Someone Always Loved You, the very first book I wrote over a decade ago, just won a Reader's Favorite Book Award in the Finalist position.
Let me explain. In this award, there are gold, silver, bronze, honorable mentions and finalist awards. So, in essence, Someone Always Loved You is in the fifth position. The way these awards work, the judges give points to books and the books that gather the right amount of points get the awards. So there could be two gold medalists and no finalists and so on.
I can't tell you how many people entered this contest, but apparently there were thousands from all over the world. I am truly speechless and honored that "Someone Always Loved You" caught someone's eye enough to receive a finalist award.
So what does this mean? Well, I'm officially invited to the Miami Book Festival in November to accept the award at the Reader's Favorites Award Ceremony. I'm going to have to sell a few book in order to get myself there so we'll see about that.
The book gets press and exposure and so on and so forth. And maybe Jim Carrey will give me a call sometime (he won a gold medal at a past Readers' Favorite Contest) :)
It just amazes me that a book I was inspired to write, one which I had NO idea what would happen from day to day as I wrote it, is still around and kicking! It's interesting to think that I one time sat across from a seasoned professional at the San Francisco Writer's Conference, feeling myself melt into my chair as he told me it sounded like this novel, based on my descriptions to him, needed a complete re-write in order for anyone to be interested in it. Let this be a lesson to you (and maybe a little to him). Write what you're inspired to write and don't let anyone tell you it's wrong. If it means something to you, that's enough to push you forward. With any luck, it'll mean something to someone else too someday.
More details to come. I was just too excited about this to hold off on divulging the news!