Dear readers of the blog,

This will be old news for some of you who follow me elsewhere, but for those of you who don’t, I’m excited to share When the Jessamine Grows is a finalist for the Southern Book Prize!

What is the Southern Book Prize (SBP)? In a nutshell, SBP nominations are submitted by bookseller members of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) and chosen from books that have received enthusiastic reviews from Southern booksellers. These eighteen finalists, six in each category, received the highest number of nominations, making the group a collection of the most beloved indie “hand sells” in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature of the year. In this graphic you’re only seeing the six fiction finalists. What a list to be a part of!

Here’s how to vote:
Ballot for the Southern Book Prize
After you click on the link above, follow these steps:

1.  Click on the button, “find your indie bookstore”
2. A search bar will come up – type in the name of your local/favorite indie store
3. Click on the store when it comes up in the list – if your store isn’t in the list, you can choose “Other” and write it in
4. Move down to the Fiction titles, and select When the Jessamine Grows
5. Select a non-fiction title (If you haven’t read any of these, you could choose one you might read in the future)
6. Select a Children’s/YA title (same as above – one you might buy for your child or grandchild)
7. Choose if you want to be part of the raffle
8. Write a nice comment about the bookstore you selected in the first step
9. Click “I’m not a Robot”
10. Click on Submit

And that’s it! Voting ends February 1st, 2025.

In other news, the book submitted over the summer, Women of a Promiscuous Nature has a publication date, February, 2026!

AND, the final backlist book to get a new cover was The Forgiving Kind, and I LOVE it!

I hope everyone has a lovely Thanksgiving with lots of time with loved ones, good food, and plenty of time to read!