Your Award Winning Novel

My company, Intrigue Publishing, was well represented at the Love is Murder Mystery Conference last weekend.  We took pitches from authors.  I sat on one panel and moderated another. We sponsored the newcomer’s breakfast and I moderated that too.  We worked the con the way I hope other small presses work our  Creatures, Crimes & Creativity con.  And our big win was that one of the books we published, “Girl Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie” won the Lovey Award for best horror/sci-fi/fantasy novel of the year.  The Lovey, voted on by Love is Murder attendees, is given in several categories.

 

In today’s crowded marketplace winning an award is one way to distinguish a book and make it stand out.  Awards that are voted on by readers can carry a lot of weight with a specific audience. Like Love is Murder’s Lovey, the Agatha award is granted by the fans at the Malice Domestic conference. For authors and publishers who attend writers conferences, this can be a great extra benefit.

 

There are also plenty of awards available to authors and publishers who don’t love Cons, although there is usually a price.  For example, the annual International Beverly Hills Book Awards is open for submissions through Feb. 15.  They consider cover and interior design, promotional text, aesthetic components and other factors that demonstrate outstanding presentation, in addition to the writing. They accept fiction and non-fiction books in a wide range of topics and categories including mystery, romance, business, self-help, memoirs and inspiration.

USA Regional Excellence Book Awards recognizes books that take readers into the heart of a “place.” If your book delivers the distinctive character  of a locale, say the glitz of Hollywood or the hustle and bustle of New York City, it is a perfect candidate for a USA REBA award.  Again, Sept. 15 is this year’s deadline.

And while the International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America restrict their awards to well-established publishers, that doesn’t mean all others are shut  out.  The National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) was created to help establish self-publishing as a legitimate side of the publishing industry. You’ve got until March 31 to submit to them.

 

You could question the promotional value of book awards, but  there’s no denying the joy of such bragging rights.  So go see if your book can become an award winning.

What's YOUR Excuse?

"I don't have time to write."

 

"I'm too busy to attend writers conferences."

 

"With all that's going on I can't focus on a book."

 

Yep, I've heard them all... all the reasons people who say they want to be writers just don't get those words on paper.  I've heard just about every excuse there is.  But not from mystery author Robert Bailey.   After three award-winning novels about private eye Art Hardin, Bob won't let things like time, work, or even a brain tumor get in the way of his writing.

 

That's right.  Bob is a glioblastoma patient.  He has spent the last two years battling his tumor in the speech and language area of the brain to finish his fourth book.

 

But he doesn't let "cancer patient" define him.  He still defines himself as a writer.   And well he should.  After five years as a corporate security director in Detroit and twenty years as a licensed private investigator, his first novel, PRIVATE HEAT,won the Josiah W. Bancroft Award at the Florida First Coast Writer's Festival in 1998.  When it was published in 2002 it was nominated for a Shamus Award.  Art Hardin's adventures continued with DYING EMBERS and DEAD BANG.

 

Bob's fourth novel, Deja Noir, is coming more slowly because the tumor is causing a condition no writer would want to face: expressive aphasia.  As his wife, Linda, writes on his blog:

 

"Part of having expressive aphasia is trouble getting words and phrases that you are thinking to actually come accurately out of your mouth, or fingers, as it were. "

 

But this hasn't stopped Bob from creating.  On the days he can't get the words into the computer in the right order, his wife is there to support him.  As she says in a recent Facebook post,

 

"Back to working on Bob's book. He can't type, but he can talk. I can type."

 

And he is still an active member of the writing community, doing book signings and attending conferences all over his area.  He'll be at the Hanover Book Festival next weekend, and I'm very excited to say he'll appear at Creatures, Crimes & Creativity in September.   He talks about his plans to be there on the C3 blog this week.  I will admit that I'm looking forward to shaking his hand, sharing a drink, and chatting with this man about private eyes and writing. 

 

In the meantime, he has served as an inspiration for me personally.  Nothing is going to stop Bob from finishing his fourth novel.  If I don't write today, what in the world is MY excuse?

 

What's YOURS?

The Thrill of the Panel!

