Publication news:
Medical thriller SCOURGE will be released in 2018 by Fiery Seas Publishing.
Thrilled! Ecstatic! Possibly even giddy. Coming right about the same time as that award for my humor anthology, one would almost think I was ego-tripping. We’re supposed to write for ourselves, not to please others, if we want to generate the best material we can. But man, it’s hard not to revel a bit when others like our work.
So yeah, OK, I admit it. I might actually be human. Go figure.
Hello out there in webland. Got some writing news that has me reeling.
I attended the Killer Nashville Writers Conference last weekend. “Marianated Nottingham & Other Abuses of the Language” was up against other entries for Best Anthology, pros with best seller status. So I asked everyone and their cats to vote for Readers Choice, figuring that was the only chance I had to win anything. Turns out one anthology had many authors, all of whom had all of their friends and fans vote (large existing reader bases), so it got over 10,000 votes. Normally about 100 can win this category. Guess what?
Yeah. But thanks to all for trying!
I sat back to relax and enjoy the rest of the awards banquet. Then they got to the judges’ awards (some industry pros, they don’t release names). And I won Best Anthology (the Silver Falchion award, a nice little medal). Whoa! Shocked the H out of me. Couldn’t sleep much Saturday night, then conference & on another panel (writing humor, appropriately) Sunday until 3 p.m., then drive home. Fortunately, made it to the bedroom before CRASHING.
Wheeeeeee! Still not down from the ceiling yet.
Ooh, and you could vote for “Marianated Nottingham” for best anthology right here, if you don’t have anything worthwhile to do just now. (heh, heh)
Late August comes the annual Killer Nashville writers conference. I’ll be there. Maybe you, too?
Just learned I’ve been nominated for the Silver Falchion award for best anthology at that conference. Woo-Hoo!
Googled the names of who I’m up against. All multi-book bestsellers. Don’t bet the ranch on me! 
In case you’re wondering, I play at tennis. This is as opposed to playing tennis. Not quite good enough for that, but hilarious with our local group of dabblers. I’m coming to think the better you get at something, the less you enjoy it. I’ve known people who stop playing golf because it’s so frustrating when the body doesn’t do exactly what the mind tells it to. Them darned uncooperative muscles.
Oh, well, that’s the advantage of nerd-dom. Nerdishness? Nerdocity? Anyway, we don’t have to worry about being jocks, ’cause it ain’t gonna happen. Instead, we get to celebrate the joys of incompetence, and delight in every shot that makes it over the net, particularly when it stays in bounds. We firmly believe in the million-monkeys-with-a-million-tennis-rackets theory, for occasionally we accomplish something quite spectacular, and enjoy it far more than those who expect such success.
A similar theory works for foods, like the entire wine food group. The less you know, the more you can enjoy the cheap stuff. And for some of us, this is a tremendous advantage. Maybe I’m missing the gene for fine-tuned taste discrimination. Except I do enjoy high quality dark chocolate more than the cheaper alternatives. Could be there are lots of taste-related genes. Hmmm.
Speaking of chocolate, I hope you realize there would be stunning advantages to gene therapy. Correcting/eliminating a certain pair of allergies should be a high priority for scientists—for every child should have the right to enjoy chocolate and peanuts. (This is important, people!) 😉
Okay, enough for now. Enjoy!
Okay, I’m supposed to occasionally, at random and indeterminate intervals, provide some news or interesting tidbits. Like the fact I’ll be at the Killer Nashville writing convention in late August. See you there, maybe?
http://www.killernashville.com/conference/register-for-killer-nashville/
More to follow. Right now, still testing to see how this works.