Let me set the scene. Bear with me–we have to go wide to get the right perspective . . .

Organization feels like progress to me. I like to think through my goals, break them down into small steps, write all those steps on a big board–you get the picture. 😉 So in talking about my author career to others, I’ve broken it down into stages:

First stage: obsessively researching routes to publication. (This also involves writing constantly. Well, to be honest, all stages involve writing constantly!)

Second stage: carrying out a rapid-release plan. (That was last fall; the idea was to establish myself as an author.)

Third stage: building on what I’ve established . . . promote my books, promote myself, on and on and on!

I’m pretty squarely in the third stage now, and if you’ve been following the blog (or if you’re at this stage yourself!), you know that it can be a tough act. The book world is massive, and I am teeny. But remember those lists and steps I like? Well, lately I’ve been using them to think about credentials. What’s the best way to indicate to readers that my books have value? Customer reviews, professional reviews, awards, promotion plans, ads . . . These are the things that have been on my mind.

Now, for my own personal purposes–and I may go into this in a future post–I decided recently that awards would be a particularly useful credential, if I could get them. I can’t control (cough cough) customer reviews, but I can seek out strategic awards. They’re immediately recognizable, they speak to any community, and to be entirely honest, they cost far less than professional reviews. The only rub is that when you pay your entry fee, you better have a reasonable chance of winning.

And that is so hard! There are so many good books out there–more every day. Plus, self-publishing budgets are tight, unless you’re well-established (at which point, do you still need the external credentials? Well, I’m sure they’re handy, but still). For my part, I was also plagued with imposter syndrome as I thought about submitting for awards. But my books are cross-genre, I’d think. They’re weird and don’t fit perfectly anywhere. I spent so much time on them, but they might fall flat. What do I know anyway? The judges might hate fantasy elements in books, or they might think my plots are too serious to be cozy, or too fun to be ‘good,’ or they might be turned off by my cover . . .

Not a productive line of thought. (Funny how it’s so easy to say that in writing, but so hard to derail the train when it’s solely in your head!) Nevertheless, I was mired there last week as I tried to make lists of which awards to submit to–which I thought I might have a hope of winning. Thursday morning I opened my business email expecting nothing much and found, instead, a very polite email asking if this was the correct address for Elle Hartford, because there was an award to coordinate.

Yes, that’s me, I replied, cautiously, my mind full of stories about email scams. In my car literally at that moment was a bubble mailer with a carefully-packed edition of Beauty, waiting to be sent off to a big national award committee. I hadn’t worked up the courage yet. I hadn’t actually submitted to any awards yet; I’d just dreamed about them.

Congratulations, came the response. The Georgia Fantasy Readers Club voted your Alchemical Tales the Best New Series of the year!

Oh my god, I thought. Who do I know in Georgia?

Here’s an award certificate! the email said.

Could it still be a scam?? I worried.

And here’s a button you can use on your website! the email said.

It’s . . . so nice, I thought, as the reality started to filter in.

And here’s what our nomination committee had to say about your work! Keep it up!

Eventually I pulled myself together and made this graphic, so that you can see what I saw:

I made it.

I made it! It’s a feeling similar to the euphoria I felt after my book launch party. It’s another indicator that hey, guess what, I actually am an author. Those dreams that I thought were unreachable when I was a kid–heck, even last week–are realized. We can check them off the list. 😉

It’s as though, in my journey of lists and steps and mountains to climb, a unicorn showed up and handed me a lifeline. It’s not like I’ve been teleported to the mountain peak–I still have work to do–but now I have more courage. I mailed off my book and I put that button on my front page. That awards like this exist at all is wonderful and meaningful and kind. That I got one, at the exact moment when it came, is magical.

I started out this post with a need to share my story, because–in part–I still am working on believing it. But also I wanted to share a little inspiration for others in my shoes. When people say that good things can happen when you least expect them, when you need them most . . . Well, it sounds silly or impossible, but it’s absolutely true. To quote Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella and her fairy godmother, “impossible things are happening every day.”

Just be sure that when those good things do happen, you don’t dismiss them as scams. 😉

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