Wow!! Wow!!! WOW!!!!

At the beginning of the year I decided to enter my Young Adult novel into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Last year, I forgot to remove my name from the manuscript and it was eliminated. It stinks when you don’t follow the rules – I some how missed that one and just submitted the manuscript I had prepared for professional queries.

This year, I submitted it again. Last month I found out my pitch got me into the top 1000 entries (from 5000) and I was excited.

Today I found out that my excerpt catapulted me into the next round with 249 others!

I received 2 wonderful reviews from the contest expert people which sent me into heaven.

I may not make it any further, but I am just thrilled to have made it this far! I never dreamed I’d make it.  Well, okay, I dreamed, I just didn’t think it would ACTUALLY happen.

The next cut is down to 50, so we’ll see what happens.

The excerpts are available to read, and I mention this because I’ve had numerous people ask me about reading the book.  There are some formatting problems and hopefully they’ll fix them eventually (everyone is having this issue – it’s mainly substituting strange characters for the apostrophes & quotation marks).

You do need to download it, but it’s free – if you don’t have a kindle and want to read it, you can download the kindle for pc app (free as well) and then my excerpt.

If you read it, please feel free to drop a review on the amazon page – I’d love to know thoughts (and be honest, please – not just nice).

The Heart of the Castle (Excerpt)

And now,

WOOHOOOOOOO!!!

I’m off to go do some more happy dancing! 😀

Problem Solving 101

To all toddlers…..

Feeling thirsty?

Too small to pour yourself a drink of water?

Or, perhaps, you just ran out of cups…

Robert demonstrates the perfect solution….

Step 1: Obtain and insert straw

Step 2: Grasp straw firmly in hand – puckering up in preparation is key

Step 3: Drink away

Step 4: Smile for the Camera and congratulate you on a job well done!

Hints:  A chair with a booster seat strapped to it helps a lot.

Take advantage of the oportunity to blow copious bubbles after your drink – you’ll look so adorable your mom won’t tell you “no” & there’s a lid on the pitcher, so you won’t make mess (stay on her good side).

*Mom’s Note:

This happened this morning after breakfast. The girls had left the pitcher of water on the table, and Robert must have been thirsty. He’d snagged straws from various water bottles and stuck them into the pitcher spout. Paul found him, and called me down to take a look & to bring the camera. He was quite proud of himself, adorable little tyke. 😀

Spit

It took me a while, but I finally caught a photo of Spit in the sink.

You have NO idea, how badly I wanted to write that.

HA HA!

Let me explain….

My husband created a monster.

Ok, well, maybe I helped.

It all started when Spit (short of Spitfire) was little.

She REFUSED to drink from her bowl – she’dwash her paws in it, get the water dirty and not want to drink any.

One morning she sat on the counter staring at the the water running from the sink as he washed his hands. He filled the sink bowl.

From that point on, she would ONLY drink from the sink.

We thought when we moved we might be able to change it.

But no, she just sleeps or sits in the sink now – waiting for us…

And when we come she drinks straight from the tap.

Silly finicky cat.

It’s a BATTLE every time I’m in the bathroom.

I understand fighting for bathroom space with teenage daughters and such, but the CAT?

Forget locking the door to keep the kids out – I do it to keep the Cat out!

If I don’t, we’re fight to see who gets the water from the faucet when I go to wash my hands, or brush my teeth.

We’ve tried not encouraging her, but the kids take pity.

Or her meowing sounds pathetic.

And we’re quite convinced she’d rather die of thirst than drink out of a lowly bowl on the floor.

Maybe we should have named her

Sheba – as in Queen of.

*At least she hasn’t tried to drink from the toilet like our pet squirrel did, God rest his soul.