Various chapters of my novel-in-progress have received honors over the past couple of months. I was waiting to announce them till I had an online publication to link to, but none yet, so here's the tally so far:

"Pura siccome un angelo" was a runner-up for the Andre Dubus Award in Short Fiction sponsored by Words + Images, the literary journal of the University of Southern Maine, and appears in their beautifully illustrated 2007 issue, available here. This chapter finds my pair of gay lovers facing some bad news for their relationship.

"Julian's Yearbook," about one of those characters during his high school years, won an Honorable Mention in the E.M. Koeppel Short Fiction Award from Writecorner Press. It's been rumored that this story has been/will be broadcast on a radio station in the Berkshires; if I get any more info on that, I'll post the MP3.

"The Albatross," in which my sarcastic ten-year-old heroine gets saved and then un-saved by her evangelical BFF, won an Honorable Mention in the spring 2007 Fog City Writers Short Story Contest. 

"Grateful, Thankful" won second prize in the 2006 Literal Latte Fiction Awards and will be published on their website when its redesign is complete. In this chapter, our girl, growing up in the shadow of her bohemian mother, navigates the conflicting messages of feminism and popular culture en route to her first sexual experience.

This is all very exciting since I had never published any literary fiction before beginning this novel last year. I do recommend sending out stand-alone excerpts while working on a longer project. It can provide encouragement for the long haul, as well as publication credits that make the complete book more marketable. For me, though, the biggest reward is that my characters become just a little more real when other people believe in them too. (Kind of like Tinkerbell.)