I’ve received some pretty great emails in my life. If you have ever emailed me to rave about how much you loved my book, your email is on that list. But the day that I got the email from Amy Edelman of IndieReader, I was having a pretty low day. You know the kind of day – the kind where everything seems particularly difficult. The kind of day that makes you feel beaten-down and maybe a little sorry for yourself.

I was going through my emails, deleting the spam (the number of emails authors get offering to ‘market’ or ‘review’ their work for whopping amounts of money is truly depressing) when I read the words “Congratulations!  It is our pleasure to inform you that your book won in the Humor category for the 2017 IRDAs!”

Whoa, wut.

I re-read that email a bajillion times checking to see if I had misread it. Nope. Winner. Not grand prize winner of the whole shebang, but honestly, I don’t expect to take major prizes with a zombie romance full of swear words. Howie isn’t THAT adorable.

But yeah – it isn’t a mistake, it’s for real. Chemistry is officially an award winning book. IndieReader’s Discovery Awards are judged by publishers and Kirkus reviewers. Each book is read by two judges. In order for a book to be a category winner, it must get a minimum of 4 stars from both of the judges. If no book achieves that, they just don’t announce a winner for that category.

So it really means something that Chemistry won. It means two random people with presumably high standards read and liked my body-positive, feminist, angry zombie romance. That’s pretty surprising.

The award was announced at BookCon in New York on Saturday. I couldn’t attend because I’m poor and New York is on the other side of the continent and is NOT cheap to visit. But it still means something that someone in New York said my name in the contect of the word “award”. I like that combination a lot.

So, yeah. Whenever I’m having a bad day I can remind myself that I am now an award-winning author. BOOM, baby. Who’s changing this toddler’s diaper? It’s just C.L. Lynch, the award-winning author. Who washed these dishes? Only an award-winning author. Okay, so my husband does the dish washing in our family. And the laundry. But you get the idea.

To celebrate, I’m giving away the first three chapters of Chemistry in an instafreebie giveaway, so if you know anyone who might like it, send them the link! https://www.instafreebie.com/free/doT2B


CLLynch

Author of "Chemistry", the feminist Zomromcom you never knew you needed to read.

2 Comments

Rohvannyn Shaw · June 4, 2017 at 5:54 pm

Congratulations! That’s awesome! I totally understand how amazing that must feel, especially because it’s unexpected.

Dave Edmonds · June 5, 2017 at 3:43 pm

Way to go, Carol! You were an award winner in my eyes all along, but hey, New York? Well done!
You gotta tell me how you got into the contest!

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