Alice C. Early

MOON has just won four Firebird Awards

It’s been quite a ride these last two years. For those of you who have been with me all along through these posts, Facebook, Instagram, ZOOM author chats, book group meetings, bookshop signings, and all manner of support and encouragement, a huge THANK YOU!!

April has been a celebratory month for me and MOON. My novel was chosen by the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club as the International Book of the Month for April. In addition to a virtual author talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p85gBj4bciM, I blogged every day for my designated week (April 11-17) about my background, inspirations, writing space, and practice. If you are interested  those posts are here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/www.pulpwoodqueenpresents. You just need to keep scrolling as they are marked Day 1, Day 2, etc. and are interspersed with other material.

This week, just in time for MOON’s birthday, I learned that Speak Up Talk Radio’s Firebird Awards named her WINNER in FOUR categories: New Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Cross-Genre, and Magical Realism. This brings MOON’s awards and designations to eleven. Releasing my baby during pandemic with almost no pre-publication readers, exposure, or reviews, was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. I had no idea if MOON would be embraced, panned, or ignored. Within weeks, she took silver in three categories by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. That affirmation let me breathe easier and sparked hope that she might find her audience, even with pandemic throwing monkey wrenches. Thanks to you, she’s been warmly embraced time and again.

In my coaching work over the last 20+ years, it’s been my observation that working one’s way through a major life transition—changing jobs or careers, deaths, divorces, illnesses—takes about two years before the heavy emotional work of transition is largely done. Since I’d been writing MOON for decades and slogging through the two-year publication effort, I thought pub date might mark the end of my transition. Instead, the real transition was only starting.

For me, the shift from “writer” to “author” was emotionally complicated. It involved taking myself seriously as a writer versus feeling like a hobbyist. It included shifting my efforts toward becoming a responsible and responsive citizen of the community of writers by sharing, mentoring, reading, reviewing, and encouraging other writers. All that, plus promoting MOON, was far more time and energy consuming than I expected, sometimes even pushing aside my second novel that howls for attention now and again. But as I progressed through the career change from businesswoman/coach (not that I’ll ever really stop) to writer/author, I began reaping the enormous benefits of finding my new tribe. Once I accepted that I am a legitimate member of the writing world, I felt a shift in my sense of self that was both subtle and profound.

Now, when people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer.  

At this anniversary, I am filled with gratitude to all of you—my agent April Eberhardt, my publication team at She Writes Press, and my husband, friends, readers, and reviewers. Without you, MOON would still be scribbles on yellow pads in a box under my desk. Instead, she’s winging around the world, entertaining readers, and encouraging me to believe—because every day requires a confidence re-set—that I truly am a writer now.