Indeed it has to come that day when just like Dr. Jekyll
transforms into Mr. Hyde and vice versa,
the Wandering Writer, changes the hat and
becomes the Marketer Writer. Nevertheless, also this definition for what
concerns the topic of the day, is not fully appropriate.
In fact, what I am going to tell you is something that
happened recently in my life and gave a new spark of hope for my literary
career.
I am talking about reaching the third place in the SIBA
Summer Indie Book Award for the best thriller. I remember how I felt surprised
to find out that someone has nominated my book for this award, of which I had
no idea.
From that point to have
a message in my email about reaching the
third place and having my book status changing from “a novel” to “an award-winning
novel” was something I could not
even conceive in my mind. It is not the fact that it might increase the sales,
but the confirmation that there were people who believed in my work, and
particularly believed in me.
At the beginning of this adventure, even before the
publication of my novel, I remember having read
an article where an experienced author gave advice
to the newbies. One of those was “Winning
an award.”
You can imagine how
this does sound to a person who, without
any experience as a writer, is going to publish his/her first novel. Yeah, it
sounds like “Right, like it was so easy to
win an award!”
Perhaps she didn’t use
the right words, but in the end, if you
have done your homework in building your
readership, growing your connections and you are present in the social media,
someone might nominate your work for an award.
As I said, I already
felt a winner, I got people believing in me, and to those, I will never stop to
be extremely grateful, and I received a lovely badge to put on my book and
marketing material.
Already with that badge on my book, I felt like the luckiest
person in the world. It meant really a lot to me, as I started this adventure
without any expectation, maybe even regretting, time by time the fact of having published it.
I got back to that article, and I thought that perhaps that
was what she meant, not the fact of
winning an award itself, but being able to grow a readership who will
believe in you. Being able to be credible with
the tales you write. Having the capability to put on paper, the world that is twirling in your head, and giving voice
to your imaginary friends.
My mind went back to the times when my elementary teacher
reproached me for having my head in the clouds. Well, perhaps it was not such a bad
idea to be lost in my fantasy world, and probably it wasn’t a wasted time to have my head in the clouds. It all depends on where you want to go.
Even as a geologist, my day-job, you need a sort of
creativity far from the numerical world of the engineers or mathematicians. With all the probabilities,
this was what I was destined to; who knows?
Something for sure is that I cannot stop thinking and thank in my head all the people who voted for
me, whose names, I don’t even
know. Those are the people who have my eternal gratitude, and to you all:
Of course, I have to thank my family for the support they
showed to me and the constant encouragement they gave me, pushing me forward
and never to give up.
Last, but not least, a great “thank you” goes to my muse, Carolina, my beloved evil
rabbit, that two-year-old dominant female, who is not intentioned to give up her throne
without a good fight.
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