SNOWED won an award

My mystery novel won the Crime Writers of Canada award for best unpublished manuscript this week!

Okay: winning an award feels great, but hearing all the nice things the judges had to say about my manuscript? That was INCREDIBLE. If you want to hear it too, my category is around about the 8:45 minute mark in the announcement video.

Alternatively, you can read this screenshot of the details from Crime Writers of Canada's winners page (or just visit the link and scroll to the bottom, wishing all the published winners well as you go along):

I am *totally* printing this out to look at if I so much as start to get discouraged. 

But that wasn't the only great news I had this week.

two socks, two contests!

The novel I'm working on now, ORIOLE, was selected as a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award for unpublished mainstream mysteries! 

I am so, so grateful to the judges for all these contests I've entered - for volunteering for the job, and especially for finding so much to like about my writing.

As you can imagine, there's been a lot of happy skippy dancing around here the last few days.

 

This makes knitting a challenge, but I did get my socks-in-progress all the way to the heel flap. Maybe next week I'll have Chompy Socks to show you. I always did love photographing Chompy Socks.

I don't know whether the acknowledgement from Crime Writers of Canada and The Crime Writers' Association will bring SNOWED any closer to getting published, but if it does ever hit print, you might enjoy reading it. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, one member of the sleuth trio, Steph, has a passion for social history (I wonder why), textiles (ditto), and for making a lot of her own clothes, sometimes from vintage or historical patterns... including a warm wool greatcoat I personally would love to own :^) 

Okay that's me for this week - have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you next Saturday!