Dumb Kids

 SleuthSayers relies on Google’s Blogger platform. Over a couple of decades, we’ve discovered a thousand thorns amid its bed of roses, bugs, errors, and omissions. This past week has been particularly harrowing with lockouts and outages affecting and infecting our outbound news feed and comments. It particularly affected Anna on Friday, so for writers especially, I recommend taking in her promotional suggestions.

But also… her article inspired today’s article.

In reading Anna Scotti’s guide, it dawned on me when I was 15-16, I came up with smart and more innovative ideas than what I use now. It began with a statewide scholarship competition sponsored by foods companies, e.g, American Dairy Association, Wonder Bakeries, Kraft, producers and canning companies– the food chain of farm to family table. They selected 200 of us, put us up in hotels, arranged lectures, arranged tours, fed us well, and even sponsored a night of music and dancing.

Participants were expected to chat up their local community about nutrition and sponsored interests in the middle of food-growing rural Indiana. The program was divided into boy and girl programs, one boy and one girl per county, one hundred girls, one hundred boys, vying for scholarships and monetary prizes. I came from a tiny rural school without a county library, so this was new to me. I appreciated being a part of it, even if I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance at a prize.

City students might wonder how dumb kids from the middle of nowhere farm country could compete with Indianapolis, population a million, or Chicago surrounds, another quarter million or more, Cincinnati bedroom communities, or university brain silos in Terre Haute, Bloomington, and Lafayette.

Easy: I had no idea what I was doing.

I started small and I owe that initial toehold to women. Gentleladies of that area and era belonged to numerous clubs– book clubs, cooking clubs, craft clubs, knitting clubs, lodges, and social clubs. Mom connected me with a couple of her societies, where I gave brief talks and the ladies politely listened.

I branched out, 4-H, Scouts, and local church groups where I spoke about matzo and manna. The mad scientist in me built a robot, not unlike R2-D2, which accompanied me to some presentations. By then, I’d acquired Albert the Alligator, who stole the show at other events and garnered more girl attention that I did.

In the meantime, I discovered local newspapers were hungry for articles. I listened and complied. Our county had no library, but the neighboring county’s library didn’t mind my taking up space where the sun warmed from a particular window. I researched, scribbled, I even dared send an essay to the Indianapolis Star which, to my surprise, printed it. (Much later I learned public cable channels thirsted for content.)

Media investors planted a radio station literally in the middle of county cornfields. Early one morning, I threaded back roads to the three towers of WSVL. They gave me a short tour before sitting down for an interview. I returned a second time for my own broadcast.

Susan, our county’s female entry, and I didn’t really interact. She was smart and pretty, and to this day, I picture Nancy Drew looking exactly like her. She was a full year older than me, an insurmountably huge age gap. She was sufficiently elderly to qualify for a driving permit; Mom drove me in her pink Rambler. Susan attended a large city school, I underwent a one-hour bus ride to a small rural 1-12. Her father ran a well regarded hardware, mine farmed and sold insurance to make ends meet. In retrospect, we could have– perhaps should have– collaborated, but the thought never occurred to either.

Meanwhile, I documented, documented, documented, every article, every talk, every presentation. At the end of summer, I packaged everything, submitted it to the committee, and gave Albert time off. I’d worked my tail off for a 1% chance at the prize. The promoters had gotten their money’s worth.

And then a letter arrived and a package. The letter announced Susan had won the girls’ division. Well done.

And winner of the boys’ division and overall winner… me! Seriously! Program directors noted both winners came from the same county. All that work had paid off.

Today, outlets have changed. The internet gutted newspapers and perhaps journalism. Gen Alpha has little use for radio and television. Substack and Reddit and Tim Tok make money in entirely different ways. We have to learn and adapt and perhaps adopt.

In a broader sense, Poe’s pendulum swings both ways. People were patient with me who might not have been as lenient with an adult, whereas a different station or magazine might have no time for dumb kids. Never know until we try.

Lesson

Thanks to Anna’s article that not only inspired today’s essay, it reminded me of what one can accomplish with few resources. Without knowing what he was doing, a dumb kid validated a couple of Anna’s ideas as achieveable and well grounded. That should serve as a lesson for me.

