My Good News (which couldn't have come at a better time!)

I have news. But before I share that news, let me tell you the story of how I came by it.

I’ve had a rough week. I’m so incredibly close to sending my next manuscript to my publisher, but every time I get rolling, something gets in my way. This week, it has mostly been house drama. There’s this whole mold problem with the house we’ve been fighting with the HOA about for 6 months… that’s another story which I’m going to ignore for now. What it means is that I've had contractors in my house half the week while I fielded dozens of emails about the subject every day. Then there's my dryer, which I’m trying to fix… I ended up in the scary, dark crawl space behind the dryer for an hour or so yesterday. Good times. So when it didn’t work again today coupled with the whole to-do list crashing in on my head, I had a minor melt-down. Tears, cursing, cats hiding. The whole bit.

Once I wrung myself out, I picked up my laptop again, determined to accomplish something today. So I started on the little things I could get done in a hurry. One of these tasks happened to be grabbing a quote from Magick Charm’s review at Romantic Times Book Reviews for my publisher’s website. Easy enough. So I headed to RT’s page of my review and here’s what I saw:

What’s that yellow print? That wasn’t there the last time I saw this. A… nomination…??

My brain shorted out for a moment and then I started thinking again. While my book was published in 2010, the review was written in 2011. Therefore, the book could be nominated for the 2011 awards. I hadn’t even read through the nomination list before now. I completely missed it. So I clicked on the yellow link and find this:

Yep, that’s my name beside the nomination title.

About this time, John walked in the door and I called him over to the computer. I pointed out both web pages, just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind or anything. He couldn’t vouch for my sanity, but he did confirm that I was nominated for the RT Reviewers' Choice Awards!

So that’s the story of how it took me 3+ months to discover my nomination. And it was exactly what I needed after a long, frustrating week. I swear, I’m still shaking with excitement!

The winners will be announced in the June issue of RT, which I should have in my hands in about 3 weeks. I think my head would explode if I actually won my category, but I’ve discovered that it really is true what they say - it is an absolute thrill and an honor to be nominated. I am so amazingly happy that people like my book and they get my strange brand of humor. Thank you, readers, and thank you, RT!