NPC, but I'm stoked!

[ttweed]

Off topic, but I am pretty excited and want to share this with fellow clubbies.

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 this 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.

Thx,
TT

[EARLY911ZOO]

congratulations!
must be a great feeling, will read and leave feedback.
all the best
RIchard

[Mark Morrissey]

Tom, that's great news. Congratulations. I have to check it out now.

[ttweed]

Thanks for the kind words. The contest will get a lot tougher now. Advancing to the top 100 will be hard, but I don't really care if I get bumped now. Making the quarterfinals gets you a full review from Publisher's Weekly, and that was all I was looking for. I'm ready to publish the book myself whenever I am eliminated. Of course, making the finals and getting a contract from a big NY house would be a dream come true, but I'm not counting on it. In these days, only the notorious get the big deals (witness Bush's $7 Mil. contract, or even $6 Mil for Tina Fey!) Publishing houses no longer develop writers, they go for the homerun, best-seller possibilities only. If you aren't well-known, you don't have a chance. Better to be a serial killer--you're more likely to draw attention.

Luckily, desktop publishing has opened up an entirely new realm of media with POD publishing and internet sales. My book is all typeset with the cover designed and ready to go. I'll send it to the printer whenever I am eliminated from the ABNA contest.

TT

[TEC69E]

Hi Tom,

Great to hear from you. I was wondering where you were hiding out all this time. I'll check out your book on Amazon. BTW, I decided to build my own street/track car . . . with inspiration from your 73.

All the best,

[ttweed]

Hi Tom,

Great to hear from you. I was wondering where you were hiding out all this time. I'll check out your book on Amazon.

Thanks, Tom! Glad to hear from you, too. Yes, I've been totally AWOL from the 911 forums, putting in 10-12 hour days behind the computer getting it done, and then starting a little indie publishing company with my wife, who is the graphic artist in the family, to publish it. When friends found out, they asked us to publish their work too, and it has kind of snowballed from there--now we have 4 books in our little imprint.

I heard about the ABNA contest and put off publishing my book to enter it (only unpublished works are eligible) but we've put out two others, a non-fiction memoir by Cecil Lytle, the retired provost of Thurgood Marshall College at UCSD, about the founding of the Preuss Charter School for underprivileged kids, called The Burden of Excellence, and an historical mystery novel set in N. Wisconsin from 1913-1960 written by a friend of ours, Pamelia Barratt, called Blood: the Color of Cranberries. They're both out now, and we're finalizing an illustrated children's "sci-fi" novel called Benny Santiago and the Mask of Mortimer Muerto for an author in Portland, OR, named Jesse Tate. It's a really cool book aimed at middle-school and up readers, very imaginative, with killer illustrations by an artist named Thomas James. We have a little blurb page for it up on our website here: http://plowsharemedia.com/benny.htm

BTW, I decided to build my own street/track car . . . with inspiration from your 73.

Oh-oh. Down the slippery slope for you....

C'ya,
TT