Awards Eligibility Post

When I began writing novels, it was – thankfully – for the pure love of it. The idea of publishing them wasn’t really in the plan. It was only due to the insistence of one single friend that I even decided to try. I was lucky – I found my amazing agent Simon, and he found my lovely editor Kate. The end result was that I found myself a published author with very little advance warning and even less idea of what was involved.

There’s a lot involved.

People read and edit your book and you change it. Then you do it again. And then they do it again. And then eventually they stop working out how to change the inside of the book and start on the outside. Sam and Gem produce illustrations. And then more illustrations. And then someone else changes all the illustrations. And then you do it again. And then your agent doesn’t like them and you start over… And that’s just to get an actual printed book out there. Not even going into the eBook, and the audiobook and the ARCs and the cover quotes and the advance quotes. That’s all before you think about marketing the thing.

And then when it’s out there you join Twitter and you tell everyone it’s wonderful and some of them even agree and you grovel for Amazon reviews and GoodReads reviews and then there’s BookBub and it’s a whole huge world you don’t understand and didn’t know existed and you can’t really remember what it was like when all you wanted to do was get down 1000 words a day about hot vampires and cool zombies. It’s great – I mean don’t get me wrong I love the book reviewing community, and the book bloggers and the book tempters and they are all lovely and welcoming but oh boy. It’s a brave new world.

And last week Rosie the Totally Cool Social Media Guru from Rebellion revealed to me that there’s yet another world to conquer.

Awards.

So, this is it. This is my awards eligibility post. Let’s get to it!

Novels for 2020:
‘Grave Secrets’, published by Solaris Books.
This is my Debut Novel and – given that it’s horror, a whodunnit, romance, fantasy and filled with the hungry undead – it’s eligible for first novel awards in the crime, romance, horror and SFF arenas, as well as the rather more specialised universes of vampires, women sleuths and urban fantasy.

I still love the book – somewhere in the English countryside, a diminutive red-headed estate agent tries to cover her bills and find a decent boyfriend in the day but at night she raises the death to heap her cop brother find who killed them. Vampires, zombies, picnics, croquet and hot sex all in one little volume. How can you resist?

So, according to Rosie the Totally Cool Social Media Guru from Rebellion, it’s eligible for:
•    The Kitschies – Red Tentacle and Golden Tentacle (Novel and Debut)
•    The Hugos – Best Novel
•    The Shirley Jackson Awards – Novel
•    IVFAF Golden Stake Awards – Literature
•    Daphne du Maurier Awards – Paranormal Romantic Mystery/Suspense
•    Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition
•    HWA Bram Stoker Awards – First Novel
•    The Barry Awards – Best First Novel; Best Paperback Original; Best Novel
•    British Fantasy Awards – Fantasy Novel; Horror Novel
•    World Fantasy Award – Novel

And that’s it. People are always telling me that in life it’s not the winning that matters, it’s the taking part. Those people? They are wrong.