Contests, awards, and not giving up

As you all know (and if you don't, you should ;)) writing is pretty solitary. Those of us with day jobs do get interaction from real humans (usually) but those jobs may or may not be related to writing.

So we lurk in our little writing caves, pounding out words, editing words, slicing and dicing words, then writing more words. Mostly all alone.

Entering contests is a way to not only gain some attention and hopefully new readers, but to interact with the writing world. It's completely subjective, one person's winner is another person's "DNF" (Did Not Finish--isn't that charming?)

Right now The Glass Gargoyle is entered in the fun and kinda crazy, SPFBO (self-published fantasy book off) a year long event that I don't have a chance of finaling in, but looks to be a lot of fun and I've already met some new fellow fantasy authors. http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2017/05/spfbo-2017-phase-1.html

I was recently notified that Warrior Wench is a finalist in the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal Chapter (FFnP) of the RWA's contest-- the Prisms! Very excited about that one, very heavy competition, but seriously, even just being a finalist is a major item on my list :).https://ffprwa.com/2017-prism-awards-finalists-announced/

And, last weekend, The Glass Gargoyle, WON for best published SF/F in the San Diego Book Awards!

 It was very exciting and I will say seeing this award daily makes me extremely happy :).

Each one of these is a chance for myself and my books to get out into the writing world. I've entered plenty of contests and come back with nothing. Yet, I'm glad I entered, I got the books out there! And I think it's worth the attempt--ya never know what will happen!