Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Another Happy Dance!

I know the Playground isn’t my own personal Brag Blog, and posts like this probably aren’t why you tune in, but I just can’t help it. I’ve had an extraordinary run of wonderful things recently. My cup runneth over. And I just have to share or else explode from the squeeing.

First came the double final in the National Readers’ Choice Award. Then the Maggie final. Then the NRCA win (squee!). Now I’m tickled to say that I’m a finalist in the Heart of Excellence Readers’ Choice award as well. The Secret Mistress Arrangement had been getting all the attention, but I’m pleased that The Millionaire’s Misbehaving Mistress is seeing some love now too from the Heart of Excellence judges.

HoE announces winners in Sept, and the Maggies are announced in Oct. Keep your fingers crossed for more squeeing (or not, if you’re tired of blogs like this ~grin~).

The other exciting thing book-wise is my newest foreign edition. I love foreign editions – seeing how the titles, covers and blurbs are revised for each country’s readers. It’s fun to see what other countries pull out or focus on as their marketing. (Thank you Google Translate!)

And foreign editons are one of the really awesome parts of being a Harlequin author. After only 18 months of being published, I’m already around the globe. My books have been translated into Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Greek (there may be more, but I haven’t found them yet).

And now, drumroll please…. I’m in Czech.

Breaking into a new market is exciting, yes. I hope the Czech readers enjoy it. But the main reason I’m so excited about this market is because of my name.

Yes, my name.

See, in Czech – like Russian and other languages in that family – you name can differ depending on your gender. I won’t bore you with the linguistic details, but long story short, females usually have the ending –ova added to their names. So, in the Czech Republic, my book is written by Kimberly Langova.

Why does this tickle me? Because of my years in ballet. ~grin~ All those great ballerinas—Markova, Pavlova, Arova, Ulanova

And now I have a name like theirs! It makes me smile a little.

So The Secret Mistress Arrangement becomes TÝDEN V RÁJI (A Week In Paradise) by Kimberly Langova.

I’m so easy to please…

Anyone speak Czech? Wanna take a stab at how that’s pronounced?

PC

7 comments:

Scarlet Wilson said...

Well done Kimberly, you're really sweeping the boards these days!

Playground Monitor said...

Yay! More possible awards for our mantle. Congratulations.

I have friends who live in Czech. I'll see if I can get them to write out the pronunciation phonetically.

Or you could post on Facebook and ask there if anyone speaks Czech and could spell it out phonetically.

Cheryl said...

Congrats Kimberly! Are you going to build a new room onto your new house to hold all the awards? You'll need it! It's just validation for being a wonderful writer!

Crystal said...

Congrats! I'm very excited for you! Yes, you must give thought to adding a room for your awards. How very exciting, indeed!

robertsonreads said...

Many congratulations Kimberly. That really has to be an awesome feeling. Continue to dance
ballerina.

word verification - mashe - will you mashe the potatoes?

Angel said...

Well, we knew you were an award winning writer, even before you started winning all these awards!!! :)

That is one totally cool cover! I love the colors, and yes, your name is very foreign and sexy sounding. Yay, you!

Angel

Problem Child said...

Thanks y'all.

New room? We just moved into this house and I have a room we don't know what to do with. Maybe this will be the answer!