Last Thursday I got the news that my book, The Autumn Bride was a finalist in the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award. Usually RITA finalists get a phone call telling them they made the final cut.
But I was away from home, in Queensland, on my annual writers retreat with eight other writers, and not near my phone. This is where we go. (Yes, it's a tough life, but someone's got to do it.)
We each have our own rooms so we can work undisturbed. Mornings are for quiet writing time, then we meet for lunch, and a writing-related discussion. After lunch, we continue writing — we're all multi-published writers and we all have deadlines. In the evening, we either buy our dinner and bring it back for a working dinner, or we go out to a restaurant.
On the Wednesday night we'd gone out for a night of pure socialization — one of the group had to leave early next morning, so after an evening workshop we went to the local surf club for a meal and some live jazz. Followed by a few more drinks back at the hotel. Late night.
So Thursday morning at 7.30 am (crack of dawn!) I was still in a really deep sleep. Persistent banging on my door. I stumbled to open it and stared blearily out. Three of my friends stood there in wet swimsuits and towels. I blinked, still half asleep. They started leaping up and down, grinning and babbling about something.
I fixated on the leaping. My friends are not normally leapers.
Frogs, I remember thinking.
It's something to do with frogs. It's a charade or something maybe. Did we talk about frogs last night?
So busy was I trying to work out the significance of the frog theme that it took me a few moments to hear that they were telling me I'd finalled in the RITA.
It hadn't been on my radar at all. I had no idea of the date.
They'd been so kind as to let me sleep while they'd gone for their 6.30 am swim.
Later I checked my email and there was a lovely email from RWA President Terry McLaughlin.
So I didn't get a call, but I had frogs and an email instead.
And a wet patch on the front of my nightie, from all the hugging.
Pretty special, I think.
I had a lovely day — almost the whole day I was answering emails and messages on FB and twitter about the RITA. It was like a party. And of course, that night we went out again and celebrated.
So thank you to everyone for the warm wishes. And the frogs.
The full list of the
RITA finalists is here.
I'll be blogging soon about the Australian romance conference but in the meantime, here are a couple of photos as an appetizer. That's me, at the costume party, which was themed "Fresh, Flirty or Famous" and I chose "famous" and went as Dame Barbara Cartland, complete with dogs — that's a dog on my foot as well as one on my arm. Also with me is crime/thriller writer Kathryn Fox, and the sinister fellow holding onto his beard with his knife is Harlequin author Marion Lennox -- who came as Johnny Depp, also carrying dogs. 
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