I guess I'd better say something about this

I get the best possible thing out of the circumstances – I was completely right, and I also got an award.

I say I was right, because I did not think I would win the PKD award – I'd looked at the competition, decided it was nice to have my name there next to them, and called that a win in its own right.

BUT, then comes the news that The Company Man received the "Special Citation of Excellence" award, which is, in effect, the runner up.

My publicist, the ever-capable Ellen Wright over at Orbit, tweeted a photo of the award:

So now I have to make room on the wall – I guess one of these velvet paintings of crying clowns has to go. (Congrats to Simon Mordern, too – a fellow Orbiteer!)

In the meantime, The Troupe got a good write up at Locus:

Bennett is telling us a story about grief and letting go that is lightly draped with the trappings of vaudeville, and Bennett's imagination.

I do get a Stephen King comparison in that one. I haven't been counting, but since Mr. Shivers, that's a lot! For a bit with The Troupe, it was all Neil Gaiman. At first I didn't know how to feel about some of these comparisons – particularly because I personally didn't see the similarity in a few cases. But, you know, I've come around to thinking that when you have two such giants in the fields casting so much shadow, you can't help but get caught up in a bit of it. (And Neil had this to say on the matter.)

The Troupe also made recommended reading over at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstores, which translated over into the UT San Diego:

If a world existed where Neil Gaiman and Erin Morgenstern got together and made book babies, the outcome would be something akin to The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett… This gaslamp-lit world is filled with eerie imagery, thrills, and eccentric characters, from Franny the strong woman to Kingsley the Ventriloquist, and all those in between. This book had a little bit of everything I love.

And it's also received a good review from Whatchamacallit:

All in all The Troupe is magical. It is filled with excitement, intrigue, and will captivate readers to the end. But most importantly it is a beautifully written work of art that will grip your heart with its final words, tugging at the essence of your soul.

So, all told, very good.

BUT – here is a point to be made:

Some books get a huge, huge publicity push. These are very, very few. I'd guess less than 5% of all books get a large amount of publicity. This is because, due to the nature of publishing, publishers can afford to put their weight behind only a handful of books. I know this isn't the way publishers want to do it, and they'd like to proselytize about every book they publish. They wouldn't publish it if they didn't like it, because that's money down the drain. But they just don't have the resources to do that.

So, I don't think it's going to be a huge surprise to anyone that The Troupe is not one of those books that has received a huge amount of publicity. It has had a great reception, and people do seem to love it, and forge a very close connection to it. But so far it's just one book in a crowd, and it hasn't quite gotten to that next-level of support that makes everyone sit up and take notice.

I'd like it to be there. I think most of you would. I like this book, deeply and personally, and I think a lot of its readers and supporters do too.

But since the book is just one of a crowd, the only thing it can depend on is the crowd. I hate to sound like a PBS fund-drive, but please, if you like it, tell people about it, review it, and ask reviewers to review it. There's an indeterminate amount of momentum any book or piece of fiction needs – once it's in enough hands and has gained enough weight, that sheer weight is enough to carry it the rest of the way. We're not there yet, but I think we're very close. At this stage, there's only so much I and my publishers can do. But I'll tell you this – there is no publicity gimmick that can possibly compare to word-of-mouth.

So if you like The Troupe ­– get talking!