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Mail can be so exciting

They are so pretty.
They are so pretty.

 

It’s been an exciting week – mostly postage related.

It started when the nice parcel delivery man knocked on the door to give me a big brown cardboard box. It contained my paperback copies of Little Girl Lost.

The paperback is officially released this month. It’s lovely to have a copy to pat. And no, patting a book is not strange behaviour – every writer does it. So too do a lot of readers.

But there was most postage based excitement the very next day…

I got a note in the mail about a parcel from the US awaiting delivery, just as soon as I paid £22 customs duty on it. I duly handed over money to HMRC and the next day another big box arrived.

It contained my actual Book Buyers Best Awards, all the way from California and the Orange County Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. I don’t have a dedicated trophy shelf – yet (working on it). However, I do have a lovely Victorian fireplace with a cast iron mantelpiece in my office and the awards look very, very nice there.

The smaller glass award is for the category win. The large one with the cover is for the Top Pick Award, and there's also a great pin, which I will wear with pride.
The smaller glass award is for the category win. It’s engraved, but you can’t see that in the photo. The large one with the cover is for the Top Pick Award, and there’s also a great pin, which I will wear with pride.

The fun continued with mail of the electronic variety. I discovered I have been nominated by readers in Australia for no less than three awards – run by the AusRom Today group… a fabulous place that celebrates Australian writers.

I am a finalist in three categories. It’s a public vote – so please click on the links below and ‘like’ my nomination if you feel you’d like to vote for:

Little Girl Lost – Book of the Year (The very first award nomination for the new book)

Little Girl Lost – Cover of the Year

And me as Best Established Author.

Finalist in three categories - thank you everyone for voting for me...
Finalist in three categories – thank you everyone for voting for me…

 

It does feel magical - really it does.
It does feel magical – really it does.

But that wasn’t the end of it. On Friday morning, I got another email, which sent me heading for my spam filter where I found a junked notification that The Wild One was a finalist in the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, run by the Southern Magic, a chapter of the RWA based in Birmingham, Alabama.

I have since spoken firmly to my spam filter about blocking such an important message.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited and touched I am by all this. It’s wonderful to think that my books are being welcomed so warmly by readers.

Thank you everyone.