‘Soul’s Child’ wins YWO Book of the Year award!

My daughter flew in from Melbourne yesterday and for the second time this year I went out on the town. We ended up at Karaoke (we sang a duet of ‘Jolene’ :D) and were having a great time when I got an email on my new Samsung Galaxy S3. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and all I could see was the word ‘Congratulations’ at the top of the email. I handed the phone to my daughter and asked her to read it. She squealed and said, ‘Congratulations, you have won the YWO Book of the Year award.’ Then I squealed and we pushed some buttons and before we could squeal any more the email was accidently deleted.

Okay – so this is a new phone and neither of us could figure out how to get the email back. We passed the phone around the table and no one has a Galaxy S3 so no one knew how to retrieve it.

Then I found Tim. Tim works at the ABC and writes a sports blog. He fiddled with his phone for a moment then handed it to me and asked me to enter my email address. I did this and in an instant the email magically reappeared.

As you’ve probably already guessed I’m not a technical person.

To Tim wherever you are – you are a star and a complete and utter gentleman!

You Write On (YWO)

YWO is an international site where writers can upload excerpts from their books or short stories for review by other writers. They conduct the Next Big Author competition with Random House, Orion, Penguin, Harper Collins and Little Brown publishers. Every year they receive hundreds of thousands of stories. Every second or third month the top three rated stories for that month are given a free review by one of the publishing houses mentioned above. Once a year they pick the top five stories (from the previous 12 months) from adult fiction (this also includes YA) and the top five stories from Children’s fiction – and these stories are the winners of the YWO Book of the Year award.

This is what the email was trying to tell me. I had won the Book of the Year Award for my story Soul’s Child!

*that popping sound in the background may be champagne corks!*

I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled and honoured I am. I think the word I’m looking for is ‘speechless’ – and maybe a little misty.