Going After Publicity for Your (small, precious) Book

So you've got a novel coming out? If you are with one of the Big Five publishers - Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, or Hachette - there will be a publicity machine at work for you. Your editor, or the publicity department, will let you know what they want your role to be. They may ask you to update your website, open social media accounts, or to provide a mailing list of friends, family, and fans.

If you are with a smaller press, say a university press or a small independent publisher - you should inquire, when you are offered a contract, what your role will be in gaining publicity for your book. Most small presses welcome your involvement and will be delighted if you submit your work to reviewers, arrange for readings and signings on your own, and so forth. But check! You do not want to overstep, duplicate their efforts, or - eek - embarrass your publisher.

I'm not familiar with every aspect of self-publishing, but I'd imagine the tips I'm about to offer will apply nicely to self-published authors as well.

If you are about to release a book, be reachable via a website. The primary purpose of publicity is to sell your book, and the secondary purpose is to get your name out there so that you can be contacted by fans, publishers, agents, and sponsors of events and projects you may find appealing.

Your website can be extremely simple - your name, your picture, your book cover, a release date, and a contact form so people can reach you (don't post your personal email address). A fuller website with lots of pictures and info about all of your publications is better, but at least have the minimum. You can hire someone to do a bang-up website, but that costs. Or you can do it yourself, nearly for free. My website is perpetually under construction and is never up-to-date, so don't come at me after you take a peek - but the point is I am findable. I do get a lot of spam. I also get fan letters, invitations to paid speaking engagements, requests for interviews, offers to contribute to journals and anthologies, and - since my novel-in-stories It's Not Even Past was orphaned last year when the publisher closed - inquiries from publishers.

You need some kind of social media. Something. Facebook has developed a reputation for being mostly for seniors, but their largest demographic (worldwide) is actually young adults 25 - 35. So you can reach young readers with a facebook page (and paid ads, if you want to go that route). But don't be too quick to write off the oldsters, either - seniors buy a lot of books! If you are already on Facebook, open a separate author page you are comfortable setting to "public." Keep this page for business. No pictures of lunch, cats, craft cocktails, precocious toddlers, thrifting expeditions or politics - unless applicable to your book.

Yes, cute. No, website.

A lot of writers promote their work on Instagram. Since the mass exodus from X (formerly Twitter), many use Threads. Bluesky is also popular. My advice is go to the websites of authors you like and admire, whose work is in some way similar to your own, and see what social media platforms they use. If you are new to all this, choose one - you don't have time to manage them all. (If you have that much time on your hands, you should spend more of it writing.)

Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon can be critical to a book's success. They are primary platforms for "book discovery." However, these platforms can be frustrating. Trolls may give your books bad reviews just for fun, or because they don't like you. If you do see negative reviews of your work - legit or troll-generated - ignore them. Remember the adage Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Next up: go after publicity opportunities, large and small. Ask friends and family to help spread the word about your book by putting the book cover on their social media, and by mentioning it to their book club, local librarian, and local bookstore. Include a purchase link to make it easy for them to buy your book! Consider pushing your publisher's site and bookshop.org, which allows readers to purchase online while supporting local bookstores!

If you live in L.A. or New York, it's nearly impossible to get a reading or signing at a bookstore - there are just so many writers, most more famous than you (or I). But if you live in a smaller city or town, you've got a good shot. Walk into bookstores and greet the manager. Buy a book. Tell them you're available for a signing or a reading and that you can "fill the room." If you have a friend in college, ask them to mention your book to their English professor. But don't put people on the spot - ask once, and take no - or no answer - for an answer. No everyone will want to read your book, and not everyone who does read it will enjoy it. That's life.

Your college alumni newsletter is a great place to publicize your work. Your local newspaper editor might be interested, too. Again, highly unlikely if you live in New York or LA, but far more promising if you live in Smallburg, North Dakota or Tiny Town, Georgia. Ask!

Your publisher should provide you with ARCs, or "Advance Review Copies." These are typically electronic (PDF or epub). Some publishers will also provide hard copies, but these are expensive and must be distributed judiciously. Electronic ARCs increase the likelihood that your work will be "pirated" – that is, circulated to unauthorized readers for free… but there are worse things. No one wants to be pirated, but the truth is all circulation builds word of mouth and it could result in your finding paying readers. It's important that you discuss distribution of ARCs with your publisher. They may have a do and don't list to help control unauthorized access.

