Those of you on my social media feeds got the news today that I’ve been shortlisted for this year’s Dundee International Book Prize for my first yet-to-be published novel, The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon. Since not all of you who are reading this may be familiar with the story so far, please allow me to catch you up.

Early in 2010 I experienced a spurt of story ideas, most of which I was able to get down into some kind of short story. At the time I mentioned that one of my stories seemed to be very rushed and I wanted to develop it more; this was the story in question. Eventually I developed it into a screenplay, but even then it felt like I had a lot more to say in the story that I needed to get in there. I’d experimented with novel-writing ages ago, long before I went back to school, and they weren’t even good enough to be called amateurish. This time I felt better prepared, though, and from March to May of 2010 I wrote the first draft of The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon. Finishing that first draft was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life, so much so that I wrote a whole .journal entry about it.

I let the novel rest for a few months to let myself forget about it, so that when I came to edit it later I could see it with fresh eyes. In the meantime I worked on other projects. Finally, after three months, I went back and did my first revisions, and suffice it to say that I wasn’t as thrilled with the story as I was when I first wrote it. I knew I had something there, though, and since then I’ve kept editing it in spurts, getting it as good as I can before taking another break so I could come back to it and make it even better yet.

Shortly into the editing process I recruited one of my then-friends, possibly the most avid reader I’ve ever known, to read a draft and provide her feedback, something I particularly needed for some details of the manuscript. Unfortunately this wound up being the same person whose lies about helping me, along with various other things, contributed so much to the hardships I’ve experienced this past year. I did finally find the help I needed (and I am grateful to my friends who came through on that), but this created a huge obstacle for me and set me back several months at a time when my life was just about coming apart at the seams.

Eventually I began to enter the manuscript into some competitions and send it to some agents, but without much luck. When I learned of Dundee I almost didn’t enter because I figured that with it being an international competition, likely to see a huge influx of entries with Stephen Fry being one of this year’s judges (which is exactly what happened), I didn’t stand a chance. In the end I decided that it was worth a shot, and clearly now that was the right decision to make, as today The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon was listed as one of the twelve shortlisted titles.

What does this mean now? Well, as far as the competition goes, the twelve shortlisted titles (from nearly five hundred entrants) will be narrowed down to three finalists, and eventually the winner will get £10,000 (about $15,800 in US dollars at this moment) and a publication deal in the British Commonwealth. More importantly, this will, I hope, give me the boost I need to get a good book deal — even if I win, I’ll still need a deal for the United States and other countries — and truly launch my writing career and put an end to this past year’s hardships.

This is where I hope all of you, whether you’ve been following me for years or minutes, will come in. I try not to ask for help from my readers unless there’s some kind of family emergency or something along those lines, but this is unquestionably a special circumstance, and after all I’ve been through lately I don’t want to leave anything to chance here. As many people have said about me throughout my life, I need all of the help I can get.

First of all, excerpts from the twelve shortlisted titles have been released as a free Kindle e-book (which has now been taken down, unfortunately). I tried to pick an excerpt that was not only as intriguing as the title itself (sometimes a title hits you and you just know you have a winner), but that would get the basic plot and story of the novel across and leave readers hungry for the whole book. As you’ll see from the excerpts of the other shortlisted novels, I am in for some incredibly fierce competition to win the prize. The first thing I would ask you to do is simply download the e-book (Amazon has free Kindle readers for PC and Mac, and even a Web-based reader, if you don’t own a Kindle) and read all the excerpts, including mine.

Secondly, and most importantly, if you like the excerpt from The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon, tell your friends about it. Let them know that your old Internet friend or foe, or your ex-teacher, or your ex-student, has done this really cool thing, and try to get them to read the excerpt and make them hungry for the whole novel as well. As much as being shortlisted will help my chances of getting a book deal, if I’m to truly succeed as an author then I will need all of the word-of-mouth I can get to create a market for this book. That friend you tell about my novel being shortlisted might be the one who tells someone who tells someone else who knows this agent who will eventually be the one to land me a good deal here in the US, regardless of whether or not I win the Dundee. One of the shortlisted authors this year is a Huffington Post writer, and between that and Fry being on the judging panel we should all receive a great deal of publicity, but I need to make people hungry for my novel in particular, and every person I can get to talk up my book will help.

(Note that I only ask you to do this if you like the excerpt and want to see more. I don’t want any of you to campaign for a novel you have no interest in reading. If you really don’t like the excerpt, though, could you just be quiet about it? Thanks.)

Two years ago, after I finished the first draft of The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon, I knew that I had a long road ahead of me before it would ever see print. I am still on that road — I still have no book deal and no guarantees of one — but the possibility of seeing the book all the way through to publication just rose an awful lot. There is still work to be done, and all the help you can give me to get my novel published would mean more than I could ever hope to put into words. Here’s to more successes coming hot on the heels of this one.