A Realm Awards Finalist? Yes! It's True!

I'm not even joking.  My book A Noble Companion is a finalist for this year's Realm Awards!!!  

This little Ugly Duckling retelling was such a challenge to write.  For one thing, it was the first time I had been part of a multi-author project.  For another, I had never written fantasy before, so I struggled with that aspect of the book a lot.  And also, every book in this series focuses on a side character of the fairy tale being retold, not the usual main character, but... there aren't any other named characters in The Ugly Duckling.  In fact, even the main character is only referred to by that description.  That made figuring out who to focus on pretty tricky.

I freely admit that I'm not a fantasy writer, I'm a historical fiction writer.  I did a lot of praying that God would help my imagination and writing skills grow and change to suit this new project.  And I did find ways to make it truly a fantasy book, but the story rests solidly on a foundation of historical research for the setting. 

I never really expected that it could compete against more obvious fantasy books for the Realm Awards, which are for Christian fantasy and sci-fi.  The fact that it made the long list last month felt like a really amazing honor, and I really didn't even hope that it would go farther.  But it did!  It's a finalist now!  Wow.

If you want to see who all the finalists are, you can find the official list here.  If you want to know more about A Noble Companion, check out my page about it.