Congratulations!

Two gals whose blogs I frequent were Christy Award winners this past week. These awards are given out at the International Christian Retail Show for books published by Christian publishers.

Deanne Gist won the award for Best Romance of 2005 for her novel A Bride Most Begrudging which I read last summer and thoroughly enjoyed. The story is laugh-out-loud funny in places, so I’m not surprised to hear that I wasn’t the only one who loved it! Deanne blogs here.

The winner of the Award for Excellence in Christian fiction in the Visionary category was Karen Hancock for her 2005 novel Shadow Over Kiriath, the third book in her series Legends of the Guardian-King. Karen blogs at Writing from the Edge.

Of course, other people won awards as well, but these are two authors whose careers I have been following, so they’re the ones who get an honorable mention here!

In other news, our friend Rick (who was sent to the Regional Hospital for rehab on June 2 after he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre) is coming home today! The rehab has been a long haul…and the complete recovery will be much longer…but at long last he is coming home. He is now able to hobble about with a cane. The family has been able to borrow much of the equipment they need from the local Red Cross. Sunday is Rick and his wife’s 18th wedding anniversary so it is particularily cool that he will be home for that. I have offered to take the three kids off their hands for the afternoon and to supply an anniversary supper at their house. (It’s going to be awhile yet before he can navigate vehicles and restaurants with ease.)