The Duffer Awards: Legendary Characters, Ridiculous Awards

by Alafair Burke

Remember high school Year Book Awards?  Most Likely to Succeed?  Best Dresser?  Most likely to raise the biggest pig?  (Hey, I went to high school in Kansas!)

Well, I think crime fiction characters need these kinds of very, very serious awards.  So for the entire month of June, my website will host the first annual Duffer Awards. Each day will feature two beloved crime fiction characters, matched head-to-head for very, very serious award categories like Most Likely to Win a Hot Dog Eating Contest and Odd Couples Most Likely to Win on Amazing Race.

And very serious awards need very serious award statues.  Duffer, as you probably know, is my very serious dog. 

Here is a Duffer Award. (Notice that his body is NOT an Oscar Award because that would undoubtedly be some kind of trademark infringement, and Duffer is much too serious to get caught in that kind of scandal.)

We started the Duffer Awards on June 1.  (See how I used "we"?  Like "we" are a major operation with accountants tallying votes and whatnot?  We are very serious.)

Here are the awards we've decided so far (winners in bold):

1. Most Likely to Marry His Ex-Wife
Mickey Haller (Michael Connelly) v. Jesse Stone (Robert B. Parker)
 
2.  Most Likely to Sacrifice an Arm a la 127 Hours
Serge Storms (Tim Dorsey) v. Gretchen Lowell (Chelsea Cain)
 
3.  Most Likely to Make a 15-mile Detour for Good Junk Food
Tess Monaghan (Laura Lippman) v. Kinsey Milhone (Sue Grafton)

4.  Best Manners
Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear) v. Inspector Lynley (Elizabeth George)

5.  Most Badass Sidekick
Bubba Rogowski (Dennis Lehane) v. Clinton "Skink" Tyree (Carl Hiaasen)

Today at the website, you can vote on Best Hat: Raylan Givens (Elmore Leonard) v. Walt Longmire (Craig Allen Johnson).  Post a comment beneath your vote, and you'll automatically be entered to win weekly prizes including signed copies of my books and $50 gift certificates to your favorite bookseller.  The more you comment, the more you're entered to win. 

Coming later in the month are 24 additional very serious awards for very serious things like Best Shoes, Ability to Travel the Globe in Two Pages or Less, Most Likely to Crash a Server on Match.com, and Most Likely to Get Away With It.  Click here and start voting today. And I hope the Murderati will visit the Duffers every day in June to vote on a new award.  (And perhaps help spread the word.  This should be fun for anyone who reads crime fiction!)

The Best Two Bucks You Can Spend

In other June-only news, ANGEL'S TIP is available in the US as a $1.99 e-book.  This special edition also includes an essay from me about the real-life stories that inspired ANGEL'S TIP, as well as the first three chapters of my new book, LONG GONE. 

If the idea behind this low price is to hook new readers, I feel a bit like a drug dealer handing out free samples on the playground.  But if you have been at all entertained by my posts here, this is a way to check out the novels for less than a cup of coffee. 

Here are the links to buy for Kindle, Nook, and the Sony Reader.  Okay, I feel a little dirty now.  And not in a good way.

Now for Comments: Help me get an early start on next summer's Duffer Awards.  What are some very, very serious awards for crime fiction characters, and which two characters would make a good head-to-head match for the award?

Deadline

By Allison Brennan

No matter how well I plan, my book deadlines always overlap other major events.

For example, PLAYING DEAD was due when I was in the middle of moving. FEAR NO EVIL was due between Thanksgiving and Christmas--a hectic time for normal people, and an insane time for people with kids (school Christmas plays, choir performances, family events, shopping, and the kids are out of school!)

Birthday GirlThis month, things crept up on me . . . My daughter's 8th birthday (Friday the 25th); my husband's 50th birthday (Wednesday the 30th--he shares his birthday with Eric Clapton--and we had the party last night); two volleyball tournaments (last weekend and this weekend); the Dreamin' in Dallas conference where I'm the keynote speaker next Saturday (and yes, I need to write a speech . . . or at least have some notes!); the RT conference starting on the 6th (and all the prep before then); and then the Thriller 3 anthology, of which I'm the managing editor. 

Usually, I can juggle pretty well, but when everything happens at the same time, I get a little stressed :/

This time, however, I'm not as stressed as usual. My frustration is that I know exactly where the story is going, yet can't sit down for 5 days straight and write. A week ago, I hit a major turning point, saw that I'd laid the ground work for something pretty cool (no, I didn't plan it, it just happened that way) and now I want to write non-stop . . . but with kids and responsibilities, I can't. This is one of the few times I wished I lived alone in a cabin in the woods (with running hot water, electricity, and food) and not have anything else to do but write. Not just because of the pending deadline, but because I'm loving where the story is going and I don't want to lose the momentum. I want to get into the zone and never leave it.

Every book seems to be a little different--some start "easy" and get harder; others start hard and get easier; but inevitably, I have two major turning points: the beginning of act two when I get stuck (always) and go back and write and rewrite and rewrite, constantly thinking that the book sucks, I can't write, I should be flipping burgers, everything is total garbage . . . then something clicks and I can move on. Then, at the beginning of act three,  I "see" the book as a whole, have (usually) figured out the ending, and all I want to do is write 24/7. 

My zone is focus plus excitement. I am so in-tune with the story, that I can't NOT write it. Being torn away from the book is emotionally painful. I stop writing not because I can't think or get stuck or reach the end of a scene, but because I'm literally falling asleep at my computer. And the first thing I do in the morning is rush to the computer and start writing. 

