Online Book Awards: the end of the year mentions that make the year's work so worthwhile

At the end of each year I look forward to putting together my 'Best of' list of the memorable books of the year.  I love to spread the word about my favourites, especially if they're self-published, just starting out, don't have a huge following, or whatever, because it's so damn hard to gain recognition in these days of total market saturation and goodness knows how many millions of books on Amazon already, with thousands more being released each month.   So here's my favourite books of 2016, if you aren't amongst the *large number* of people who've already looked at it on my book blog!

Another reason I like to put this list together each year is that there is nothing quite like discovering your book on someone else's 'best of the year' list.  Almost more than anything, these accolades make all the hard work and the 'oh God I've just written 30K words of total garbage' days worth it.  I was over the moon to see The Devil You Know on four book blogger 'best of the year' posts.  So a big huge enormous thank you to Lizanne: Lost in a good book, Between The Lines, Mrs Bloggs' Books and Alison Williams :).  

I was also delighted to see The House of York named in EmmabBooks' list of 5* rated books for 2016.  I'm so grateful for all the reviews for both books this year, and for my novella Best Seller which I released in March.  I was surprised and bowled over to see it named as 'Favourite Overall' for 2016 on Ellie Firestone's blog.  I got this book ready for publication whilst laid up in bed after a knee op.  Being immobile had its upside!  My husband got me one of those table things like they have in hospitals, for my laptop; through February, March and April my world was my bed, my crutches and my laptop on that table.

I think anyone who tries to sell something they've produced, be it a book, music, art, whatever, spends half the time assailed by self-doubt, and the validation of a reader considering your work good enough for a 'best of' post is such a confidence booster.

   
So, will I be calling myself 'award winning'???  I love what fellow writer Carl Rackman said.  He's going to call himself an award winning author, because he won awards for swimming in 1987, and he's an author.  My husband made the same suggestion to me a while back: "They don't know the award is for the backstroke" (and no, I won't be calling myself an 'award winning author'!).