Wildest dreams - RT Book Reviews Reviewers' Choice

Once a book is published - when it grows up and leaves home, it takes on a new life. It's making its own way now, in the world of readers and reviewers. All the writer can do is watch from the side lines. It is wonderful to hear that a reader enjoyed your book. That was what made you write it in the first place. Not so good if they didn't enjoy it, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Good reviews make you happy, bad ones make you wince, sometimes particularly perceptive ones make you thoughtful. Getting awards, or being nominated for them, is the icing on the cake.

The Joan Hessayon trophy

I've been incredibly lucky with my debut novel, Never Coming Home. It's been nominated for a number of accolades and won a few. I'm immensely grateful to various reviewers and judges who liked it enough to put it forward. I can honestly say that every one of them has been a complete surprise.

And late on Wednesday night I had another surprise. The nominees and winners of the RT Book Reviews Magazine Reviewers Choice awards were announced. I clicked on a link to see if there was anyone there that I knew. There was - me. Along with Sharon Sala, Diana Layne, Joya Fields, Robin Covington and Teresa Hill I was a nominee in the Indie Press/Self Published Contemporary Romance category. I hadn't won, that honour went to Sharon Sala, but just to be nominated was a terrific thrill. Wildest dreams territory. In fact, so wild I e-mailed my publisher early next morning to check that I wasn't imagining things. I'm a writer - we do have vivid imaginations.

The reply came back promptly - yes it is you.

I'm going to be attending the Booklovers Convention organised by RT Magazine in Kansas City this year. To be going as one of their award nominees is a fabulous feeling.