The Murder Plague strikes gold
My darling little dystopian novel The Murder Plague won gold—first place—in the mixed-genre category at the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Awards over the past weekend.
I’m thrilled. I’m proud. I’m nationwide.
Thrilled as I am, I write all of this with a hint of cynicism about literary prizes.
The nice thing about the Royal Palms, as opposed to some other literary prizes I’ve seen, is that they provide finalists with the judges’ rubric evaluations, so authors can see what the judges liked and disliked, in considerable detail. Also, though the identities of the judges are not revealed, there is some transparency to how the Florida Writers Association goes about it, so I have some confidence that the process is credible. The FWA says it has numerous all-volunteer judges who are current or retired professors, teachers, librarians, editors, bestselling and award-winning authors, and journalists from across the nation. I also know a couple of people involved in the awards, and I consider them to be of highest integrity.
I received evaluations of The Murder Plague from three judges. They rendered scores of 0-10 on each of ten different aspects. Each judge also provided text comments on each aspect.
I can’t share their comments with you, as the rules state: “these comments are for your personal use only and may not be used in marketing.” Suffice to say, they had very nice things to say about my characters, premise, dialogue, description, and plot in The Murder Plague.
I like them too.
There were differences of opinion, both on the various aspects and on the book as a whole. The low judge’s total score was 83 out of 100; the high judge’s was 95.
Naturally, I’m not cynical about the prizes I win. They’re wonderful. And I’m not cynical about the big literary awards, of course There are, at the top, a dozen or two BIG-EFFING-DEAL literary prizes out there, for which most authors would give up body parts to win.
Prizes can provide money (not the ones I’ve won,) trophies, plaques or medals, and always, at the very least, validation, which we all desperately need. Writing can be a lonely occupation. It’s nice to know somebody likes you, really likes you.
But there is a such cottage industry of literary prizes. Authors could, if they chose, enter dozens of contests each year, general literary contests, genre-specific contests, authors’ organizations’ contests, trade magazines’ contests, regional contests, philanthropic foundations’ contests, indie writer contests, and many literary contests that seem to have no particular distinction or background but impressive-sounding names. All of these contests, of course, require entry fees, which range from $35 to hundreds of dollars per entry. Some of them have awards ceremonies for which finalist authors are invited to attend (and which also have fees; there’s no such thing as a free lunch.) Others are all virtual (we’ll email you if you win something.)
Cynicism is widespread—and merited.
I have read that some contests are pay-to-win, so called “vanity awards.” I’ve also read that others may be industry scams to promote certain publishers, by making their authors award-winners.
Still, bad as all that sounds, I’ve seen worse in the publishing/author biz. There is so much slime in this biz. It’s really author beware.
I entered The Murder Plague in four contests, none of the BIG-EFFING-DEAL contests, but contests I thought looked credible. The book won a gold in one, a silver in one, and nothing in the other two. I am pleased.
Yet I’m reluctant to wrap myself in the “award-winning” title. That works fine if you can be specific about something that a significant number of readers have heard of, like “Bram Stoker Award Winner” or “National Book Award Winner,” or something like that. But for most contests, the prize looks nice on the shelf, but not in my promotions.
