3 Months of Marriage! Plus... Contest Disappointment.

G and I have been married for three months today! It's crazy how time flies! We really are made for each other, and every day that goes by, it just becomes more and more obvious how much we love each other. I just had a dream the other day about us going to Vegas, and I realized just how much I miss it. Sure, we were only there for a week, but it was like a dream. Of course, I think we'd feel that way just about anywhere that we could get away, just the two of us. Wouldn't it be nice to be stinking rich and able to travel anywhere in the world on a moment's notice? Especially if you had the job freedom to just pick up and go and not worry about coming home anytime soon? But we certainly don't live in that fairy tale, so there will be no picking up and going for us in the next few months. G says that maybe when I hit my halfway goal on Jenny Craig, we can take a special trip to celebrate my progress. I definitely like the sound of that.

What I don't like is entering contests that I don't win. I entered the Chicago RWA's Fire and Ice contest with my Young Adult manuscript and found out yesterday that I did not make the finals. Booo! I know that any contest is going to be extremely subjective. You never know who is judging your entry and if they just don't like the plot or the tone, you're toast. Whereas, a different set of judges in the same contest might have loved it. It's a crapshoot, really. But, still, a crapshoot I was hoping to win! I am anxious to get my scoresheets back to see what they liked/didn't like about the first 20 pages of my book. Maybe after the 3 finalists, I was 4th in line. Hey, you never know!

Next Thursday is the dreaded "Golden Heart" finalist announcement. In some ways, I wish I hadn't even entered. There's all this hope surrounding it. I really had so much faith in my book when I sent it in! But now that it's been rejected by Harlequin, I seriously doubt it's going to final in the GH contest. Sure, the editor said my writing was great, but compared to the other entries? I don't know. From what I hear, some people revise their manuscript over and over for years, sending in the same manuscript (but tweaked!) every time until they win. It's brutal. But being a finalist for the GH is huge when it comes to RWA Nationals, and I so was hoping to make it into that group. I entered in Contemporary Series Romance, not YA, and it's one of the toughest categories in the whole contest. They usually get upwards of 150 entries in that one category, and there can only be a max of 7 finalists. Ouch! The odds are definitely stacked against me. I figure there's a 99.9% chance that I won't final. Unfortunately, that 0.1% still has hope, and that's what's killing me. I wish I could just sleep through next Thursday instead of having to live through the nightmare of finding out I didn't final in yet another contest. Ugh.

Luckily, I have the world's greatest husband (in the world), and can be happy that there is one person who would choose me every single time. :)