And the winner is – Nancy Sharpe, for guessing Alexis Grant

Congratulations to Nancy Sharpe for guessing that Alexis Grant was the writer who signed a multimillion-dollar contract in my dream. Nancy wrote as follows:

Sorry, so late weighing in on this – crazy week with several projects – definitely not complaining Hmmmm…..so many great choices and I see there have been a lot of excellent suggestions. How about Alexis Grant with her travel memoir?

As Nancy notes, she had the advantage of coming in late. Thus her clever sleuthing revealed which writers were already out of the running. Nonetheless, she deserves my heartfelt congratulations, and I’ll be mailing her a copy of Eldercide this week. As I wrote her privately on Facebook, I’m delighted she won, because I admire her blog and her own networking abilities. I’m definitely going to check out her fiction as well. Although I don’t usually read fantasy, I’m sure my granddaughter will love her work.

This morning, Nancy made my day when I read the following comment:

Hi Julie,
Just wanted to let you know I passed the Humane Award on to you in my blog today. Have a great day!

Thanks to the other BBT folks who followed up with additional guesses: Elizabeth Spann Craig guessed Karen Walker. Karen guessed Patricia Stoltey. Patricia guessed Marvin Wilson. Then Patricia weighed in with another idea: “On second thought, were you the star in your dream? If so, we’ll just all hope it comes true. That would be literally living the dream.”

I replied, “Great guess, Patricia. I believe that in dreams, we really are our own stars, in that there’s a part of the self in each character that shows up. So technically, I suppose you could be considered a winner, but I’m going to say no – that’s not who I dreamed about.”

About my choice: Alexis Grant is the only writer from Blog Book Tours I’ve met in person. Soon after BBT began in May, we discovered we both lived in the Capital Region. On May 12^th, we met for lunch at Panera, where she gave me an invaluable lesson in blogging. She helped me set up my sidebar, including the link to Twitter, and perhaps most importantly, she encouraged me to stick with WordPress as a more sophisticated and varied blogging program, even though more people are using BlogSpot.

So why did she figure in my dream as the author with the multimillion-dollar book deal? Although she hasn’t yet published a book, I admire the energy with which she’s pursuing her goal and the excellence of her social networking skills, and I believe these may well bring her the success she’s pursuing. Because of the help she’s already given me, and the help she’s offered to give in the future, I hereby pass the Humane Award created by Helen Ginger on to Alexis Grant.