These days, when writers talk about "reviews," they are often referring to individual reader reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or on reviewer platforms like NetGalley or Booksprout. But "real" reviews - those written by professionals that appear in journals and newspapers - are the Holy Grail, and you should go after them. Thirteen million people read The New York Times each day. You probably won't get reviewed there. But a small-town newspaper, even a freebie, can easily have 5,000 daily readers, up to as many as 13,000. That's a lot of potential to sell books!

Think about books you like that are similar in some way (e.g. genre) to your own. Figure out where the books have been reviewed using your good friend google. Then contact the reviewer and ask if you can send them an ARC. Nota Bene: the more prestigious the periodical, as a rule, the earlier they want your ARCs. Many will request them four or five months ahead of publication, and your small publisher simply may not have them ready that far in advance. Wing it! If an editor agrees to read an ARC, send them a meticulously edited PDF - along with information like release date, cover price, ISBN, and whether bookstores will carry your book.

Your publisher will probably ask you for an email list - and even if not, you should have one for your own use. Way, way ahead of time, prepare a list of every single person you know who might conceivably be interested in you or your book. Have names and email addresses current, proofread and up to date. Be sure there is a purchase link (preferably, a pre-purchase link) included so that people can order your book on impulse, while they are thinking of it. If you end up sending out the email yourself, include a request that readers review you on Amazon or Goodreads.

Go after the little guys - and the medium-sized guys, too. Before It's Not Even Past was released, I hit up everyone I could think of to run a review or at least a mention. A lot of folks ignored my request, a few said no - and quite a few said yes! My alma mater asked me to teach a class. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (where many of the stories first appeared) invited me to blog for Something Is Going to Happen. Art Taylor asked me to blog for The First Two Pages, too! Dru's Book Musing ran a cover reveal and A Day in the Life feature, Victoria Leigh reviewed, and Roger Johns ran an interview on Murder Books.

Paul O'Connor interviewed me for Hourglass Author, and Bonnar Spring invited me to an interview on Crime Wave Podcast (mine aired right after Anthony Horowitz's!). And there were more.

John Loyd posted a comprehensive review of the collection. Book blogger Anne Van Doorn ran a terrific review, and Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier included It's Not Even Past in a round-up of crime short story collections published on Crime Reads. Jeremy Black of The Critic accepted a review copy and gave it a stellar review! Then he passed the book along to David Brown, a book blogger who loves mysteries, and David ran a review and invited me to an interview!

Janet Rudolph of The Mystery Readers Journal offered me a spot in Mystery Fanfare, and King's River Life, a magazine that really supports mystery writers, told me they no longer run reviews of collections – but asked me to do a guest blog! Crime Fiction Lover ran a nice mention, and Killer Nashville and International Thriller Writers both invited me to contribute to their journals! Some of these outlets are small and some are huge. But they all have readers who love mysteries and buy books, and I went after every single opportunity I could. And then…

Down&Out Books closed and my book went out of print, right after it was released. So all that work was a big waste of time, right?

No! Decidedly not! Because a couple of months later, I got an email from a guy who'd tracked me down via my website. He had heard about the book but couldn't find a copy online (of course). Seemed like a nice guy, so I offered to sell him one of the six remaining author copies I'd been hoarding for posterity. That night, I sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night, struck by an epiphany. Doug Greene. Douglas Greene. I know that name.

Sure enough. Mr. Greene is the (semi-retired) founder of Crippen&Landru, a highly respected publisher of mystery collections, classic and contemporary. And he loved my book! I asked him to put in a good word for me with the editor-in-chief, Jeff Marks, and a couple of weeks later, we had a deal! Crippen & Landru will release It's Not Even Past with a new cover and a new introduction in October, and are currently negotiating foreign rights for the book on my behalf! They'll release a second collection, They Look Like Angels, early in the new year. This happy ending would absolutely not have happened had I not gone all out to get publicity for my book. That is how Doug Greene found me, and it's how the foreign publishers found me, too.

Christian Gibson's cover!

So you spent a year – maybe more – writing your book, and you worked hard to get it out to potential publishers. Now spend some time ensuring that your book reaches the fullest complement of readers possible! Good luck!

