A Bronze Medal for "Snapdragon" in the Independent Publisher Awards (IPPY Awards)

I wouldn't have even entered the IPPY Awards if it hadn't been for my friend, Liz. She is my beta reader, turned get-off-your-ass-and-come-to-RWA-nationals, turned mentor-of-all-things-author-world, turned friend. When I met Liz about a year and a half ago, she gave Snapdragon a look before I published it. At the time, she herself had just won a Bronze IPPY in the Romance category for her wonderful second chances novel, Caught Up in Raine, and had some very nice-looking pictures of her floating around from the awards gala.

It was Liz who inspired me to even take the step of entering awards. It made sense. As an indie author who had just come out with her debut novel, pretty much no one had read it. Entering awards was pretty much a guarantee that at least three people would read my novel. If they liked it, maybe they would leave a coveted review, and if they really liked it, maybe I'd even get a nod.

Well, someone liked it--or, at least, a few someones. Because today I got the wonderful news that Snapdragon won a Bronze Medal in the Romance category!

But that's not even the fun part of the story. The fun part came that same week when I found out that I was a finalist in the Foreword Indie awards. When I went to the web site to confirm that I had, indeed, won something and found that Liz, who writes as L.G. O'Connor, had won a Foreword Indies award for a novel that I was the beta reader on, called Shelter my Heart, the sequel to Caught Up in Raine!

So, what do I do? Head to her Facebook page, so I can congratulate her. Because she should have posted a link to the awards page and let people lavish her with praise...right? By this time, it's almost 11PM PST, which makes it 2AM on Liz's time zone. She'd been on Facebook that day, but there was no mention of the awards. This is the actual e-mail I sent her:

And her reply? Her response, at 6:23AM EST was: "Ahhh! Really?! Let me check the rest of my my email!!!" LOL!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled about both of our wins. And I'm not paying lip service as I shout out a heartfelt thanks to Liz, for putting the fire under my ass to get me to put myself out there. I would not be here without you. Hurry up finishing your WIP--it's fantastic, and I want to read the rest of it. And, oh yeah, the next drink's on me.