Sherry Ledington
Sherry (alias “Yorkie Lover”), an admin assistant from Arizona, is our first round winner. Her chapter, “The Wayward Wife,” was voted number one out of more than five hundred submissions.
Keeping company with two spoiled dogs and one (spoiled?) husband, Sherry credits much of her success to her creative writing teacher, Connie Flynn.
“She’s always there with words of encouragement when I’m beating my head against the wall and telling myself that I’ve read better stuff than mine on the back of a cereal box!”
Just proves what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it.
Lacey Kumanchik
Lacey (alias “laceykaye”), a process engineer from Washington, is our second round winner. Her chapter, “Sweet Deception,” was voted number one out of 299 submissions.
Says Lacey, “I started writing because my brother, whose head is always in the clouds, made me wonder what, exactly, could be inside someone’s head that was so amazingly fascinating.”
Lacey is a member of Eastside RWA and the Red Pen Posse critique group.
Pamela Bolton-Holifield
Pamela (alias “doglady”) is a retired opera singer living in Alabama. Her chapter, “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright…” was voted number one out of 276 submissions.
“I love the Regency period in no small part due to the fact that I lived in England for three years as a child,” says Pamela. A bakery manager in “real life,” this is the first time Pamela has ever entered her writing in a contest. “The fun I am having has been prize enough,” she says, “but winning just tops the cake!”
Eve Ortega
Eve (alias “TessaD”), a part-time librarian and full-time mommy from southern California, is our round four winner. Her chapter, “Forget Me Not,” was voted number one out of 253 submissions.
Says Eve: “I came to my love of all things Regency by way of a Jane Austen devotion. I even gave my son the middle name Austen.” But that’s not the only link Eve has to our story. When she was ten years old her family adopted a kitten and Eve named it…you guessed, Penelope!
Courtney Milan
Courtney (alias “CM”), a jack-of-all-trades from California, is our fifth round winner. Her chapter, “The Missing Missives,” was voted number one out of 179 submissions.
Courtney has been a computer technician, a lawyer, a sales person, a hair stylist, a pastry chef, a bodyguard, an editor, a teacher, a statistician, an animal trainer, and what else but a writer! She wrote her first novel when she was ten years old. “It was entitled ‘To Bring Back the Buffalo’… and it was not released to critical acclaim, nor was it a resounding success.”
Sara Mangel
Sara (alias “Sara_Lindsey”), a recent college graduate from California, is our sixth and final round winner. Her chapter, “Patience Makes Perfect,” was voted number one out of more than 180 submissions.
An art history/pre-med major in college, Sara spent much of her time working on her senior thesis, “Once Upon a Picture Book: The Illustrated History of Little Red Riding Hood.” When she wasn’t studying or writing, she was reading lots and lots of romance novels.
Sara is a member of RWA and is currently at work on her first novel, a historical romance set in the Regency era.