I’ve always said that she’s one of the best writers that I know. Several of her short stories have been published in magazines, she runs a Christian Book/Music/Movie review site along with her twin sister who writes freelance for several popular Christian teen mags.

And this past weekend, it was announced that she won the Operation First Novel Contest hosted by the Christian Writers Guild (you may notice their ads in Writers Digest). The prize? A contract with Tyndale House (if you’re familiar with Christian publishing, you’ll know that this isn’t small potatoes!), and an advance, or possibly prize, of $20,000. Yup. You know all those popular novel contests that offer a prize of a token $5k and a consideration at a major house? Yeah… this isn’t one of those.

You can imagine that with stakes that high that the competition is probably quite fierce. We were all ecstatic when we found out that she was one of the 4 finalists, but when I got that text? Yeah, I screamed out loud.

It’s funny- with the publishing contract and the nice advance, you’d think that would be the tops. But to be honest? I thought the coolest part was that the book cover art was finished and presented when the contest winner was announced. Seriously! I think that is just awesome.

So if you want to go meet the next NY Times Best Selling Author, go check out her blog, take a look at the awesome cover art, and then tell her how pretty she is. And tell her I sent you- I’m angling for a position on her marketing team.