HILD wins the Washington State Book Award

photo of WSBA finalists by Vicki Platts-Brown

Last night Hild won the Washington State Book Award for Fiction. Here's a photo of me with other finalists and winners of Poetry and History/Non-Fiction and Biography/Memoir, plus the Scandiuzzi Children's Book Awards. Winners are the ones with the red ribbons added to this badges. You can't see mine because it's clipped to the bottom of my sweater (under my right hand) but I was definitely wearing it. (Finalist and winner info here.)

At the point where this photo was taken I'd been up for 24 hours straight and things were getting a wee bit surreal.

Kelley and I had woken up in London at 4:45 a.m. UK time, packed, got on a plane, flown to the US, eaten something, changed into mostly clean clothes, then I'd won an award, read a bit of the book to the packed Microsoft Auditorium, signed a bunch of hardcovers and galleys and paperbacks* and programmes, met some lovely people and talked to a zillion more, and drunk two beers. I'm smiling here but an hour later I was beginning to see two of everything.

It was a long, strange, occasionally marvellous (and sometimes seriously hard) kind of day. Kelley and I were given a bottle of Taittinger on the plane by a cabin attendant for doing a favour for her and a fellow passenger but were too out of it to drink it after the awards. It's chilling in the fridge right now.

Expect a more meaty blog post early next week about our amazing (and amazingly busy) UK trip. Right now I'm not entirely sure which way is up...though I do know it's all wonderful.

* A box of Hild paperbacks was waiting for me on the doorstep when I got home—they hit the shelves October 28. And I have to say, they look fabulous. More about that next week.