Chanticleer International Book Awards

I'm so excited, y'all.  She Dies at the End is on the short list in the paranormal category of the Chanticleer International Book Awards!  From this list, they will choose five category winners.  It was a lovely surprise to find in my email when I stepped off of a cruise ship and back into the real world.

If you haven't yet read my multi-award-winning first novel, you can grab it for free all month right here.

She Dies at the End (November Snow Book 1) wins some awards

Being a self-published writer is not an easy gig.  It is really hard to break through and find an audience.  You pour so much of yourself into your work for very little in the way of financial rewards, and sometimes it feels like no one is reading your stories at all.  So when nice things happen, it is a great boost for the old self esteem.

Some writer friends encouraged me to enter book contests this year, so I took the plunge on a few.  It's been so gratifying in recent weeks to learn that She Dies at the End was selected as a finalist in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards.  This past week, I was even more thrilled to discover that She Dies at the End took Bronze for Supernatural Fiction in the Readers' Favorite Book Awards.

It was especially encouraging considering how much I broke all the indie author rules on this book.  I edited it myself, which is super dangerous, and you should never do that.  I designed the cover myself, which is also a pretty bad idea.  I just couldn't justify the expense at the time, not knowing if anyone would ever read it.  It's nice to have some strangers think I might actually know what I'm doing.

So, if you haven't taken a chance on me yet, please do.  And don't forget to leave Amazon reviews.  They mean as much or more to me as any award, I assure you.  Thanks and love to all my readers.  I couldn't keep doing this without you.