for the connections between (and to) the characters, the pulse-pounding suspense, the HEAs, and the escape from the cerebral nature of science papers (my normal milieu). I listen to audiobooks to see how someone else visualizes and conceptualizes the author’s world, characters, and plot– when I read, I have my own idea of how each character sounds and his/her mannerisms and behavior, but I love seeing (hearing?) them come alive in the hands of a skilled narrator. The characters and plot become so much more real, and I get a whole new level of enjoyment beyond that of print (or eInk). There have even been times when I’ve been ambivalent about a hero in print, and become an avid fangirl upon hearing his motivations, the nuances of his psyche, brought to life by an excellent narrator! And the level of emotion and heat injected into the love scenes… whew!

I listen to audiobooks all the time– running at the gym, doing experiments in lab, doing chores around the house, on flights, etc. If I’ve got my iPod on, it’s a good bet I’m listening to romance… and will undoubtedly have a grin on my face. I’ve also been known to chuckle aloud whilst doing experiments in response to particularly humorous scenes! I have the audio version of every romance novel I’ve read – if it’s available, and I’ve listened to many several times.

 

Thanks to all who participated in our Why I Listen to Romance Audiobooks Contest!

Lea Hensley