I want to welcome my friend, Dale Mayer, back for the third time. Why, you ask? Well, Dale recently became a finalist in Brava’s Writing with the Stars contest, and after two rounds of challenges and voting, she’s still in! This round of voting is on the best back cover copy and she needs your help once more. The winner gets a contract with Kensington. So, show her some M & M love and go vote at Writing
With The Stars contest.

Once again a huge thank you to Liz for the invitation to join you here today! She’s been such a wonderful supporter, I can’t thank her enough.

Seven tongue-in-cheek reasons why I’m still in the Writing with the stars contest – I think…

This is another humorous look at this six past month voyage into the world of public opinion.

Five months ago, around the 12th of July, I actually entered my ms Tuesday’s Child into the Brava Writing with the Stars contest – only a couple of days before the contest closed. Less than a month later I received that crazy phone call from Megan Records that set my calm, peaceful orderly life on its butt and things haven’t been the same since. So far there have been two rounds completed with the third round of voting in progress. There are only six finalists left and two more will go soon after the polls close on January 2nd. Things were fun when we started. It was new and different. Now that I’m still in the running, things have gotten scarier.

I care more – before it didn’t seem real and the goal too far off in the future to be really understood. We’ve been through three months of this already and I’ve struggled to come up with a reason why I’m still here!

So these seven potential reasons are my way of lightening the stress and nail biting moments that have multiplied in astronomical proportions in the five months since hitting that ‘submit’ button way back in July.
Let’s take a look!

1. People feel sorry for me because I couldn’t think up a name for my manuscript so just used the day I started the book.

2. Voters looked at my picture, realized I was blonde and needed extra help

3. Voters realized the last judge didn’t like my character descriptions so voted to help me out – if so could those voters come back and visit again, please? This judge REALLY hates my entry.

4. My voters all hate paranormal/contemporary and historical romances – that only left mine. Don’t anyone tell these voters that psychics make my entry a light paranormal too!

5. Voters played ‘we love her, we love her not’ and ended up on my name. If they played eenie meenie minie mo – they ended up below me – so obviously no one was playing that game!

6. People following me on my social networking perils have decided I need a little longer in the game to get it right – Yep that was me trying to figure out how to do anything BUT retweet on twitter!

7. The people reading the computer generated results were into a little liquid Christmas cheer and couldn’t read the results correctly – no, I have no idea who would have sent out a bottle of bubbly so early!

And there you have it. It’s so close to Christmas, I wanted to make sure you all have a smile on your face at least once today as you move through a crazy schedule of deadlines, line-ups at stores, gift wrapping and running out of tape, baking where you forgot to add the pecans to butter tarts and everything else that can go wrong!

Okay, this is me talking now. Did I mention Dale was a good friend? What a nice belated Christmas present it would be for her to sign on the dotted line. So, hop over to the website above and vote.

In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to let her know of any experiences y'all have had with contests. I'll start it off with my comment.