I found out on Thursday evening that I wasn't on the list of those who had made it through to the second round of the competition. Having invested huge amounts of time and energy into putting myself and the book out there over the last five weeks, I felt a bit flat at first. However the day after the competition results came through I suddenly felt very chirpy - as though I had an instinctive sense that the wave of energy that had swept through and galvanized me into taking all that action towards raising the book's profile had ebbed away, as it was somehow supposed to do. 

I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to learn so much about the marketing and promotion of the book in such a short time, and feel only enriched and empowered by the whole experience (going on the radio, in particular, was an interesting trip!), and full of renewed vigour in terms of pressing on and finishing the book, at which point I'll be using these new-found strategies (bar the voting, perhaps!) to find an agent and/or publisher (hopefully some time in the not-too-distant future). I'd also like to thank everyone for their votes and interest in my project - the feedback has been invaluable, and has given me an enormous boost of confidence with which to carry on writing, and putting that positive message out there.

All of this feels very much like the beginning of my book's journey out into the world, not the end: so watch this space!! :-)

Just waiting, as the politicians will be later, for the votes to be counted and the results to come through this evening :-) We were originally to have been told the result on Tuesday, but they've given themselves an extra couple of days to make sure the results are fair (there's been more cheating!).
With any luck, I should be able to update my blog with the outcome by the end of today, bearing in mind the competition organizers are in the US, and 9 hrs behind us here in the UK :-)

The competition updates are as follows: the NextTopAuthor site is now rated 56000 in the world for traffic!! An amazing thought! The requirements for round two have now been revealed to the entrants - suffice to say, whoever gets through round one is going to be just as busy in May as we've all been the last five weeks. The voting for round one ends on Monday 3rd May now, not Sunday 2nd, so there's a bit longer to gather in those final votes.
I'm not going to tempt fate by detailing the round two stuff until I know whether or not I've got through. So  I'm just going to hang in there for the next two and a half days and see how the giant cookie of life crumbles for me on this one come Tuesday morning :-) Que sera, sera... I feel, as I have always felt about the book, that everything's taken care of, so I'm not too worried either way.
But it would be cool to make it through, I must say :-)
Happy May morning to anyone reading this, if you're out there - it was a beautiful morning in Oxford in the end, and I was up with the larks to go and join the traditional celebrations in the town centre: singing from Magdalen tower; morris dancing; full English breakfast etc :-) A great start to the beautiful month of May. xx