Seal of Most Excellent Validation

If you were anywhere near the Internet yesterday, you will have already heard my squeals of shock and astonishment. Totally out of the blue, the amazing gals at RT Book Reviews tweeted me that The Mark of the Tala was chosen for the June Seal of Excellence. They describe it like this:

Each month the RT editors select one book that is not only compelling, but pushes the boundaries of genre fiction. This book stands out from all the others reviewed that month, in the magazine issue and on the website. June 2014’s RT Seal of Excellence — the editors’ pick for best book of the month — is awarded to Jeffe Kennedy’s fantasy romance, The Mark of the Tala.

I’m not sure how many books they review each month in magazine and on the website, but it must be hundreds. You can see the list of past selections here. Sharing this honor with those books and authors? Just UNREAL. Seeing my book listed alongside ones like Written in Red, The Hunger Games Trilogy and Gone Girl (also a June selection!) is powerfully moving.

They also say this about their selections:

The RT Seal of Excellence is awarded to the one title each month that stands out from all the rest. The RT staff nominates contenders which the RT editors then read and discuss at length. Sometimes a book is propelled to the top of the list by an innovative twist on a familiar story, or a villain that leaves readers chilled to the bone. In other instances the setting or the author’s writing style has set the story apart. But every title that wins the RT Seal of Excellence is our pick for the best read of the month.

I think that’s the best part of all. For those of you who’ve been following this blog lo these five years (can you believe that??), then you know I struggled for a long time to find a home for my particular blend of fantasy and romance. At one point, an agent I was pitching to at a national convention put me in tears when she icily told me my books fell in the cracks between genres. She was particularly cruel, the worst of them by far – which led to my writer friends referring to me as the Crack Ho ever since – but everyone had a similar refrain. No place in the market for my kind of thing.

Yes, the market has changed in these last five years and there’s more room for different and more interest in permutations on fantasy – so I’m dead lucky  there. Some wonderful people have taken chances on my work and that’s been huge. Carina Press bought into my Covenant of Thorns trilogy when no one else would and those books led directly to my Twelve Kingdoms books being picked up. 

So, to have this book be celebrated for standing out, for pushing genre boundaries – incredible validating.

I feel as if I’ve been fished out of the cracks.