I guess I could have posted this in the "Pelicanites who are AWOL" thread, since I haven't been around for quite awhile. I used to post pretty often in the 911 forums, but this is totally off-topic so I thought I'd post it here. I am pretty stoked and want to share this with my fellow Porschephiles.
I just found out that the novel I completed this last year,
Beep! Beyond the Frogpond and Back, was selected as a quarterfinalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. This means that it was deemed to be in the best 500 out of 10,000 entries, or in the top 5%, which is pretty gratifying.
The next phase is making the semifinals (the top 100 books move on in the judging) on April 15th. All the quarterfinalist excerpts are posted on Amazon Shorts now, so any Amazon customer can download and read my first chapter excerpt (which was used to judge it) for free, and submit a review of it on Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001UG3AFK
If you're interested in checking it out and have any time for such a thing (and have an Amazon account), customer reviews of the excerpt are considered in the next round of judging and would be appreciated.
I have to admit that the only way I was able to get this book finished was to quit participating in these forum (and all the other internet time-stealing distractions), cut down on my driving events and totally ignore my Porsche projects for the last 18 months, but it was worth it. I have one more item crossed off my "bucket list," now, and I know you didn't really miss me.
TT