I spent most of the day on our family room couch, sick with a yucky stomach flu. When I turned on my telephone at 11:30 p.m. to use it as an alarm clock, my home screen informed me that I had 32 Facebook messages. Except for my birthday, I don’t generally receive anywhere near that many messages, so I was curious. Opening up the app, I found comment after comment, congratulating me. For what? I honestly hadn’t a clue. On my phone screen, I paged down and down until I reached the first message, which said, “RE: the Fairfield Book Prize.”
Without reading any more, I dropped my phone and raced down the hallway to the bedroom only to find Chris fast asleep already. (I am always amazed at how fast that man can fall asleep!) I jiggled his foot and said, “I think I won!”
He said, “Hunh?” (After all, it was nearly midnight.)
“I think I won!”
“Won what?”
“The Book Prize—I think I won!”
“What do you mean…You think you won?”
I explained that I hadn’t seen an official announcement, just a bunch of friends congratulating me.
Chris got out of bed and followed me back to the family room where we turned on my laptop computer and pulled up Facebook. There, at the bottom of all of the wonderful congratulatory messages, was this announcement:
July 7 @ 5:39 pm
Congratulations, Lynne Harris Heinzmann, on winning the Fairfield Book Prize for “Frozen Voices” – Richard Hoffman, this year’s judge said: “It’s an ambitious piece of storytelling with multiple and interesting points of view and characters that are clearly and indelibly drawn, including Harry Houdini. I was reminded of E.L. Doctorow.” We are very proud of you!!
I looked at Chris. “Holy cow…I won the book prize!”
“You sure did.” He looked so proud of me and I loved that look more than anything.
I hardly got any sleep that night. I was just SO excited about becoming a published author and I kept trying to imagine how that was going to change my life.