Blast From The Past Blasts Into The Present

So every once in a while, I get sideswiped. Not often--it takes a lot to confuse me. But when something happens that shocks me, I get really shocked.

For example:

I got an email this weekend from an old friend I haven't heard from in years.  Turns out she'd gotten a hold of my first book (The Reckoning of Asphodel) and really liked it. So she bought the rest of them. Granted, that's enough to make me excited.  After all, we've all had dreams of going back to high school and having someone completely random tell you, "Yeah, I've read your book/seen your movie/danced to your album/been to one of your games." Right?

Well, she took it a bit further.  She had emailed me to inform me that having read my blog and my website and noting all the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll nominations I've gotten in the past, she thought she'd go vote for me this year.  And, when she didn't find my stuff on the Readers Poll yet, she nominated me.

So, allow me to announce the following:

Apostle of Asphodel, the concluding novel of my fantasy series The Asphodel Cycle, has been nominated for Best Sci Fi/Fantasy Novel of 2009.

Metamorphosis, the collection of my spec fic short stories published by Aspen Mountain Press, was nominated for Best Anthology.  Also, in a complete coincidence as best I can tell, the cover art by Renee George was nominated for Best Cover Art.

Breaking the Covenants, the first book of the Covenants gothic vampire romance series co-written with Canadian author Rob Graham, was nominated for Best Erotica.

And, strangely enough, I was nominated for Author of the Year.

This is my third year in a row with nominations in the P&E Readers Poll.  Last year, the second Asphodel book, The Gift of Redemption, placed in the Top Ten for Best Sci Fi/Fantasy Novel while its sequel Temptation of Asphodel placed in the Top Ten for Best Novel. So now all four Asphodel novels have been honored with readers' nominations on the P&E poll, which I find very exciting and gratifying. As I've been proofing the print galleys for Reckoning, I've allowed myself to get caught up in the editing side of things.  But this has changed my focus, quite properly, back to where it should be--the reader.

And I figure that if I'm entertaining someone who is reading my work, I must be doing something halfway right. 

So Oxford commas and serial adverb abuse aside, please let me thank you, the people who read my stories, for allowing me the very great privilege and honor of sharing my worlds with me. Hopefully, the stories I write in the future will get better.  Hopefully, I improve in my craft.  Hopefully, one day, I may actually get one of these stories right.  But until then, thank you for bearing with me as I follow the writers' path.

If you wanted to check out the 2009 Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll and maybe...you know...vote or something, follow this link.

I'm off to go shovel more snow from the driveway.  And thus does the mundane burst my little bubble.  Then, maybe some football and perhaps...the tiniest little amount of shameless begging for votes.