Well, I came home to a wonderful surprise in my mailbox tonight: a certificate telling me Mistress of Legend won Silver in the Fantasy category of the Foreword Indie Book Awards. I didn’t even know they had held them already!
I am so glad because I am so proud of that book. I feel like it is the strongest in the series, yet I know it is difficult for judges to judge the final book in a trilogy when they haven’t read the first two. But the fact that this one won tells me I did my job in making the story make sense on its own.
This award has been two years in the making since I just barely missed the deadline for entries to last year’s awards. But it was worth the wait.
I have spoken with two of the Story Circle awards coordinators and what really got me was how much they appreciated the research that went into this book. Finally, someone understood why I wrote it. So many people seem to think the book was somehow done incorrectly because I don’t posit a lot of new information or advance a groundbreaking theory. That was never the point; the point was to gather into one volume what others have said about Guinevere and show how that fits the idea of Guinevere changing as a character as society’s views of women changed over time.
I have to say that knowing that someone understands it gives me a lot more confidence going into speaking about Guinevere at the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies in June! As part of being a winner, I will also have the opportunity to present at the Story Circle conference next year. I’m seriously thinking about it.
I have to say that knowing that someone understands it gives me a lot more confidence going into speaking about Guinevere at the