Good News

Earlier in the year I submitted my novel  Jack of Hearts to the Houston Writer’s Guild novel contest.  Recently, I received an envelope in the  mail from them. Looking at any Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes from places I’ve submitted always makes my stomach churn for a second. What’s it going to be? Of course, as any submitting writer knows, it’s likely to be bad news. But, you never know.

The results were kind of bizarre in this case.

When I opened the envelope it contained only the two judges’ scoring sheets. Nothing else. No, “Thanks, but you didn’t place” or “Congratulations, blah blah.” So, my first assumption was that JoH didn’t do too well, and they hadn’t bothered to put a note in because it was obvious. But then I looked at the scores. The first judge gave me 148.5 out of a possible 150. And the second judge gave me a 139. Both had very nice and glowing things to say about the story.

Still assuming I hadn’t placed, I at least knew that the margin of victory must have been slim (within 12 points out of 300). I was a little bummed at not winning anything, though. Later, it was still kind of nagging me–probably because I’m too optimistic or vain (how could I not have won something with that score! haha)–so, I decided to email the head of the guild and ask how I’d placed, just to be sure. I’m glad I did. He emailed me back five minutes later, and said he was about to email the results to everyone, but had misplaced my email. I’d contacted him just in time.

Jack of Hearts won an honorable mention. Only 13 other contestants scored higher than me out of a total of 140 entries. And this was a wide open competition; it wasn’t genre specific. So, all in all, I’m pretty happy with the results.  Feel free to read the first chapter here, if you’re interested.