I
don’t know anyone who writes with the specific objective of winning an award.
Nor do my author friends list best seller lists as their reason for creating. It is still true that most of us long for
those things, not so much for the sales and money those things bring but for
their inner value. Bestseller lists
suggest love and respect from readers. An
Agatha award from Malice Domestic or a Lovey from Love is Murder is validation
from fans of your genre. An Edgar or
Nebula award gives a writer validation from his or her peers.
I
hadn’t thought about other possible sources of validation as a writer until I
received an email from fellow mystery author Neil Plakcy.
I’ve
known Neil for three years, since I reviewed his novel Mahu Blood for the International
Thriller Writers’ newsletter The Big Thrill.
At the time it was the latest in his much-respected Mahu mystery series,
set in Honolulu. Neil also teaches at
Broward College in Florida and recently contacted me because he was assembling materials for
a new version of their mystery fiction course.
Neil
had read my essay, “Black Ain’t Nothing But a Detective’s Color,” which was
published in the summer 2007 issue of the Mystery Reader’s Journal. In that piece I discuss how being Black makes
a detective different. I was pleasantly
surprised when Neil asked permission to incorporate my essay in his mystery course.
He explained that many of his students were coming from a multi-ethnic
community and that my essay would be valuable to those students. I could help them understand African-American
characters in crime fiction.
And more,
it’s a Master Course which could be taught by multiple instructors over a period
of years. So going into the future it
could be that hundreds of people who want to learn how to write mystery fiction
will read my essay as part of their course of study.
Of
course I still long for fan accolades, reader appreciation and peer endorsement. But I never realized how much academic
validation might mean to me. It says
something about my understanding of my genre that makes me glow with pride.
