You know, you see the RITA finalists being announced as the news hits, and you cheer with your buddies and send out WHOO-HOO’s and YAHOO’s and all sorts of things – and then one little award nomination will hit you were it counts, give you shivers, just make you believe again.
For me, that’s this one:
Best Contemporary Single Title Romance* Caridad Ferrer, Adios to My Old Life
Best First Book
* Caridad Ferrer, Adios to My Old Life
I have tears over this. You want to know why?
Here, I’ll let Caridad/Barb tell you herself:
My beef with the Ritas this year wound up being an intensely personal one, so I’ll state that right up front. My category didn’t make it, for one– (Young Adult–in a great year for Young Adult books and we couldn’t manage 25 entries, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant) and I couldn’t go into the secondary category that would have best suited my story (Mainstream with SRE) because of the word count restriction. Not because my book was too long– while it is long for a YA at 72K words, it didn’t qualify for Mainstream because that had a MINIMUM word count of 80K. It was right there in the rules and I had somehow completely missed it, because it seems so odd that for a book to be considered Mainstream it would have to START at 80K words.So I chose a tertiary category, Contemporary Single Title– because it started with a minimum word count of 70K. Was it the best place for my book? Oh hell no. So why go to so much effort?
Because this is my one and only shot at Best First Book. Is that arrogant, to think I had a chance there? Maybe– but who’s to say I didn’t have as good a chance as any of the other first books out in 2006 and why shouldn’t I have my chance?
The worst part was, when I expressed my frustration to one of the individuals who was taking opinions for revamping the Ritas, I essentially got a pat on the head and a “There, there, dear, so sorry, but doesn’t one of the children’s book organizations have a contest you can enter?” email in response.
My hair nearly caught on fire, I was so ticked. This isn’t about contests– it’s about the Rita. RWA has been my primary writing organization since I started in this gig– and actually, a lot of the children’s writing orgs don’t really cater to the more commercial Teen/YA books and really, so not the point. The point is, I consider RWA to be my writing home and would have hoped for a little more support from the PTB. Again, full disclosure– I did get a lot of support from many, many members of RWA who considered the whole situation to be FUBAR’d beyond belief and from people who are on the committee to revamp the contest rules, so it’s not like I was totally hung out to dry. But for this year, yeah, I’m essentially screwed.
The only thing she’ll be screwed over now is figuring out what to wear to the awards ceremony! Congratulations, Barb!!
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Oh thank you, sweetie!! This is just… oh, damn, you made me cry again!
I have never been so glad to be wrong in my entire life. Seriously. Something like this, it gives a girl faith that the judges can look at a book and say, “This is a good book,” and understand that the categories aren’t always as clear cut as they might seem. That’s all I wanted. Acknowledgment that I’d written a good book and it belonged in the Ritas– so I guess what I’m saying is I’m really glad it didn’t get disqualified! *g*
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Good for her!!! Congrats and kudos!!
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I have this in my tbr pile. Congrats!
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kudos to jIll and jo
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Well done Barb!