A Winning Weekend!

My husband and I had one lucky weekend! It all started with an email to me from Jack Calverley, the host of Crime City Central. The website hosts a weekly audio narration of a crime short story. The stories are donated by authors to the site, with the hope that listeners will seek out and buy novels and other short stories written by them. Back in April, I donated the text to one of my previously published short stories, "The Murder Cache." The story proved to be very popular with listeners and was selected as one of five finalists for best story of Crime City Central's first year in existence. Listteners then voted for their favorite.

Jack's email was to tell me that "The Murder Cache" won the honor of being voted the best story out of the whole 52 weeks! And he sent a photo of a virtual trophy for the award (see above). My story beat out stories by fellow crime writers whose work I admire greatly, such as Lawrence Block, Steve Hockensmith, Beverle Graves Myers, Reed Farrell Coleman, Carolyn Hart, and more. I'm absolutely thrilled! You can listen to the story HERE. I'd love to get some feedback from my blog readers on what you think of the story after you hear it.

The next good news email came from my writer friend Kevin Paul Tracy. He held a contest for people who liked the Facebook page of his upcoming novel, Rogue Agenda, to be released in October. I liked it, and lo and behold, I won the first place prize--a 5 lb gummy bear!! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it when it arrives, but the first thing will HAVE to be to take a photo of me with it. :)

The final and biggest good news came to my husband Neil. He has been diligently entering a local contest this summer put on by Shock Top Beer, the very tasty Belgian white wheat beer. The prize was a $4000 Yeti mountain bike, and you could enter the contest at each of three Vail Resorts' bars (T-Bar, Sevens, Park Avenue Pub) each day over the summer. The final drawing for the winner was held at the T-Bar at the base of Peak 8 of the Breckenridge Ski Resort yesterday at 5 PM, and you had to be present to win. We were there early and shared a Shock Top beer for good luck. Neil's name was drawn as one of five finalists!

The five of them then had to run the maze at the Peak 8 Fun Park, and the first person out would win the bike. Neil has run the maze in past years and watched our kids run it many times, so he understood the whole concept of finding the four stations with the letters M, A, Z, and E and stamping his card before heading for the exit. Also, we live at Breckenridge's high altitude full time, unlike the other finalists, who were all tourists. So, that was an advantage, though the other finalists were all much younger than him. Once "Go" was yelled, Neil took off and methodically worked his way through. I watched and cheered from the observation deck with the other families, and about halfway through, I heard one of them yell to their finalist, "Follow the old guy! He knows what he's doing!" And Neil did. He stormed out of the exit first and claimed the prize. Needless to say, he was very happy and excited (see below).