Soooo exciting …

Yes, THE PRINCE’S MAN is a winner!

I can’t thank Rosie’s Book Review Team for (a) running these annual awards, and (b) for nominating my book for this category, and also my wonderful readers for voting en mass for me to win this award – it means SO much!

I don’t usually allow my personal life to intrude into my work life, but this is a particularly difficult time: along with trying to keep both my businesses running, I’m nursing my dying father at home, contending with the onset of arthritis in both hips (the last thing a professional horse rider needs), and my wee dog, Frodo, was diagnosed with a sudden onset aggressive cancer and had (hopefully successful) surgery this week.

So perhaps you can see why this is such an uplifting thing to happen to me right now – and I’m going to revel in it for as long as life will allow before it kicks me in the teeth again, as it surely will.

Enough of the whinging – I’m inordinately proud of this book – my first published novel, and now winner of two awards.

Back before it even gained its first agent (it’s had two, though neither managed to sell it), THE PRINCE’S MAN won a UK Arts Board Award for ‘Best Opening Chapter of an Unpublished Novel’. The prize was a one week residential writing course at the prestigious Arvon Foundation, during which the tutors (prolific professional novelists) were highly complimentary and encouraging about my writing. That gave me a lot of confidence, I can tell you.

And now the book has won another award, voted for by a panel of reviewers and then the reading public, who have enjoyed the completed novel, and become fans of this fledgling series. Again, I can’t thank everybody enough.

If you’d like to check out all the category winners and find yourself a few new reads, pop on over and take a look on Rosie’s site

I bought one (guess which one, when you’ve had a look) to add to my ginormous TBR list, how about you?