Despite my expectations, Esperance has made it to the shortlist for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, shortening my odds from twelve-to-one down to six! Grateful thanks to the librarians and other judges who put it there. 🙏🏽 The ceremony will be in London in September, and I am very much looking forward to being there.
In a misguided attempt to console me for not winning the L.A. Times Book of the Year Prize (misguided because I didn’t need consoling—I had a great time!) someone told me that book prize winners are always the third best book. Their theory went like this: the judges go into the room and discover that they are split between two books. Group A won’t give ground to Group B’s book, and Group B won’t give ground for Group A’s book, so they both plump for an acceptable compromise: hence, third best. 😆 It’s a fun story, but I don’t believe it. Luminous, Sylvia Park’s L.A. Times winner, is an absolutely stunning novel. I could never have written it in a million years.
In any event, I will soon be in the judge’s room myself. I have been asked to take part in the Joffe Books Prize, which is, I believe one of the biggest crime fiction prizes in the UK. It is open to unagented BAME authors and is intended to encourage greater representation in the marketplace. The winner gets £1,000 in cash, a two-book deal with Joffe Books (I should be so lucky!) and a £25,000 Audible audiobook offer for the first book. On any view, that is an amazing proposition. What is even more amazing is that Joffe Books have taken it into their heads to get me involved. It’s going to be a blast. At least until I have to make some decisions. I have no doubt many of the entries are going to be amazing. The problem is, to quote from Highlander, one of the all-time great movies, “There can be only one.”