If you haven’t heard via the social media blitz that went out, I’m guessing the giant photo above caught your attention!!! That’s right The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler just won the Independent Publishers Bronze Medal for Best Fiction in the Northeast Region. My goodness… I’m still struggling to even type that without my eyes filling with tears. Holy Cow!

The Independent Publishers Book Awards, most commonly referred to as the IPPY Awards, are a set of national book awards presented to independently published books each year in a variety of categories. This set of prestigious awards have been held annually since 1996 and aim to highlight and recognize excellence in independent published books. I cannot even begin to describe my feelings on receiving this award. This is just unbelievable really!

Most of you are well aware that I wrote The Gathering Room pretty much for my own entertainment. After coming across the non fiction The Nelly Butler Hauntings - A Documentary History by Marcus LiBrizzi in 2015 I became obsessed with this little known piece of Maine history. After researching for some time and not being able to satisfy my curiosity on the lives, emotions and relationships of all of those involved, I decided one night to just write what I thought happened. Write it for myself. Write the book I wanted to read.

So I wrote for myself and that evolved into…. wouldn’t it be cool to have a published book for the kids and grandkids. You know a legacy thing to leave behind when I’m gone. I will never forget the day Jane Karker from Maine Authors Publishing called my office at the Maine Tourism Association to ask about the best way to market their annual Book Festival in the tourism sector. After answering her questions I had a question or two for her! You see, I had never heard of Maine Authors Publishing, heck I had never even heard of self publishing! At that time I was still thinking in order to get published I would have to send out my manuscript to hundreds of agents and be rejected over and over! After all Dr. Seuss was rejected 27 times before he finally published The Cat In The Hat. I could certainly only hope for odds that good!

Jane explained to me the world of self publishing and I sent her my manuscript that night! So from there this idea of a book moved on to ….. we can do this ourselves and sell a few books to friends to help pay for this! Before I knew it I was working with an Editor (I’m apparently a horrible speller and a lover of commas!) and a Graphic Artist to design the cover. I got an Illustrator to draw the map of Taunton Bay in the front of the book. I did my part by printing the area off of Google Maps, taping it to my bathroom window (best sunlight) and tracing the shoreline onto another piece of paper! True story!! From there it went to layout and I was faced with decisions on type of paper, placement of the numbers on pages, indentations of paragraphs and on and on. A million things you never think about when you pick up a book to read it! But the amazing thing about being self published is that every decision was mine. I have been in complete control of this project from the start, something that doesn’t happen for authors in traditional publishing.

Initially we ordered 400 books. I wanted books for my family of course and then we hoped to sell books to friends and maybe a few local bookstores through the catalog that Maine Authors Publishing puts out twice a year. One of my sons is a computer guru so he set up a website for me so I could take online orders and I nearly made myself sick trying to learn about e-commerce! I remember worrying at the time that I would be stuck with boxes of unsold books. That after I was dead and the kids came to clean out the house they would find all of these books! Their comments would be “Oh yeah remember when Mom wrote that book? It just never sold.” I hate wasting money and the thought of all of this money going to waste on an unsellable book was a major concern that I battled with in the dark hours of the night more then once during that time! And then somewhere along the line the book, and the incredible story it tells, took on a life of it’s own. I was not longer in control. Oh sure I was still making decisions but “the book” had plans. It had a destiny that I was not aware of and still to this day don’t completely understand! Everything I imagined this journey would look like was thrown out the window and I have been given an experience that I never saw coming!

Those first 400 books were gone in a matter of days. GONE! I remember calling Maine Authors Publishing three days after they had shipped me the books to tell them I needed to order more! Apparently the normal procedure is to wait a week or two, as there is always a big burst of sales when a book first comes out, but after a couple of weeks you can pretty much tell if you are going to need more books. I couldn’t wait a week or two, I needed more books now! From there we had to keep ordering books, first by the hundreds and then finally we began ordering books by the thousands! Here we are only 10 months later and I still can’t order books fast enough to keep up with the demand. I never expected that!

And now an IPPY Award! I could never have even imagined this happening!! Never. I wrote a book for myself, that has become a bestseller and now has won a national book award! Who’s life am I living?

I am beyond grateful for this whole journey. And thankful to each and every one of you who have read the book, who have supported me in your positive comments, feedback and reviews. For the folks who show up at vendor fairs, festivals, book signings, speaking engagements or book clubs, I thank you! I cherish the personal interactions I have with all of you more then you will ever know. I love sharing this amazing story with all of you!

So now we must ask the book where we go from here? What does it have in store for me next? Movie? HBO? Netflix? If there is one thing that everyone says about the book is that it has to be a movie!! What amazes me about that is that I hear it from people who haven’t even read the book yet!! Truly!! People who haven’t even read it tell me it has to be a movie. What does that say? And what about the prequel to The Gathering Room that I’m currently writing? How will that play into all of this? Oh my goodness!

If you would like to view the IPPY Awards for yourself you can find them here at this link, 2023 IPPY Awards just scroll down a bit to the Regional Category.