NO! I'M NOT TIRED OF WINNING
2019 was not an easy year for me, but it has been extremely fertile for my children. You know, my books. Those things I write, when I'm not watching re-runs of T.J. Hooker, hiking mountains, or drinking Irish whiskey.
I may have said this before, but when you publish anything, from a short story to an epic novel, there is a sensation that is probably akin to a parent watching their child climb into the schoolbus for the very first time. You've created this thing, nurtured and guided it and fallen in love with it...and now it's time to release it into the world. A world you know can be terribly cold, indifferent, and cruel. A world where your love counts for jack-fuck and cannot prevent so much as a skinned knee, much less a catastrophe. There is anxiety, and emotion, and fear. Yes, fear....
Are the other kids going to accept yours? Are the bullies going to target them? Will the teachers be nasty? Are the bus-brakes going to fail? The anxieties are many, and the greatest of them is not the disaster-scenario per se, but rather the fear they'll simply be ignored, like that poor kid the the Tears For Fears song "Mad World":
Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me...
As a parent-of-sorts, you know that even excellence is no guarantor of success. Robert Parker, the Dean of American Crime Fiction, said that All Our Yesterdays was the best book he'd ever written in his long career, yet nobody bought it. John Carpenter's version of The Thing is regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time, yet when it debuted in 1982, it flopped harder than a lead pancake. And who can forget Vincent Van Gogh, the all-time great artist who sold exactly one painting in his entire life?
Writers are amubulatory jars of insecurity and dread. I was not a stranger to literary accolades before 2019 showed its tricky and pugnacious mug, but while my debut novel, Cage Life, won three trophies in the first year and a half after its release, in the last year or so I had begun to feel a strange resentment toward that book. It seemed to be sucking up all the oxygen -- and sunlight -- in the room, distracting from the works that succeeded it. They weren't putting up the numbers I wanted them to. They weren't winning awards of their own. Some small part of me suspected I had become the literary equivalent of a one-hit wonder.
No more.
On May 6, my short story collection Devils You Know was named a Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards for Excellence in Independent Publishing.
On October 30, my second book, Knuckle Down: A Cage Life Novel, was given Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards.
On December 24, I was informed my "long short" story, "The Numbers Game," had won the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award in the Novella category.
On December 29, I received notice that Knuckle Down had won the Best Indie Book Award in the category of Suspense.
On the very same day, I was also told that Sinner's Cross, a novel I released just two months ago, had won the Best Indie Book Award in the category of Historical Fiction.
Today, I finished my fifth interview as an author, this time with the Hard Hat Book Site. Their last interview was with Bob van Laerhoven, author of the much-acclaimed Return to Hiroshima. I'm okay being placed in that company. Unlike Groucho Marx, I would definitely join a club that had me as a member. But it didn't stop there: a few weeks ago, my alma mater, York College, featured me in an article in their quarterly magazine, which gave me a curious feeling of having come home in triumph.
Yeah, 2019 was in many ways a beast and a bitch. I had more deals fall through than you would probably believe, and long stretches where I licked pencil-stubs, thumbed through dog-eared stacks of unpaid bills, and wondered how the fuck I was going to get by for another week, much less another year. I've had fights with utility companies and cable providers, and while I made quite a bit of money, relatively speaking, through my writing, the IRS is going to have a field day come tax time with all those bloody 1099s.
Such is the fate of the writer. It's either feast or famine and there is usually a lot more famine than feast. But not this time.
When Donald Trump was running for office he claimed the American people would get "tired of winning" should he become president.
Evidently he doesn't understand the American people.
We never get tired of winning.
The Numbers Game
Devils You Know
Cage Life
Knuckle Down
Sinner's Cross
I may have said this before, but when you publish anything, from a short story to an epic novel, there is a sensation that is probably akin to a parent watching their child climb into the schoolbus for the very first time. You've created this thing, nurtured and guided it and fallen in love with it...and now it's time to release it into the world. A world you know can be terribly cold, indifferent, and cruel. A world where your love counts for jack-fuck and cannot prevent so much as a skinned knee, much less a catastrophe. There is anxiety, and emotion, and fear. Yes, fear....
Are the other kids going to accept yours? Are the bullies going to target them? Will the teachers be nasty? Are the bus-brakes going to fail? The anxieties are many, and the greatest of them is not the disaster-scenario per se, but rather the fear they'll simply be ignored, like that poor kid the the Tears For Fears song "Mad World":
Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me...
As a parent-of-sorts, you know that even excellence is no guarantor of success. Robert Parker, the Dean of American Crime Fiction, said that All Our Yesterdays was the best book he'd ever written in his long career, yet nobody bought it. John Carpenter's version of The Thing is regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time, yet when it debuted in 1982, it flopped harder than a lead pancake. And who can forget Vincent Van Gogh, the all-time great artist who sold exactly one painting in his entire life?
Writers are amubulatory jars of insecurity and dread. I was not a stranger to literary accolades before 2019 showed its tricky and pugnacious mug, but while my debut novel, Cage Life, won three trophies in the first year and a half after its release, in the last year or so I had begun to feel a strange resentment toward that book. It seemed to be sucking up all the oxygen -- and sunlight -- in the room, distracting from the works that succeeded it. They weren't putting up the numbers I wanted them to. They weren't winning awards of their own. Some small part of me suspected I had become the literary equivalent of a one-hit wonder.
No more.
On May 6, my short story collection Devils You Know was named a Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards for Excellence in Independent Publishing.
On October 30, my second book, Knuckle Down: A Cage Life Novel, was given Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards.
On December 24, I was informed my "long short" story, "The Numbers Game," had won the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award in the Novella category.
On December 29, I received notice that Knuckle Down had won the Best Indie Book Award in the category of Suspense.
On the very same day, I was also told that Sinner's Cross, a novel I released just two months ago, had won the Best Indie Book Award in the category of Historical Fiction.
Today, I finished my fifth interview as an author, this time with the Hard Hat Book Site. Their last interview was with Bob van Laerhoven, author of the much-acclaimed Return to Hiroshima. I'm okay being placed in that company. Unlike Groucho Marx, I would definitely join a club that had me as a member. But it didn't stop there: a few weeks ago, my alma mater, York College, featured me in an article in their quarterly magazine, which gave me a curious feeling of having come home in triumph.
Yeah, 2019 was in many ways a beast and a bitch. I had more deals fall through than you would probably believe, and long stretches where I licked pencil-stubs, thumbed through dog-eared stacks of unpaid bills, and wondered how the fuck I was going to get by for another week, much less another year. I've had fights with utility companies and cable providers, and while I made quite a bit of money, relatively speaking, through my writing, the IRS is going to have a field day come tax time with all those bloody 1099s.
Such is the fate of the writer. It's either feast or famine and there is usually a lot more famine than feast. But not this time.
When Donald Trump was running for office he claimed the American people would get "tired of winning" should he become president.
Evidently he doesn't understand the American people.
We never get tired of winning.
The Numbers Game
Devils You Know
Cage Life
Knuckle Down
Sinner's Cross
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