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Anna Scotti is delighted to have the next in her "librarian-on-the-run" series, When Bright Angels Beckon, included in the 85th anniversary issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (September-October '26), along with a personal essay, Sisters Reading Sisters. Bright Angels is the thirteenth story in the librarian series, and the eleventh to appear in EQMM. The next in the series, I Shall Wear Purple, will appear in an upcoming issue. Learn more at AnnaKScotti.com . Purchase It's Not Even Past direct from the publisher, at your local bookstore, or online. It will be available from bookshop.org soon!

Everyone - Big Five kahunas, small press authors, self-published writers and "gettin' there" authors - is invited to post comments, questions, corrections and additions in the comments. Please do!

Zines, Then and Now

When the Editor-in-Chief of the newly-launched That Glow invited me to contribute a column way back in 1999, she frowned when I referred to the glossy pregnancy-motherhood-working woman site as a zine.

"On-line magazine," she corrected briskly. I nodded, pretending to understand, as I pretended to understand most things technology-related back in the day. Didn't the "zine" mean magazine? I knew about zines! gurl.com was funny and smart and progressive, decidedly sex-positive, and chickclick was edgy and hip and represented third wave feminism - it even sponsored the first Lilith Fair! 

At That Glow, we were also all about women - but we were glossy, not grungy - upscale and sleek. We were going to run ads, pay writers well, 

and - 

 Well. The fact that you probably don't recognize the name - or perhaps mistook it for one of the many sound-alike sites that are now, in 2026, gorgeously thriving, tells the tale. The editor was bright and ambitious and well-connected, but decidedly ahead of her time. I was sorry, but not surprised, when our "online magazine" slipped beneath the surface of the roiling sea of the newly dubbed "world wide web." (Recognize that www, y'all?) 

For me, launching a writing career in the mid-nineties, "publishing" on the internet seemed iffy, experimental, kind of cool - but also more than likely a waste of time, sort of like those semi-pro art shows people would throw together in someone's garage. A lot of work, one fun night of hope, pot, and cheap white wine, and then…nothing. Gone. After all, how would anything "posted" on the internet be circulated? How would it be seen? How would it be archived? Yes, people under forty years of age. These were actual questions we asked ourselves. The concept of words, images and (God help us) videos circulating for all eternity on the internet was beyond our feeble ken.

 Even with print magazines folding all around us, even with copyeditors and even editors being laid off wholesale, even with writers being pushed from staff to stringer, the money - and the glamour - was still in print publication. I'd been a columnist for Buzz Magazine until it folded abruptly in 1998, but no worries. I had regular gigs writing crime, disease, and celebrity scandal for the Big Seven women's mags - Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, et al. I'd just move on to the next juicy gig! 

 (That sound you hear is everyone who was actually making a living writing in the nineties spitting coffee all over their computers.) 

So - zine, magazine - for me, it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. Zines were an online phenomenon, some new flash in the pan that was cool and fun but probably destined to fail. 

 But I was late to the party. What I thought was new was just an online version of the do-it-yourself rags that had been around since the thirties, when sci-fi fans put together little "fan magazines" - called zines even then - to discuss their favorite characters. The very first of these may have been Allen Glasser's The Planet (July 1930), distributed to The New York Scienceers, a sci-fi fan club. In an article for Carter ARTicles, Carolyn Croley writes that art and design zines were first created in the early 20th century, focusing on Dada and surrealism. What these journals had in common is that they were small, hand-produced, carefully curated, and often at a variance with the tastes of mainstream culture. 

These early works were seminal, but their authors were by no means the first to self-publish. Tristram Shandy was self-published by Laurence Sterne in the late 1700s. A hundred years later, Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass. Self-publishing was often undertaken by writers who couldn't connect with a publishing house. This route was quite respectable, and the term "self-published" didn't really have a stink on it until the advent of "vanity publishing" in the early 1900s. 

 The North American Review was founded in 1815, and is still going strong. NAR was first produced on letterpress, but by the fifties offset printing had taken over. Similar specialized literary journals, often called "lit mags" or "littles," proliferated in the 1960s with the advent of mimeograph machines. Access to photocopiers in the 1980s produced another wave of journals, and by the end of the 20th Century there were thousands of little magazines being produced across North America, some financed independently, some supported by colleges, foundations - and even by the government. My first poetry sale was to a tiny photocopied journal whose name is lost to history but that paid me fifty bucks! In 1988 dollars! 

