Steve Umstead: Paginations

I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary of publishing Gabriel’s Redemption (February 2nd), and I was struck with a memory the other day. Last year on a whim, just before publishing, I submitted it to Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award Contest (ABNA), and a few weeks later was astounded to find it qualified for the second round. Seeing my name, and the book title in ‘official print’, in that master list of 1,000 qualifiers was damned exciting, I must say.

In the year since, a lot has happened, including publishing two more Gabriel novels, completing the trilogy (a trilogy I didn’t even know was going to happen last year at this time – I thought it was a one-and-done novel). Gabriel’s Redemption has over 50 reviews with a 4.6 star average on Amazon, and the follow up novels have done just as well (better actually, according to average rating, though the sample size is admittedly smaller).

When the subject of 2012′s ABNA came up a few weeks ago, I didn’t even consider it at first, but then it hit me. The second in the trilogy, Gabriel’s Return, I feel is an even better story than the first (if I do say so myself), and I don’t see anywhere it’s written that a second in a trilogy wouldn’t qualify, so what the hell.

It’s in as of last night, with a pitch based on the book description, and the first two chapters as the excerpt. And away we go…

Anyone else in??

P.S. In a Twitter chat last night with @Harper_Jayne, I had a thought…winning the whole contest, and telling Penguin thanks but no thanks for their publishing contract. Yeah…that’s a nice goal.