One of the best things about attending a big-time writers conference is being able to participate in panels.  When you sit on a writer panel you get a chance to reveal yourself to readers who may never have heard of you.  If they find you interesting, they may well find your books interesting, so being a panelist almost always leads to book sales and new fans.  Plus, you get to know other writers with whom you have something in common.

In July I’ll attend Thrillerfest in NYC and the panel I landed on sounds like great fun.  It’s called “ARE YOU COMBAT READY? PREPARING FOR A MISSION.”  That’s the subject I’ll discuss with five other authors on Friday, July 12 at 4:00 PM.

The way these things usually work (like the panels at the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference) is that someone is dubbed moderator, and that title is all the description we get.  It is up to the panelists to decide what direction the conversation will go.  It gives us all a lot of flexibility.

And I will be speaking with a pretty interesting group.  Bob Gussin, our moderator, was a medical researcher before he founded Oceanview Publishing.  His wife, Pat is the accomplished thriller author. Simon Toyne is a Brit TV producer and director who has written an international best seller and has been called the “English Dan Brown.” John Dixon’s first book isn’t even out yet, but it’s already the basis for an upcoming CBS TV show called Intelligence. Leo Maloney is a former Black Ops contractor who worked for a clandestine government agency for many years. And Guy Burgstahler has no military experience nor is he an author.  He IS the Chief Marketing Officer for 5.11 Tactical and has studied how marketing has been used as a tool to fuel military initiatives.

So what will our panel be about?  Maybe we’ll discuss how we would prepare to attack a well- guarded safe house in Kosovo and extract someone.  Or, how we would capture a target from a heavily guarded compound in the middle of the desert.  We may consider night attacks versus day, etc.  We could compare and contrast the mission prep we see in movies and TV with the more realistic view we try to give in our novels. Or how about comparing the preparation our protagonists have to go through with the ones the writer has to go through to be able to render them accurately on the page? We might explore the moral and emotional preparation for combat. Or discuss our writing methods.

There are so many possibilities, and it’s such a diverse panel, that I can’t wait to sit in front of that audience and throw myself into the mix.  Of course there will be a book signing right afterward and if we have enough fun, I know the audience will too!  And that will mean a chance to sign some books and make new fans. 

And then I’ll get to watch some other guys’ interesting panels.

Conference Planning: Location, Location, Location

 Last week I told you that we here at Intrigue Publishing will launch a new conference for writers and fans next year.  Once we decided to hold the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity (C3) conference the next decision we had to make was where to put it.

We wanted our con to draw readers and writers of the chosen genres from the entire DMV – The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.  We also wanted it to be easily accessible for people coming in from farther away.  And we wanted to keep costs down.  The less expensive the venue, the less we would have to charge for registration.  But we had absolute minimum space requirements.  We needed enough rooms to have three panels going on at one time, plus spaces for a bookstore, registration, an author roundtable and special events.  The hunt was on.

A cost comparison quickly ruled out any venue in DC.  Several places in Northern Virginia were in contention, especially in Arlington where Malice Domestic was held for several year, in easy reach of Reagan National Airport.  Then we looked at some promising places near Baltimore Washington International Airport. 

We found what we were looking for just north of Baltimore.  The Marriott Hunt Valley had the space we were looking for at a reasonable price.  It is an easy train ride from BWI Airport.  Plus, the folks there have valuable experience.  For years they’ve hosted Balticon, one of the better known science fiction gatherings.  They know how to do this con thing, and how to handle the special kind of people we call fans.  And did I mention that they offered us a really nice discounted rate for attendee’s hotel rooms?  We met with them and ran through all the details with smiles on both sides of the table.

The next decision was about food.  At some cons the visitors are on their own for dining.  At others meals are included.  We decided to follow the Love Is Murder pattern and include as many meals as possible in the registration price.  This would prompt people to stay in the hotel and network when they weren’t watching a panel.  We arranged to have Friday’s dinner, all three meals Saturday and Sunday’s breakfast be part of the package.  And since the panelists will all be there, fans will be able to sit at a table with their favorite writers, or maybe with new authors they just met.         

Of course, there are a lot of other details involved in putting a con together.  I’ll talk about more of them next week.