I posted this on my Facebook and Twitter pages, but I’ve been nominated for two RITA awards, which are given out by Romance Writers of America. Huzzah! Huzzah!

Every year, RWA gives out two different awards — the RITAs for published books/authors and the Golden Hearts for unpublished books/authors. Both the RITAs and the Golden Hearts have a variety of categories, like contemporary romance and paranormal romance. The nominations were announced on March 26. You can see all the nominees here, and the winners will be announced on July 28 during an awards ceremony at the annual RWA conference. Basically, the awards are like the Oscars of the romance writing community. The awards ceremony is really nice, and everyone gets dressed up for it.

Spider’s Revenge was nominated in the strong romantic elements category, and Touch of Frost was nominated in the young adult category.

I’m still in smiling, happy shock. 🙂

I had marked on my calendar that the nominations were being announced that morning (nominees are called), but when the phone rang at about 9:15 a.m., I figured it was just my mom calling. But I was very happy to be wrong about that (sorry, Mom). The call went something like this:

“Hi, is this Jennifer?” the woman asked.

Hmm, I thought. This is probably a telemarketer. Or someone wanting me to take a survey. No way this is a RITA call.

“Yes,” I said.

“Hi, I’m with RWA, and I happy to tell you …”

And then my brain froze for a minute. Several minutes actually.

And then she said I was nominated in two categories.

Total … brain … meltdown!

I asked her if she was kidding — at least I think I did. She assured me that she was not kidding. She probably thinks I am a total space cadet nut. Ah, well. At least I didn’t scream in her ear. I waited until after I hung up the phone before I did that. LOL.

I never, ever thought I would get nominated for a RITA. I’ve entered my books every year, and I always hoped one of them might get nominated, but I never really expected it. Like I said before, I’m still in shock — but it’s a good kind of shock.

And I’m so happy that these two books got nominated. With Spider’s Revenge, I really wanted to deliver on the Gin-Mab and Gin-Owen story arcs for readers. With Touch of Frost, I branched out and wrote a young adult book, which was a new genre for me. So it’s just a little extra special to me that these books were nominated.

Anyway, that’s my RITA call story. I just want to say thanks to RWA for sponsoring the contest and to all the folks who donate their time to judge the RITAs and the Golden Hearts. I also want to say congrats to all the nominees. It’s a great group of books and authors to be included with, and it truly is an honor to be nominated.

Tags: About Books, Contests, Elemental Assassin series, Mythos Academy series, On Writing