Well, it's only a small step but I entered a novel in the
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest and it made the first round cut. The book is called Turnabout, and I tried entering it in the YA category last year and didn't make the cut. I honed the blurb (the first round is judged solely on the 300-word blurb) and switched to the science fiction category, and I made the cut this time. The contest accepts approximately 2,000 entries per category, and the first round cuts that down to about 400 or so. The next round will be announced in mid-April and will be judged based on an except consisting of the first 3,000 to 5,000 words, depending on what the author submits.
We celebrate the small victories.