 (So…if a poem sold for fifty bucks forty years ago, I guess now they must sell for - what? A thousand? Ten thousand? Hahahhahahahahhhahahahahahha. Sorry, poets. Just know I'm laughing with you, not at you.) 

 These early lit journals were a bit more polished than hand-produced zines. Zines were more ragged, more amateurish, more raw. Typed by hand, sometimes even hand-written, often mimeographed, then stapled together by hand, zines were integral to pop culture. In the seventies, long before most American households had a computer, amateur mags were spreading the word about street style, fashion, and music, perhaps picking up where those early art and design zines left off. Zines were particularly relevant to the punk scene. Punk - the zine - debuted in New York in 1976 with a caricature of Lou Reed on the cover, and helped popularize the moniker "punk."

 Similarly, small self-produced "underground" newspapers rose to prominence in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s, mostly associated with the counterculture. As the Vietnam war ended, most of these disappeared. Plus ça change, as Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849. Plus c'est la même chose. Yeah.

 What he said. 

Print reading matter still outsells digital by a wide margin, and that seems likely to obtain for some time to come, but e-reading has undeniably changed the game. Today, the Substack and Mailchimp platforms distribute what are essentially e-zines, though the lines between magazine, newspaper, newsletter, blog, website and zine have become a bit blurred. Paper zines are still around, too - Paper Pushers Print Shop in Seattle stocks hundreds of tiny, hand-produced zines. Los Angeles has an annual zine festival, as do San Francisco, Toronto and Chicago. Other cities have a big zine component to their comic book festivals. Zines have evolved, but they are still around, online and in print. Why not check a few out?

Anna Scotti is the author of a young adult novel, Big and Bad, that won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Though primarily a mystery writer, she has published poetry widely and was awarded numerous awards and honors for her collection, Bewildered by All This Broken Sky, and the poems within. Anna's novel-in-stories, It's Not Even Past, went out of print shortly after publication, but will be re-released in October - details to come! Learn more at www.annakscotti.com.

Awards, Competitions, Prizes and Honors

When my first story for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine appeared in 2018, I'd long been a reader of short mystery fiction, but was only newly a writer of it. Suddenly I was hearing about a panoply of awards with confusing and sometimes similar names:  Edgars, Anthonys, Agathas, Derringers…Macavitys?  Wasn't Macavity one of T.S. Eliot's cats? 

 Barb Goffman also made her EQMM debut in this issue, with Bug Apétit, which earned nominations for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards!

I got my first taste of glory when a story placed fifth in EQMM's annual Readers Awards - something I'd never paid much attention to. A subscriber for decades, I'd certainly never bothered to vote! Fifth, but okay! That meant somebody had read it, and liked it. Many somebodies! Then a story that is somewhat a departure for me - it could almost be classified as a "cozy," though darker than most of that genre - was suddenly in the running for a variety of prizes, from EQ's Reader Award to the Thriller to the Macavity. Schrödinger, Cat, didn't take any top honors, but I surely enjoyed the banquets and cocktail parties! And when It's Not Even Past was nominated for a Derringer, I was hooked. Derringers are awarded to short fiction writers by short fiction writers (and readers) - a true jury of one's peers!  

I began to read about all the prizes, honors, and competitions open to mystery writers. There was a lot to learn, and I thought I'd take this opportunity to share some of that info with those who might also be toward the origin end of their learning curve. 

A few notes before we begin: I have not included every prize category of every award here - rather, I've given an overview. If a description intrigues you, check it out - that's why God made websites. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I've tried to include the biggies, especially those that particularly honor mystery and crime fiction. And I've focused on prizes and awards available to writers in the United States, working in English. When a prize or award requires an entry fee, I've so noted. 

Any errors are my own, and I'm sure there are some! I invite you to post any corrections, and to provide additional information, insider notes, gossip, and asides in the comments. 

The Agathas are awarded by Malice Domestic, an annual convention that takes place near Washington, DC. The Agathas celebrate cozy mysteries - those that do not contain explicit sex and minimize gore, violence, and foul language. Members of Malice Domestic nominate, and conference attendees choose the winners. Six categories of prizes include novels, children's, nonfiction and short stories. If you win, you get a fancy teapot and a lifetime claim to fame.  Malice Domestic also sponsors grants, competitions, and anthologies that may be of interest.  

