I Won!

I can hardly believe it. I never win anything. Especially not for my writing, which is normally too unconventional, too distant from general readers' tastes, to attract a large following.

And yet - and yet - I somehow managed to win the Whipped Cream Book of the Week contest. I'm still in shock.

It works like this. Every week, Whipped Cream, a popular erotic romance review site, collects all the books that have been reviewed during the past seven days. Any review that received a rating of 4.5 Cherries or better gets thrown into the poll. Over the weekend, readers can vote for the book they'd most like to read, based on the reviews.

When I learned that I'd gotten a 5 Cherry review for Bodies of Light, I was ecstatic - especially after I read Clematis' review. She called my book "original" - not once but twice. For me, it's hard to imagine higher praise. It's so difficult to come up with anything new in erotic romance. Evidence that I seem to have succeeded in doing so is incredibly satisfying.

Anyway, my book got thrown into the poll, but I didn't have much hope of winning that sort of popularity contest. After all, even the reviewer said she'd never heard of me before reading this book! I didn't want to beg for votes but I did send out the review and poll links to my lists, just in case anyone really felt like giving me their vote. (I admit, I also emailed my sister and a couple of friends who know I what I write.)

I promised myself I wouldn't keep checking back to see how I was doing, and I kept that promise. For one thing, it was a bit awkward since I was competing against two other authors from my main publisher, Total-E-Bound.

Anyway, I finally allowed myself to look at the results today, July 4th, after the polls had closed. I was floored to see my name at the top of the list.

I want to thank everyone who did vote for me. Now my review will be on the front page of the site for a week, hopefully a boost to sales. If you want to read the review for yourself, just click here

Now, I think I'll go pour myself another glass of champagne...!