Contact: Angie Brillhart

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abrillhart@barbourbooks.com                                                                        

                                                                            

Uhrichsville, OH—Barbour Publishing is pleased to announce that Stand-In Groom, the first in Barbour author Kaye Dacus’s contemporary fiction Brides of Bonneterre series, has been chosen as a 2010 Christy Award finalist in the Contemporary Romance category. Winners will be announced at a ceremony on Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in the Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel, directly before the beginning of the International Christian Retail Show.

Created in 1999 to recognize novelists and novels of excellence, the Christy Awards honor authors in several categories. Each year, when publishers submit titles for consideration, the novels are read and evaluated against ten criteria by a panel comprised of librarians, literary critics, reviewers and other readers that have no associations with a publishing company.

“Kaye is a talented and delightful author to work with,” Senior Fiction Editor Rebecca Germany said about Dacus’s novels. “This nomination is well-deserved.”

Kaye Dacus likes to say she writes “inspirational romance with a sense of humor.” In Stand-In Groom, Dacus urges readers to attend the quirkiest wedding ever where a wedding planner and a guileful groom meet their match in an "I do" ruse. When wedding planner Anne Hawthorne first meets George Laurence, she thinks she’s found the man of her dreams. But when she discovers he’s a client, she knows planning his wedding will be no honeymoon. Can Anne remain professional while falling for the groom?

"Being nominated for a Christy Award is a dream I never imagined would come true,” said author Kaye Dacus. “I have to recognize the countless other authors out there working as hard, or harder, to entertain and minister through their writing who have mentored me along the way, either directly or indirectly. And, as always, the praise goes to God for such a surprising and undeserved blessing."

Kaye Dacus holds a Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and is a former Vice President and long-time member of American Christian Fiction Writers. A Louisiana native and current President of the Middle Tennessee Christian Writers, she now calls Nashville, Tennessee, home. Other titles in Dacus’s Brides of Bonneterre series include Menu for Romance (Book Two) and A Case for Love (Book Three). Dacus looks forward to the release of Love Remains, book one in her new The Matchmakers series with Barbour Publishing in August 2010. For more information on Kaye Dacus and her other books, visit http://kaydacus.com

Barbour Publishing appreciates the hard work of its authors and would like to congratulate Kaye Dacus on Stand-In Groom being named as a 2010 Christy Award finalist.

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