Here's Ashley-Ruth Bernier with the Agatha awarded her short story Six-Armed Robbery from The Malice Domestic Anthology Mystery Most Humorous!

The Anthonys are awarded to  novels, short stories, children's and young adult fiction, and nonfiction. Works are nominated, then voted on, by attendees of the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. This is a highly- coveted award that can provide a nice career boost. Bouchercon moves year–to-year - the next convention will be in  Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 

The Barry Award is conferred annually by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, honoring various categories of book, but not short stories. I was unable to get more information prior to deadline.

The Daggers are awarded by the Crime Writers' Association to books published in the UK.  

The Derringer Award is presented by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, recognizing excellence in short stories of the mystery and crime fiction genres. Categories are differentiated by length - flash to novelette -  and there are also specialty prizes, including The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer, and the Silver Derringer for Editorial Excellence. In 2025, an award for best anthology was added, although collections are not eligible.  (Anthologies are by multiple authors; collections are by a single author.) Membership in the SMFS is free, and members may submit one or two works, in one category or two. Medals are presented at the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. The Short Mystery Fiction Society is entirely volunteer-run and their daily list-serve provides a wealth of information about writing and publishing - as well as the occasional insidery-tidbit from well-known writers.

Janet Hutchings, legendary editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1991 to 2024, was awarded The Silver Derringer in 2025. (photo, Laurie Pachter)

In 2020, Josh Pachter became the first person to receive the Golden Derringer and win a competitive Derringer (best flash) in the same year. His story, The Two-Body Problem, appeared in this issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.

 

The Edgars are presented by the Mystery Writers of America annually in New York. The Edgars are awarded in a number of categories, from short stories and book-length works of fiction and non-fiction to theatrical genres. There are also special awards; The Robert L. Fish Memorial Award honors the best first short story of the year, The Lilian Jackson Braun Award highlights a cozy mystery novel, The Sue Grafton Memorial Award is for a series novel featuring a female protagonist, and there are also the Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the much-coveted Grand Master Award.  MWA confers two separate awards - with nice cash grants - for unpublished and published Black writers, in honor of the late Barbara Neely. Typically, publishers submit stories and books for consideration, but authors may also submit, and there is no limit to the number of entries one may make, nor an entry fee. However, authors in the short story categories must have been paid for their work, and all publishers must be on the MWA-approved list. Winners receive a ceramic bust of Edgar Allen Poe, but bragging rights are the real prize here - the Edgar is the most prestigious award specific to our industry. 

Kate Hohl at the 2024 ceremony, where she won the Fish Memorial Award for The Body in Cell two (EQMM).

The Dashiell Hammett Prize, a bronze statuette by Peter Boiger, is presented annually by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. The prize, awarded to a traditional novel, nonfiction book, or graphic novel, is announced in the fall of each year. Submission is free, but authors or publishers must snail-mail hard copies of the work to various committee members. Details are given on the IACW/NA site.  

The Dilys Award,  presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, is no longer extant. It is included here as you may see it on various resumes and websites.

The Hillerman Prize is also defunct. It is included here as you may see it on various resumes and websites.

Killer Nashville awards a number of prizes at its annual convention, notably The Claymore Prize, celebrating a work in progress, and The Silver Falchion, for published works of fiction and nonfiction, both in a variety of categories. As with most of the awards included in this round-up, there's no cash award, just a handsome medal and a very nice claim to fame. But there is a charge to submit - sixty to $100 bucks, although one free submission is included with conference admission. Killer Nashville also bestows The John Seigenthaler Legends Award upon "an individual who has championed First Amendment Rights and advocated for writers in the publishing industry."

The Macavity Awards are presented annually at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention.  Winners are nominated and voted for by fans, readers, and mystery enthusiasts who belong to Mystery Readers International or who subscribe to Mystery Readers Journal. Categories include  several novel categories, nonfiction, and a short story award.  

 

Janet Rudolph founded Mystery Readers International. The first Macavity was awarded in 1987.

The Reader Awards presented by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine are decided by readers' votes, and the top three honorees are celebrated at an invitation-only cocktail party held in Manhattan shortly before the Edgars ceremony. EQ's sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, does not offer a reader's choice award, but they do co-host The Black Orchid Novella Contest, in partnership with The Wolfe Pack, an international organization of devotees of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. The BONA prize is a thousand dollars and publication in the magazine. 

