We interrupt our regularly scheduled program...

...for this important announcement!

Wait, what?

Yes, yes... I'll get back to the whole why write thing next post. I'm hard at work on it (well, not at this very moment, but I have started it); hopefully, it will see the light of day sometime tomorrow, but the kids are home sick, and they make it hard to write anything.

However...

Back in January I entered my novel in the annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. I spent the month getting it all polished up and formatted correctly and all the other little things that had to be done for submission. Since I was getting it ready for that contest, I also set up on Amazon's CreateSpace self-publishing site. You know, killing two birds with one stone and all that.

Of course, now that I have my book in hand and have had a chance to look through it, I've found some rather embarrassing errors (like "here" instead of "hear"). It's amazing how much easier it is to edit the actual book than it is to edit the text on the monitor. I had no idea! Those kinds of things make me want to bite off my fingers (why stop with just the nails, right?), but, you know, you have to go with what you have, and I'm sure, at least, I keep telling myself that I am, that the judges won't let some bad editing come between them and a genuinely good story. Right? RIGHT?

Okay, I'm breathing again...

But the contest...
The contest is divided into two categories: general fiction and young adult fiction. They accept 5000 entries for each category, and the winner of each category gets a book deal with Penguin. It's possible that other entrants could also get book deals, but the winners are guaranteed one.

All of that to say that the results of the first round of judging were announced today, and I am officially moving on to the next round of judging. I guess, that makes me a semi-finalist. The quarter-finalists will not be announced until March 22, so it's a long wait. Well, not really, but it'll sure feel like one! I'm sure I'll actually forget about the whole thing amidst all the chaos of life within the next couple of days, but, at the moment, while my stomach is all tied in knots from both moving forward and the anticipation of the next stage of judging, it feels like a long time to have to wait.

So there you have it. Surpassed 80% of the entrants to get here. I'm a big ball of nerves.

Remember, you can own your own copy of The House on the Corner; the links are just over there on the right.