Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

Last month I submitted my entry into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. I was hopeful – why else would you enter in a contest unless you hope to win – but didn’t want to obsess about it. Thankfully, the following weeks after were crazy busy for me and I didn’t have time to dwell on it at all. In all honesty, I forgot about it because I was so preoccupied with all my other various commitments and activities. Then I got an email from them saying the entrants who were moving on to the next round were posted. I clicked on the link. Eventually, I got to the pdf that contained the writers who moved on. It was in alphabetical order – by first name. At first, I started scrolling down. Then I thought, this will take me forever to scroll to the “S”s. I had to suck it up and do a search for my name. So, I hit -F and typed in my first name. I’d know instantly if there were any Shirleys in the second round once I hit return. No hits would mean I didn’t make it. Any hits could mean it was me, but then again, it wouldn’t necessarily be me. One was found. It was me! I was so excited and relieved. I had to share the news… with my class. I happened to see the email when I had just assigned my class a practice problem to try on their own. I wound up interrupting that independent thinking time to share my news because I couldn’t contain myself. I saw it as a life lesson… you never know unless you try!

Worlds Collide

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted here. I really didn't mean it to be that way. School kicked into gear, I worked on finding a cover for book 2, had various board meetings (I'm on three different boards), Nobel Laureate dinner, presented at a conference, threw my neck out and couldn't move for about a week, my brother got engaged (and had an engagement party), flew to San Francisco and Washington, DC for three different things, published Winter Solstice (Book 2 of my series) and oh, the holidays were in there somewhere. Dang, no wonder I'm tired and I didn't get a chance to blog. The good news is that I juggled it all - sometimes barely - but I did.

And through it all, I wrote. Okay, maybe not here. But I did continue writing my book. Now, I'm entering in my actual busy season - science fair season. There's fall, winter, spring (which is part of science fair seasons - regional, state and international - for me) and summer. Now that I think about it, that makes is apropos that my books (thus far) are season-related.