Time to celebrate!

Good news is this month’s Nanowrimo is up to 13,000+ words… bad news is I didn’t get any writing done yesterday, as I was too busy checking my e-mail about a zillion times. The reason is because I submitted my book titled ‘The Manifest’ for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award which started taking submissions on Oct 1st and stopped on November 6th.

Yesterday was November 12th, which was the day that Amazon sent notice to the 5000 canidates who qualified and were in for their book challenge. First prize for this contest is a contract with Penguin books and a $25,000 advance. I submitted my manuscript along with the prevously viewed cover page to Amazon on Oct 23rd, and last night at around 8pm EST, I got the following letter:

This means my book is in! I’m one of 5000 entrants who have qualified for the next round. On January 15th, Amazon is going to narrow the field to 1000 semi-finalists. It’s a long wait, but I got this month’s writing and the holidays to get me through it. But the fact that my book is in is enough for me to celebrate, and celebrate I will. This Friday at a local restaurant here in Hamilton which is only a short walk from here, local writers in the city who are participating in Nanowrimo this month will be meeting for a half way party… so I’ll have two things to celebrate: the half way point of the writing month and making it into this contest!

Good news indeed, and I’m hoping this will inspire a lot of good writing in the days to come. Speaking of that writing, I have to get back to my novel. Have a good day everyone… and I’ll be around.

Peter