Winning Etiquette by Poppy Gee

Do you try to read the books that are nominated for major awards? Do you second-guess the nominations or do you usually find you agree? 

When I was younger I always tried to read the award winning books. I found them interesting and exciting. Each time a list was released, I scoured it, counting how many I had read, noting which books I wanted to read.

I used to read every winner of the now defunct Australian/Vogel award, a prize for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of 35. These novels were by writers you’d never heard of. Debut fiction is exciting because almost every writer writes their first novel thinking no one will ever read it. Consequently, debuts are often more raw, honest, heartfelt, sometimes flawed, and the imperfection is part of the perfection – it’s pure.

These days I don’t make such a deliberate effort to read award-winning books. I already keep track of the publishing industry, paying close attention to what other writers are writing and consequently my TBR list is extensive and robust. Eric Beetner's ITW shortlisted book The Last Few Miles of Road was already on my list before it was honoured in the Best Series category.

The next question is interesting. Is it rude to second-guess the nominations? I'm going to suggest we should do this, that lists should get dissected and debated, and maybe the judges should be scrutinised too. I want to push back on the idea of any kind of literary authority!

Australia has a notorious and shocking history of bestowing awards on books that have later been exposed as frauds or hoaxes.

In 2022, John Hughes’ novel The Dogs, which made several shortlists, was withdrawn from the prestigious Miles Franklin longlist after he was found to have plagiarised sections of his novel from The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and All Quiet on the Western Front among others. The author claimed he was creating a collage, but given there were no citations, this explanation was not accepted as satisfactory.

In 1995, Helen Demidenko won the $60,000 Miles Franklin Award for The Hand That Signed The Paper. The author claimed she had Ukrainian heritage, and that this family history informed her novel about Ukrainian people siding with the Nazis during the holocaust. The literati described her as ‘astonishingly talented’ and ‘searingly truthful’. Astonishing she was, truthful not so much. It was revealed Demidenko’s real name is Helen Darville, she’s British, and her Ukrainian background was made up. Hers was an elaborate masquerade – she even performed a Ukrainian folk dance with her publisher at the award ceremony.

In 1996 a novel called My Own Sweet Time, allegedly written by an Aboriginal woman called Wanda Koolmatrie who was a member of Australia’s stolen generation, won the Nita May Dobbie Literary Award, a cash prize of $5,000 for the best first novel by a female writer. Later it was revealed the book was written by a 47-year-old white taxi driver called Leon Carmen. This shocked the publishing industry, including the publisher who had been duped.

There are plenty more stories…If you’re interested listen to this podcast:

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/the-book-show/fakes-and-frauds/102323578

When it comes to art, we should question decisions, rather than succumb to the dangers of sheep-like conformity like the people in the philosophical fable The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale the townsfolk knew the emperor was naked, but feared they would be regarded as stupid, or worse, so they pretended they could see the emperor’s magnificent garments as he paraded around.

Having said that, overall, I think literary prizes are a good idea – for writers, they can be an appreciated cash injection, acknowledgement of hard work, professional validation, and a wonderful, sociable, joyful moment in a fairly solitary pursuit. If you have won one, I’m excited for you! Pop the champagne, I'll have a bubbles with you and toast your hard work and talent. Tonight I'm going to the launch of my good friend Steve MinOn's debut book: First Name Second Name. His novel won an unpublished manuscript award and tonight we will all be celebrating!

Just Read (pronounced REED) from James W. Ziskin

Do you try to read the books that are nominated for major awards? Do you second-guess the nominations or do you usually find you agree? 

SUBBING FOR CATRIONA THIS WEEK.

I don’t usually read the books nominated for major awards. Oh, I might notice a book because of a nomination, but for me to pick it up and read it, the subject would have to appeal to me. The nomination qua nomination wouldn’t convince me to read, but other factors might. Maybe the cover is appealing, or the title, the blurbs, or the synopsis. I never know what might grab me, but it wouldn’t be because it’s on a list of finalists.