The Shamus trophy is awarded by The Private Eye Writers of America in categories that include hardcover, paperback original, first novel, short story, and a lifetime achievement award, The Eye. There is no charge to submit a novel or story, but eligibility is tricky: the Shamus is for  works that feature a paid private eye who is not a police officer or in law enforcement. Lawyers and reporters who do their own investigative work qualify, but not amateur sleuths. 

John M. Floyd's Mustang Sally, which appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, won the Shamus for best PI Short Story in 2021.

The Thriller Awards are sponsored by International Thriller Writers (ITW) and are conferred at an annual convention held in May in New York. Prizes are awarded in several categories, including best short story and best novel. Authors who are active members of ITW may submit their work directly, but are asked to check with their publisher first to avoid duplicated submissions. (Membership is free to authors who meet eligibility requirements.) NB: ITW gets so many submissions that they stagger due dates; check their schedule. The prize is a cool trophy (and a nice fluffy feather in your cap!).

 

Here I am  grinning madly before a poster with my name on it at The Thrillers!  Catherine Steadman took the 2023 prize for Stockholm.

The "Best ofs" are not exactly prizes, but being included sure feels like one! Inclusion in Otto Penzler's The Best Mystery Stories of the Year or Steph Cha's The Best American Mystery and Suspense can provide one heck of a career boost. Both Penzler and Cha invite big-name authors to co-edit each year's volume. A new anthology, The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year, edited by Michael Bracken, has just released its first edition.

Billie Livingston says of her BMSY inclusion, "It's overwhelming to find yourself in the company of your literary heroes!" 

Many small literary journals offer prizes that range from a frameable slip of paper to a significant amount of cash. Don't count them out! Yes, many do charge a submission fee, being lovingly put together on a shoestring by volunteers and interns. Professional writers have a variety of opinions about those fees. My personal view is that I don't enter any competitions I don't feel qualified to win. I don't mind a reasonable fee going to create a prize pool or even to cover publication costs. Other reputable writers have very different opinions. Regardless, winning a prize sponsored by a lit journal can lead to much greater exposure than publishing strictly "in-genre." And many lit journal editors are eager to see crime fiction and mysteries, if they are written well.

So what about the really, really big stuff?  Well, the Edgars are pretty significant in our mystery world - in fact all of the prizes I've noted here are -  but what about The Pulitzer, The Nobel, The Booker, et al? Don't laugh! Truman Capote was famously disappointed when In Cold Blood, though nominated, did not win a Pulitzer in 1966. (It did win the Edgar for best "fact-crime novel.") Though usually classified as "literary fiction" or "psychological fiction," Ann Arensberg's Sister Wolf could certainly be considered a mystery. It won The National Book Award for Best First Novel in 1981. Mysteries and thrillers are regularly nominated for the Booker Prize (formerly the Man Booker), but unfortunately only books published in the UK are eligible. Motherless Brooklyn took The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1999 and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 won the fiction award in 2008. Numerous mystery and crime fiction novels have been finalists, including hardboiled noir by Michael Chabon in 2007.

Okay, but surely a mystery writer could never win (gasp) The Nobel Prize, right? Wrong. 2018 Laureate Olga Tokarczuk 's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead centers on a woman investigating murders in a Polish village, and is most definitely a mystery. The Nobel is awarded for a body of work, not a single novel, but Drive Your Plow is a significant part of Tokarczuk's oeuvre. 

And a closing fun fact:  you (or your publisher) can submit your book for Pulitzer consideration for only seventy-five bucks. I know this because Lightscatter Press submitted my poetry collection, Bewildered by All This Broken Sky, in 2021.  (To my tremendous surprise, I did not win.) 

What a thrill to be interviewed by the literary powerhouse Adriana Trigiani, a great lover of poetry!

  c. 2026 Anna Scotti all rights reserved

Anna Scotti is a mystery writer, young adult author, poet, and writing instructor living in Southern California. She has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors (some noted above). She has two short stories collections coming in 2027. Find her at annakscotti.com.  

