My Real Life

…well, you know the rest.

Today they announced the 50 semi-finalists in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.

You may remember that I was a quarterfinalist.

I am not, however, a semi-finalist.

Am I disappointed?

You betcha.

Am I surprised?

Not really.

I read most of those excerpts and I’m shocked that most of them hadn’t already been published.

So, where do I go from here?

My immediate plan is to use tonight to wallow.

If I didn’t have choir tonight, (and if I wasn’t still sick), I’d pack the family in the car and head to Friendly’s for a 7-scoop Reese’s Peanut Butter Sundae.

However, my health and my schedule have other plans.

So, instead, I’ll go to choir, come home and snuggle up with Real Man to watch some television.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up, dust myself off, and get moving with the rest of my life.

First order of business (other than work) will be to join a writer’s group that a co-worker of Real Man’s (a published co-worker of Real Man) suggested I join.

Second order of business will be to update my query with my new information:

1.  I was a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.

2.  I have two, official Amazon.com reviews, as well as 15 customer reviews…all positive.

And then…

then…

I’m just going to write.

So, in the beginning of February, I entered my novel in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.

In the initial stages, they only accept 5,000 entries.

Then, for the second round, they narrow the 5,000 down to 1,000.

Well, I made the cut!

I know this isn’t even CLOSE to winning the contest.

There are many more rounds to go through, but still, it feels good!

In the first round, they read our pitches.

In the second round, they are reading our excerpts, which are the first 5,000(?) words.  Can’t quite remember how many words the excerpt was.  Anyway, it’s the first X amount of words from our novels.

Then, they’ll narrow it down to 250 contestants for the third round.

If you make it to the third round, they will post your excerpt at amazon.com and people can go on and read and review the excerpts, and they go from there.

So, I’m in round two.

Someone, somewhere is reading my excerpt and deciding if I make it to the third round.

The next date I am waiting for is March 23, 2010.  That’s when they post those who go on.

Fingers crossed!

(If you are interested in reading more about my novel, visit my writing blog: http://bozzawrites.wordpress.com)