Now I’m not suggesting that I dismiss the major awards. Far from it. I know how hard it is to get a book noticed, and award noms are great rewards when they come. So I’m happy for the lucky nominees. But taste is taste. Not everyone shares the same likes and dislikes, so we all must take the nominations with a grain of salt, which does not diminish them in my eyes. I love so many books that have never been shortlisted for awards, and I can respect books that don’t appeal to me personally but have garnered accolades and nominations.

We’ve all heard people complain about the awards. Some say this one is a popularity contest, and others disagree with that one’s shortlist. But let’s be realistic: if the finalists are chosen by attendees at a conference, how can we complain? It’s a fair vote by hundreds of readers, after all. And when a jury of five or six chooses six finalists for the Edgars or the ITW awards, why should we expect the list to match our own preferences? It’s unreasonable. The results are determined by a small group’s personal reactions to the books they’ve read. It may not be a perfect system, but what’s the alternative? Voting by the masses? That takes us back to the so-called popularity contests.

So my feelings are that we should celebrate the nominees, no matter how they’ve been chosen (provided the procedure is transparent and fair). Take the advice of the committees/voters and read the finalists or don’t. It’s okay. Just read.

An honor to be nominated by Eric Beetner

 Do you try to read the books that are nominated for major awards? Do you second-guess the nominations or do you usually find you agree? 

Well, this is prescient timing. It just so happens that I recently learned my novel, The Last Few Miles Of Road, has been nominated for an ITW award for Best Series Novel. It was a complete blindside shock to me and I’m extremely grateful.

It also makes it hard to let my cynical side free and admit that I don’t put a whole lot of weight behind an award nomination in my own choosing of what to read. I think it comes from years of being let down by award-nominated books that have turned out to be simply not for me. I know this is my issue much more than it is the nominated books. I tend to read far outside the mainstream.

I will say that there are certain awards I put more weight behind, ITW being one of them (and no, not because I’ve been nominated twice now) I find myself often at odds with the taste of the Edgar awards. Just not usually my kind of book. 

Another thing I take into consideration is how many times I have acted as a judge for awards, both big and small. Certain awards, like the Anthony’s for example, are open to anyone who is a Bouchercon attendee and therefore maybe more democratic, but at the same time it functions more as a popularity contest.

I’ve served as a judge and head judge for larger scale writing awards where the judge panel is 5-10 people strong and composed of other writers and industry professionals. It’s not fair to say one is more “legitimate” than another, but I do think a peer-voted category is a little more gratifying for the writer. When I saw my little indie press book pop up on a list with best sellers like David Baldacci and Meg Gardiner, I know that judges didn’t need to put a small press book on the list. Nobody owed me anything. My book got there on merit. In the list of 6 nominees in my category, one book has over 22 thousand Amazon reviews. The Last Few Miles Of Road has 42.

ITW isn’t getting any publicity from nominating a book like mine. Nobody is signing up for Thrillerfest to come see if I win or to get a chance to meet me in the signing room. 

So the question of if I “agree” with nominees… I truly think that’s not my business. I’ve been a judge, a head judge in fact, when not a single of my top picks have made it to the nominating stage. The other judges were so far from my choices that nothing I picked made it. We’re all different readers. Any kind of art thrives on different tastes. It’s why I get so annoyed when other lovers of hardboiled or noir fiction ever talk down to cozy writers, or erotica writers. No! There SHOULD be books and stories out there for everyone! I know the books I often seek out are for a small niche audience, of which I am a part. I’m so grateful they exist and I know how hard it is to break through the piles and piles of more conventional books, which then go on to get nominations, which then go on to get the associated publicity and resulting sales boost (though I have not yet seen mine, but I plan on flogging this accolade as far as it will take me)

I like award categories to get a niche as they can. I’ve long advocated for the Anthony awards to expand to many more categories. It doesn’t cost any extra. All it does is give more books a chance to get recognized and fight their way into someone’s vision when they come to the book table. Dig deep and have a Noir category, humorous, cozy, historical, debut, series, hardboiled, traditional, international, audiobook, book cover, and on and on.

