RONE nomination for silver medal winner…serendipity.

Today, I received this email:

 “Dear Prue Batten,

 Because your book, A Thousand Glass Flowers, received the high review rating of a 4 star or better, it has continued to the second, public voting phase for the 2012, RONE Awards. In this phase the readers will be narrowing down the contestants to 4 – 6 finalists in each genre by choosing the books they love best.

logo

 This is to inform you that your book’s genre is open for voting beginning tomorrow (Friday)!  It will only be open for votes for exactly one week, so it is extremely important that you let all your friends and fans know!  We would hate to think a superior quality book was lost only because people were unaware of the time limit, so we are including the link for voting so you can pass it along!

 http://indtale.com/rone-awards/2012/week-4

 The finalists in this round will then be read and judged by a group of professionals in the industry to determine the very best in indie and small published books of 2012.”

ATGF_LargeFrontCover

So rather like Gisborne: Book of Pawns in the medieval hist.fict category, A Thousand Glass Flowers is up for the Best Fantasy Award. And of course, I am begging once again – that if you enjoyed the novel, you click on the above link and help take the book through to the third and final level. The nice thing about this book is that last year it secured a silver medal for fantasy in the internationally recognised Readers’ Favourite Book Awards. 

silver

When Gisborne was nominated, I remember saying what serendipity it was that Richard Armitage was in Australia at the same time because his Gisborne was such an inspiration. The most basic meaning of serendipity is the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it.’

Trust me, I have definitely not been searching this week.

My mum, 88 years and gorgeous, is in the mid to late stages of macular degeneration for which she has been part of a clinical trial for a new injectable drug. She had, and still holds hope that the therapy will prevent blindness, but she has peaks and troughs and this week was particularly bad. This week we have approached modalities to give her quality of life if her sight deteriorates further. Confronting for her, difficult for me to have to make her face such things. So that when the above email arrived overnight, I wondered about inspiration…

DSC00117 - Version 2

Let’s just say Mum is an inspiration – her middle name is Isabel. My female protagonist in A Thousand Glass Flowers is Isabella. Mum is an iron lady, plucky, courageous and an absolute go-getter. Belle is similar. Mum is rather beautiful. So is Belle. So let me say, that if ATGF is fortunate enough to get to Round Three, I dedicate the success to my master blaster mother and thank all readers who might have voted for the novel!