As I snoozed in bed this morning I heard my phone beeping at me, but I ignored it because I’ve had an internet phone for four months now so I have learned to disregard any kind of sound it makes before 8 AM. Eventually, however, the ruckus became so serious that I got up to see what the heck everybody was push-notifying me of. It was important! Go figure. Thus, Lessons were Learned about always keeping my internet phone right by my bed forever and ever and ever because (inhale!):

The Guardian! (I know, what?) One of their columnists, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Damian Walter, held a contest of sorts, the point of which was to find out if indie authors/publishers had, amongst their numbers, “[a] book to rival the magnitude and sheer storytelling bravado of George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones.”

Cool! Well, what happened?!

 “The brutal truth is that nothing I saw came close.”

Honestly … no surprises there. I have recently gotten in to A Song of Ice and Fire, and it’s the best thing ever. Who knew, except for everybody except me? Since 1996? Anyways, the good news is that Mr. Walter went through 800 or so indie books and thought mine (mine!) was pretty good! Maybe more than pretty good, if I’m honest:

“My favourite novel among these five, however, is A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer. Imagine a history of 19th-century literature where the eldritch weirdness of Poe and Lovecraft had infected the mainstream drawing-room novels of the era … Molly Tanzer is a tremendously clever writer, with a remarkable knack for fusing the grotesque and the comedic. A Pretty Mouth manages the thing that becomes ever harder as the novel grows older. It does something new.”

Uh? Yay! What? OMG!

So, thank you to Damien and congrats to everyone else on the list, you can read the whole thing at the link above. And seriously? I am still kind of in awe. (My face! In The Guardian! And for a great reason!) I’d gibber some more about how awesome this all is, but I gotta go do stuff to my most recent batch of kimchi. Writerly life is glamorous, what can I say?