To All the Writers Who Did Not Win an Award

(Including me)

I woke up on a Monday in late November and reached for my phone. The results of the Readers Choice Awards would be posted today! I was a finalist for Looking Up, a book that I am so dang proud of. My best book. One that traveled from grief to hope, transcending the macabre and the beautiful. I’d never felt this way about any of my work before.

This book…