In Reference to Murder

Daggers & a Week of Noir

Tonight at at the Tiger Tiger nightspot in the Haymarket, London, the British Crime Writers Association (CWA) will announce the International Dagger, Short Story Dagger, Dagger in the Library, and Debut Dagger awards. Also at the reception, the shortlists for the Gold John Creasey (New Blood), and Ian Fleming Steel Daggers will be announced, with the winners handed out later this year.

If you head farther south, to Gijon, Spain, you can catch the tail end of Semana Negra (Noir Week), a festival which celebrates crime fiction. This year there are discussions on organized crime in contemporary Naples and the Crusades from a Muslim viewpoint, and 120 authors from 15 countries will award prizes to the best crime novels written in Spanish. Held without interruption every summer since 1988, Semana Negra has achieved two World Guinness records:  the longest conga line ever in Europe (over 6,200 people in 1991) and the longest line of books (1,650 meters, well over a mile in 1994). For more details (in English), check out this link and this link.

Contest Deadlines Coming Up

Three more crime fiction short-story contests are coming up soon:

• The Wolfe Pack's Black Orchid Novella Award is still accepting submissions through May 31st. The theme has to be "traditional" in flavor and conforming to the spirit of the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout.

• The Al Blanchard Award for short stories is associated with the New England Crime Bake Conference and has extended the deadline for submissions to May 31st. The story must be a crime story by a New England author or with a New England setting.

• The International Mystery Writers' Festival, originally scheduled to skip this year, is forging ahead anyway with a program in June. Although it was too late to add a creative writing contest as the festival has included in the past, they are still accepting submissions for the 2010 conference, with a deadline of August 30th. There's a category for Best Short Mystery Play which includes short stories.

Also, the Private Eye Writers of America has opened their nomination period for submissions for their annual Shamus Awards.  Nominated works must be stories of P.I. fiction of 20,000 words or less published in 2008. The deadline for submissions is June 19, 2009.

What a Novel Contest

Amazon and Penguin Group USA are now taking submissions for the second Breakthrough Novel Contest. Like last year, entrants will have to undergo several layers of juried evaluations (with judges this year including Sue Grafton and Sue Monk Kid), ending in a public vote a la American Idol. So if you're brave enough, dust off your moldy MS and send it in. The submission deadline is February 8th, so you'd better hurry.

GalleyCat asks the question of last year's Amazon winner, did it really break through? And concludes that, along with the $25,000 book contract and critical acclaim, author Bill Loehfelm's Fresh Kills sold at least 5,000 copies in hardcover (noting that 4,000-7,000 sales is a good standard of success for most literary novels, especially debuts by unknowns). More proof of Loehfelm's breakthrough status may be that Putnam signed up a second novel, Bloodroot, which they plan to publish late this summer, shortly after the paperback release of Fresh Kills.

Of course, the contest isn't without detractors: 2008 judge and member of the National Book Critics Circle, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, came away a tad on the bitter side, saying, "The contest was intended for writers at the bottom of the literary food chain and cynically directed at the section of the public most susceptible to the culture of hype. Remember the pagan ethos of the reality show world: Reality contests reproduce 'reality' by intentionally making the contests less than fair. The final round in which the public demonstrates its critical acumen (which the contest has done nothing to sharpen) by voting amounts to a sarcastic egalitarian sham. American Idol is watched by millions of viewers. The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award will never attract millions of readers, nor justify the fun and games by popularizing literacy, nor resolve the issue of a savvy contestant racking up dubious votes." So there!

Are You Up to the Challenge?

There are two new writing challenges from the crime fiction blogosphere in which anyone can participate:

Julie Buckley over at Poe's Deadly Daughters offers 14 photos: pick one, then write the first sentence of a story that could accompany that photograph.

Patti Abbott and Gerald So have a short-story challenge, but you have to sign up by January 13th via Patti's blog. The guidelines thereafter are simple:

1. Write the first paragraph of a story, (say 3-6 lines)
2. Send your paragraph to Patti by January 20th (aa2579@wayne.edu) who will then stir the pot and send it back out to another writer and send you someone else's paragraph
3. Write a 750 (or so) word story using the new paragraph
4. Post it on your own blog or with Mystery Dawg at Powder Burn Flash on February 10th.
5. Patti will let you know whose lines you used when it's over.

MWA 2009 Grand Master Award

The Mystery Writers of America organization has named James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton as the 2009 Grand Masters, in honor of the Bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe's birth next year. It marks the first time since 1978 that MWA has presented dual Grand Masters. The awards will be presented at the 63rd Annual Edgar Awards banquet on April 30, 2009 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

Getting the Best of Things

It has begun. Just as "holiday creep" sees Halloween decor in stores the day after the Fourth of July and Christmas trimmings appear, well, year 'round now, so have the Best Books of the Year lists started coming out even before the year has even ended. Three entities named their such lists this week, USA BookNews, Amazon, and Publishers Weekly.

The USA BookNews list named Blood Harvest by Brant Randall as the winner in the Mystery/Suspense category, with other finalists including

• Anatomy Lesson by Raymond Obstfeld
• Blood Island by H. Terrell Griffin
• Eyes of the World by Rob Palmer
• Island Life by Michael W. Sherer
• Sonnets: A Novel by Robert K Brown
• Spa Deadly: An Allie Armington Mystery by Louise Gaylord
• Stuff Dreams Are Made Of by Don Bruns

and in their Thriller/Adventure category, the winner was Stealing Trinity by Ward Larsen, with finalists as follows:

• Lightland: A Supernatural Thriller by Kenny Kemp
• Pacific Rebound by Jay Lillie
• Rabbit in the Moon by Deborah & Joel Shlian
• Tengu: The Mountain Goblin - A Connor Burke Martial Arts Thriller by John Donohue
• The Crocodile and The Crane by Arthur Rosenfeld
• The Deal by Adam Gittlin
• The Identity Factor by James Houston Turner
  
  

Amazon didn't break their 100 Best list into genres or even split into fiction and nonfiction, but they did include a few mysteries and thrillers. The highest-ranking was The Likeness by Tana French with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson at #12.

Publishers Weekly has three relevant categories of Best Books of the Year—General Fiction, Mass Market, and Mystery. Under General Fiction, they included:

• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
• The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
• Master of the Delta by Thomas H. Cook
• The Likeness by Tana French
• Ritual by Mo Hayder
• The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
• Flesh House by Stuart MacBride

The Mass Market category inclued:

• No One Heard Her Scream by Jordan Dane
• Deadly Deceptions by Linda Lael Miller

and in the Mystery category, the finalists were:

• Wild Inferno by Sandi Ault
• Lie Down with the Devil by Linda Barnes
• Ghost at Work by Carolyn Hart
• The Private Patient by P.D. James
• The Messengers of Death: A Mystery in Provence by Pierre Magnan, trans. from the French by Patricia Clancy
• Death's Half Acre by Margaret Maron
• Salt River by James Sallis
• Fear of Landing by David Waltner-Toews
• The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe
  
  

Pity the poor releases in November and December. Maybe we should have a special award just for them?