Because I Am Awesome…

This! This is the book of awesome!

I'm pretty full of myself today. Why? Because RTBookreviews reviewed LUST AFTER DEATH and gave it four stars!! Don't wanna click through to read? Here's a snippet…

Those looking for a dark, spicy and different sort of paranormal tale will not want to miss this!

Oh yeah, baybee! Dark, spicy and different!! (As opposed to morbid, smutty and weird.) I don't plan to come down from this high for a long, long while. Though I promise—I'll use the crack for the forces of good. Namely, to get Love-Bots, book 3: Built4 It written as fast as possible.

It's a tough thing as an author to maintain confidence. And oddly enough, positive reviews and reader acclaim only go so far. The problem with positive feedback is that there's never really enough of it to stop self-doubt from creeping in the back door. (And not in a hot, sexy way.) The hardest part for me about truly wonderful moments—like getting an awesome review or a gushing email from a fan—is that I dismiss the elation too fast. Never one to rest on my laurels, I toss said laurels into a trunk somewhere and literally forget that I ever earned them.

So I'm working on enjoying my laurels more. For example, I've taken to taping certificates and awards on my wall. (Okay fine, only one. But that's all I could find in the 5 mins it took to come up with this idea.) There's an award certificate floating around somewhere for Mere Passion too, but I need to find it. And I really should find and dust off my college graduation thingy. Heck… I won an award back in college for chemistry. I should find that! Get around to framing it 20 years later.

There's nothing quite like a visual depiction of one's awesomeness to remind one of the fabulousness of themselves. I'm all about the visual depictions lately—as evidenced by my brainstorming wall of fantastic for Built4 It. On the one hand, having a giant mind-map of my work-in-progress on my wall is a little dream-inducing, it also gets a fire under my butt to write like the wind. The sooner I finish a draft of Built4, the sooner I can take down the Wall of Doom and start a new Wall of Doom for my next book.

So yeah—if you rock (and I'm sure you do!) flaunt it! Bang your own gong, toot your own horn, plaster your achievements on your wall or screen saver, or forehead. Tell anyone who'll listen. Bask in your awesomeness for a while. And then get your ass back to work.

What was your last proud moment? Did you celebrate and boast? Or did you smile quietly? (Or worse, minimize the achievement in your mind?)