So, yes, I like awards in concept. I don’t look to them very often to find what I will read next, but I do take them as an indicator of what the industry is responding to. I like to be aware of them and when I get a chance to read some award winner, I do so with an extra curiosity. Maybe also a little extra scrutiny, which sometimes backfires. I expect it to be great and if I don’t feel it is, I get a little soured on the entity that picked it. 

So it’s a complicated mix of feelings for me.

Right now, though, I’m very pro-awards books. I think you should read them. I think you should look at a category and see the outlier you hadn’t heard of before and seek that one out first. “If it’s good enough to be nominated alongside Ann Cleeves and Iris Johansen, it must be good!” That’s the idea, anyway.

Wish me luck in June. I’ll be there waiting to hear if the underdog can win one for all the little folks out there, or if it was truly just an honor to be nominated. But I don’t think I’ll be writing a speech ahead of time. I’ve lost more awards than most authors will ever be nominated for. Maybe I’m due. Maybe nobody owes me a damn thing. I do know it’s nice to be invited to the party. I treat it like the honor that it is, win or lose.

Books and Prizes, Oh My!

 

Books and Prizes, Oh My!

 

Do you try to read the books that are nominated for major awards? Do you second-guess the nominations or do you usually find you agree?

 

This question forced me to look at my life as a reader from the wrong end of the telescope because I find myself asking how I discover books to read. I’ve been an avid reader for 50 years, and the ways I have learned about books varied from recommendations from friends, family, and teachers to displays at the local library and bookstore before Amazon existed. I realized that after the people and places in my childhood, I found out about books at the theatre. It’s not as odd as you think.

 

I was a child of the Seventies, so these titles shouldn’t surprise you. Books I read after seeing the films include The Exorcist [William Peter Blatty], The Omen [David Selzter], Poseidon Adventure [Paul Gallico], Three Days of the Condor [James Grady], and The Godfather [Mario Puzo]. The reverse to this trend was reading books and then seeing the movies: almost all of Stephen King and Ira Levin’s film adaptations, The Onion Field [Joseph Wambaugh], and All The President’s Men [Woodward & Bernstein]. The 70s was also the decade of sagas to TV screens from novels, such as Lonesome Dove, Roots, and Shogun.

 

The films that stood out to me as better than the books were The Godfather and Blade Runner. I had to do some mental work to connect Apocalypse Now to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I was disappointed seeing The Shining because the topiary animals were so sinister in the novel.

 

I haven’t said a word about nominations and prizes because, other than the National Book Award and Pulitzer, I wasn’t aware of shelf-esteem, such as The Booker, the Edgars, or any other award until later. Much later. In hindsight, I noticed something odd about a spontaneous list of crime fiction I had read when I was younger.

 

Published in the 1970s:

·       The Godfather.

Edgar-nominated.

 

Published in the 1980s:

·       The Name of the Rose [Umberto Eco]

·       The Silence of the Lambs [Thomas Harris]

·       The Black Dahlia [James Ellroy]

·       A Fatal Inversion and The Lying Game [both by Ruth Rendell]

All were Edgar-nominated.

 

Published in the 1990s

·       Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil [John Berendt]

·       The Silence of the Lambs [Thomas Harris]

·       The Alienist [Caleb Carr]

·       A Drink Before the War [Dennis Lehane]

·       The Bone Collector [Jeffrey Deaver]

 All Edgar-nominated.

 

At around the mid-90s, all of my  stumbling and fumbling in the dark stopped because of the modem connection to the internet. Magazines such as Entertainment Weekly featured book reviews and a column from no less than Stephen King himself, and I wasn’t dependent on the stodgy New York Times Book Review and dodgy critics in any of the local newspapers.

 

I understand that nominations and prizes boost sales and provide readers and writers credibility, visibility, and validation, but I was almost 30 years old at the turn of the century, so I trusted my own brain matter. I was, however, not a writer until a decade later. You do read differently as a reader and as a writer. I had enough ‘experience’ and discernment to know what I liked and whether I was reading dreck or quality, and I say that about all genres. I should note that I didn’t have to wake up to diverse authors. I’ve been reading them for decades, too. The problem was that they were often not up for prizes and they lacked the big guns of the Big 5 Publishers. Example: Iceberg Slim.