So really, I'm not at all upset that I needed to be up at 6 a.m. on Sunday for a volleyball tournament 45 minutes away . . . I've already mapped out the two closest Starbucks.

Last Thursday, Zoe and I spoke and signed books at M is for Mystery. The crowd was small, but very interested -- I think because Zoe is so entertaining! She's smart and funny, my two favorite traits in a person. 

Me, Ed Kaufman, and Zoe Sharp at M is for Mystery

And I have some good news . . . LOVE ME TO DEATH is a finalist for best romantic suspense in the RITA award. The winners will be announced at the RWA conference in NYC at the end of June.

Apologies for the short blog -- that deadline thing! So I'll leave you with a question.

I often buy books that final in contests like the RITAs and Edgars and Thrillers, especially debut novels and books that are nominated in my own category. For example, this year I've read 5 of the other 7 nominees; I just ordered the two I haven't read. Do you use contests as a shopping list? Do you find that you've already read them before they were nominated? Have you found any favorite author because you bought them after they won or was nominated for a writing award?

How Not to Make Contest Judges Hate You

by J.D. Rhoades

     I had the honor this past year to serve as one of the committee chairmen for the MWA's Edgar Awards. The committee that I headed up was the Best Young Adult Mystery, and let me tell you, it was an eye-opener. I went into it not knowing that much about the whole YA field, except Harry Potter (which I liked but could take or leave, based on the first book) and the TWILIGHT series, which I haven't read, but which I hear an awful lot about from the teenagers in my house (one liked it okay, the other loathes it).

     After reading through a boatload of submissions, though, I was extremely impressed by both the breadth and depth of the subject matter and the quality of the writing. It was a tough choice, and the voting went several rounds, but I'm comfortable with the eventual winner: John Green's PAPER TOWNS.

     The voting process itself is shrouded in secrecy and covered by a variety of confidentiality agreements that make the whole selecting-the-Pope thing seem transparent. But I thought that, since I'm sure new committees are hard at work reading through a new batch of submissions, I'd toss out some general suggestions to publishers and publicists on how not to make committee members (and committee chairmen) hate you.

     You need to understand that some of the things I am going to tell you in the following paragraphs may not seem fair. That's because they really are not fair. They are a natural function of the judges being human. Judges, if they're doing their jobs. do try  to be better than the average human, but don't stake your book's chances on their succeeding.

1.  Know what genre, if any, the award is for. The Edgars, for example,  is given by the MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA. I put that in all caps because it apparently escaped the notice of some publishers. Since these awards are--let me say it again--from the MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA, perhaps--and this is just a thought-- the novels you send should have at least some component of mystery or crime in them. We got some beautifully written, moving books that just did not fit the genre, no matter how far we tried to stretch it. I began to think about midway through that a lot of books get submitted because some harried publicist told a summer intern "go pull some books to submit for the Edgar Award" and the poor clueless intern was too cowed to admit that he or she didn't know what the hell the Edgar Award was. Well, poor clueless intern may not know, but you can bet your boots the judges do, and they're slogging through a lot of submissions. If you really cannot rest until the judges read your fantasy epic or your beautiful, sensitive coming of age tale, neither one of which has so much as a stolen bike to bring it into the realm of crime fiction, then send  it after the awards, when they might  actually have time to read something else. Otherwise, they will hate you.
2. Do not send ten books the week before the contest deadline. I know you're busy and stuff slips up on you. But all of the judges are   working writers, and they have deadlines, too. Your gem may not get as thorough a read if the judges only have a day and a half to do it. And they will hate you.
3.  On the other hand, if you send books too early, it's possible that the book the judges all   loved early on is going to get pushed aside in their memory by the one they just read that they love, too. See "this is not fair" above. So when do you send them? I'd say about midway through the period. the judges may breathe a heavy sigh when the UPS guy shows up with another dozen books, but they probably won't hate you. Much.
4.  Once the submission period is over, please do not ask if the judges will  consider "just one more" that you forgot to submit. Sorry, I know stuff happens, mistakes get made, and it's not the writer's fault. The committee chair may really want to help you out, but I for one had no real wish to open that particular floodgate, because the old cliche is actually true: if they do it for you, they have to do it for everyone else. And, since what you're making the chair and/or the committee  do is make an innocent writer suffer for something that was not their fault, said chair and/or committee  will feel guilty, and thus, will hate you.

     A final note: Maybe it's because I haven't gone to the right places in the blogosphere, but I was happy to see a big decrease this year in the usual bitching and whining about how the Edgars suck, how awards in general suck, how it's all political, people only vote for their friends, blah blah blah. I can't speak for the other committees, but the folks on the YA committee (Our Pari, Our Cornelia, Jeff Shelby, and Lori G. Armstrong) volunteered cheerfully with only a minimum of begging on my part. Then they worked very hard and bent over backwards to be fair, even when publishers violated the above guidelines. And I certainly didn't hear any of the "well, this needs to win because such and such won last year" reasoning that awards judges are sometimes accused of.

     Thanks guys, it was an honor to be your chairperson. And thanks, Cornelia, for being there to present the award itself.

     So, 'Rati: any of you ever judge an award? Have any suggestions of your own? Readers, if you'd like to chime in with your own stories, or even a "this book should've won" complaint, feel free. Just don't trash my committee, or I'll have to take steps. You don't want me to take steps.