When they were getting ready to announce my category, my husband took my hand. I held onto him so hard as they read the names of all the finalists. Yes, I wanted to win even though I had a contract. Don’t we all hope and dream for the moon?

And I did win. I won, I won, I won! I can always boast that Butterfly Swords won the Golden Heart® for the best historical romance manuscript of 2009. No one can take that away. Ever.

Is this ungraceful of me to strut like this? I do admire and genuinely hope the best for my GH® sistas, especially in the historical category. In fact, I have a feeling a couple of them are also really, really close to signing. One in particular, but I won’t name names. 😉

It’s just been such a long journey with so few celebrations up until the very last few months. And even with the contest placements and manuscript requests, I was getting scared. The best agents in the industry and the top romance editors were saying my Asian setting was too risky.

When I got up on stage for my acceptance speech, do you know how I felt? I felt like that moment at the end of the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness. They finally announce that Chris (Will Smith) has earned the job he worked so tirelessly for without any promise of success. The executive says, “Tell me Chris. Was it as easy as it looked?”

Chris fights back tears as he replies: “No. No it was not.”