Honored and Hopeful

I recently learned that my latest novel, The Sisters of Sea View, is a semi-finalist in the Historical Romance category of American Christian Fiction Writer’s Carol Awards. Many other authors share this honor, so I do not expect to take home the prize. But if it is not vain to say it, someday I would really like to win a Carol Award. Why?

I have won other awards, and been a finalist in the Carol Awards, but have not yet won. The reason it would mean a lot to me is that I would love to have the opportunity to stand up and give a brief speech in honor of the woman the award is named for, Carol Johnson.

Carol Johnson, former VP of Editorial (Fiction) at Bethany House Publishers, is credited with pioneering and developing the Christian Fiction genre by acquiring novelist Janette Oke back in 1979.

Janette Oke and Carol Johnson

Carol also took me under her wing during my years with Bethany House Publishers. She was a mentor to me when I worked there as a young editor who secretly longed to write a novel one day. Here’s hoping I will one day be able to thank her in an acceptance speech, but in the meantime, I will thank her here. Thanks, Carol!

Other Inspired By Life and Fiction authors on the semi-finalist list include our own Robin Lee Hatcher, Deborah Raney, and Becky Wade. Well done, ladies!

A few other semi-finalists I have read and enjoyed include: Mollie Rushmeyer’s The Bookshop of Secrets, Hannah Linder’s Beneath His Silence, Sarah Brunsvold’s The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip, Jody Hedlund’s Never Leave Me, and Sarah Sundin’s Until Leaves Fall in Paris.

How many of these have you read? Thanks for stopping by the blog today, friend!