 

I learned after the fact that many of the novels I enjoyed were nominated or had won an award.  I never consciously sought out Booker Prize authors or Nobel Laureates. I know within 10 or 20 pages if the book is for me. I can’t recall a book that made me wonder how it ever got published (well, maybe certain vampire or ‘sexy and risqué’ books) nor did I find myself asking what all the fuss was about, though I have noticed that publishers these days chase trends and the dollar harder.

 

The truth is they don’t know, and it’s Hit or Miss what agents think will sell. The majority of the books I have listed here are solid, so I’m not one to dictate literary standards; that is subjective.

 

To each their own.

 

 

Do you try to read the books that are nominated for major awards? Do you second-guess the nominations, or do you usually find you agree?

The short answer is, no, I do not. I’ve never watched a movie based on an Oscar nod either. As a writer, I’m what is called a pantser. The same goes for my reading. Now, I know plenty of readers who pick their book choices with an eye to the list, but a lot of these readers, will also DNF (do not finish) a book with the ruthlessness of a literary agent reading a query letter. I am not that reader. If I start a book, I’m pretty much in. So, it behooves me to make good choices from the outset. How can I trust the recommendation of a rando who has no idea what I like? I mean, I heard Stephen King said he didn’t like his book, Insomnia. It’s still one of my favorites. Absolutely hated the Dome, though, ugh.

That’s not to say I don’t love a great recommendation. Finding a new author to love is like Christmas, and your birthday wrapped together, especially if they have a backlist long enough for you to get lost in. I found Kellye Garrett through the recommendation of a friend, and it opened a whole new world of incredible writers that I knew nothing about. I’ll be forever grateful for that. So, for me a book recommendation is special. When I share my love of a book with someone, it’s because I think there’s something in there that I think will bring you joy. A list can’t do that.

The first book I remember reading was a Harlequin romance by Penny Jordan. I was ten years old. I stole the book from my sister who was four years older than me. I thought that everything she did was cool. Her reading choice at the time, confirmed that opinion for me. That one stolen book was a gateway that introduced me to a world that was only limited by my ability to search through the stacks at my local library.

 Forty-six years later, my favorite place to be is in between the pages of a book. In books I am an explorer of worlds. And though, I may never visit the fantastic world of Xanth, or a little town named Derry, Maine, thank goodness, I’m privileged to know them as intimately as my own bedroom, thanks to the writers who made them real through the beauty of their words and their boundless imaginations. It’s pretty darn magical if you think about it.   

As a child, I spent every waking moment not sucked away by school or chores with my nose in a book. If you asked anyone who knew me then, that’s probably the first thing they would say. I read when I was supposed to be studying at school, by putting a book under or between my schoolbooks. I read when I was supposed to be sleeping, with the old flashlight under the covers trick. I read while walking to school, may have bumped into a few trees, or mailboxes.

There was never enough time to read. I graduated from romances to Greek mythology, to the classics, to fantasy, to science fiction, and then to Stephen King, where I discovered that even better than a good story, was a good story with great characters. Oh, how I wanted to be part of the gang, hanging around the Barrens, fighting an evil clown, and the local bullies.

As a grownup on a bullet train to old age, all-night binges have been replaced with long lines at the grocery store, airport lounges, and waiting rooms. I’ll will run out of time before I come near to running out of books. If I chose to, I could select books to read strictly from my author friend circle and never run out of great reads. In fact, sometimes, I go on a tangent and do exactly that.

Then there are my long-time favorites, Stephen King, Walter Mosely, Harlen Coben, Kevin Obrien, and Danielle Steele, yes, I said Danielle Steele. I miss these authors after not reading them for a while. And finally, there are the list.

Every year around this time, I think you could safely call it the award season for books. List of books nominated for the best of are released. You can always count on the greats making an appearance on these lists. But I’m going to keep on ignoring them for books that speak directly to my bookworm’s heart.

Current read, in case you’re wondering, is a new author for me, that I’m happy to add to my favorite’s list. Magic City Blues, by Bobby Mathew. I can recommend this to you, if you enjoy a fast-paced, page turner, with the throwback feel of a classic PI novel.