I've been away a bit, "remembering my summertimes," as Stuart Little famously said. I came back to a few nice surprises, namely more good reviews for my new book, Jake and the Giant Hand, plus a guest post on my publisher's blog, about what it felt like to receive my first award nomination.

A quick excerpt from the guest post: "I simply couldn’t believe it. I had to re-read the letter from the nominating committee about thirty times until it very, very slowly, sunk in. I don’t generally need that long to get the gist of something, but for several minutes I simply couldn’t grasp what I was reading. Eventually though, I did catch on. I got out of my chair and danced around my office, then through the house. Keeping the news quiet until the shortlist was officially announced was like trying not to let anyone see me breathe, or blink."

For more about Jake and the Giant Hand, and what makes authors dance around like nine-year-olds, here is my other blog: http://phdowding.blogspot.ca/2014/08/...