How one author celebrated her RITA nomination

I’ve been away at Tarzali for a few days and while I was there, I received the fabulous news that Claiming His Family has finalled in the Traditional section of Romance Writers of America’s RITA competition.

In the world of romance writers, this is the equivalent of being nominated for an Oscar, so I was a tad excited. Elliot was determined that we must go out to celebrate. That guy will grab every possible chance to celebrate!

“But it’s Monday night,” I tell him. “Nothing will be open up here.”

“We’ll find somewhere,” replies my confident husband.

And so we set off.

Now the Tablelands, for those who aren’t familiar, have villages (for want of a better description) all about twenty minutes (driving) apart. We headed off from Tarzali (home of The Round Bar) and went through Malanda (which has quite a good a pub and a motel with a restaurant) intent on finding one of the cute, little, yuppie dining places at Yungaburra – the Burra Inn, Eden House, Nick’s Place, Flynn’s etc.

On the way, we barely missed running over an echidna but arrived safely and, as I predicted... every eatery was in darkness.

“Oh, well, we’ll have to go to the Chinese place at Atherton,” says Elliot, trying to sound disappointed, when I know that secretly this was where he was hoping to end up.

But, what do you think, dear reader?

Exactly.

The Chinese place at Atherton was closed too.

“See!” I exclaim in my best I-told-you-so smug voice.

We drove on in a more subdued mood to find the only places open in Atherton were a pizza shop or KFC. KFC won. Don’t ask. OK?

We drove home through the night, munching hot, salty, potato chips and finally, quite late and wrapped in a pashmina, I sat on our veranda and ate the chicken and drank some champagne and together we watched the beautiful starry sky.

And it wasn’t such a bad way to celebrate the RITA nomination after all.