Boo Hoo, Tee Hee, She Chortled

 

As a writing teacher, I spend an inordinate amount of time urging other writers to eschew clichés. This is more easily said than done (see what I did there?) as sometimes a cliché expresses one's thoughts perfectly. Nonetheless, I'm ruthless with my students, who are mostly published writers - all talented - and can take it. No nights as black as pitch, no thinking outside the box, no being sly as a fox or brave as a lion. And for the love of God, no smiles that light up a room.

So it was with some chagrin that I found myself recently "laughing through my tears."

Yep. This is an action I've read in a thousand sophomoric short stories and novels, and even in a few poems, yet one I didn't even know could actually be done. If you keep track of happenings in the mystery world, you're no doubt aware that Down&Out Books closed recently, and my newly-released collection of stories, It's Not Even Past, died along with them, just when the reviews (and orders) were starting to roll in. Now, I've published before, but this is truly the book of my heart. Most of the stories were originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and the main character, Lori Yarborough, is a librarian-on-the-run in Federal WITSEC. Lori is a mostly-better version of myself - like me, sort of, but smarter, braver, stronger, better-educated, and more resilient. She's shorter and skinnier than I am, though, and a good deal younger. In fact, the version of her that lives in my head looks an awful lot like my daughter.

There's a picture of said daughter, taken by the talented Robert Tate, in which she's striding down Mulholland Boulevard in an evening gown, strong, powerful, and stern. I call that picture "Don't Tell Me to Smile," and I keep it pinned over my desk to remind me of the tenacity and potency at my character's core.

Lori Yarborough would never laugh through her tears. In fact, she brags in a couple of stories that she never cries at all. But I do, and what drove me to enact that oxymoronic stock phrase was receiving yet another order for my DOA book. When the publisher closed, I'd hastily ordered a couple of boxes of resale copies, but more fans than expected had tracked me down to order. I was saving one copy for the coffee table and one for my grandson - and that was it. So there I was, laughing ruefully but snuffling back tears, too, as I checked the author's copy carton in my closet (still empty), thinking what a fool I'd been to order so few, to choose the wrong publisher, hell, to write a book at all.

(As it turns out, a white knight publisher rushed in - yes, inspired by one of those author's copies I sent out - and It's Not Even Past will be released anew later this year, along with a volume of short stories not from the librarian-on-the-run series. My cup runneth over! But more on that when I can share all the details.)

Meanwhile, Lori's life post-collection continues. In Traveller from an Antique Land, published in EQ in May/June 2025, she hit rock bottom, living in a tent on the streets of Los Angeles. In When Bright Angels Beckon, coming in the September/October issue, she's on her feet and back to amateur sleuthing. (Cliché count: two in this paragraph, two in the graph above. I think I owe my students a mea culpa.)

Writing a returning, evolving character is tough - as plenty of folks here on SleuthSayers can attest. There are lots of details to keep track of, of course, but there's also the simple recurring question where do we go next? I gain inspiration from the world around me, particularly from photographs.

Here's a photo I found helpful in writing about Lori's days on the street. The image of makeshift shelters over the 405 in California - a freeway that runs by Disneyland and Hollywood along the sparkling Pacific Ocean, through BelAir and into the opulent valley - while small, tragic lives play out unseen above, is particularly evocative. But there are real meat-and-potato details in the photo, too. That blue tarp - who hasn't seen them on roofs and hillsides after a heavy rain? The piles of trash heaped around something that may be the form of a sleeping person, and there, heartbreakingly, a bag of food clipped out of reach of rats, as if the unhoused were camping in the Angeles National Forest guarding their food from bears.  

I'm not alone in looking to visual images for inspiration. Photographer Horace Bristol's collaboration with Steinbeck inspired the immortal Grapes of Wrath. (Though many associate that book with Dorothea Lange's iconic photo Migrant Mother, there's not actually a linear connection between Steinbeck and Lange.)

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje was inspired by a rare photo of jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden and his band.

The epigraph to Clarence Major's gorgeous poem, Photograph of a Gathering of People Waving, reads "based on an old photograph bought in a shop at Half Moon Bay, summer, 1999." Who would not be transported by the poet's lines, "You remember your own meadow/…your grandmother’s church-folk/ gathering on a Sunday afternoon in saintly quietness."

In my series, Lori's friends Tony and Marta Morales have three kids, the youngest of whom is Camilla, named after one of Lori's alter egos. In some of the stories, the Morales family barely surfaces, while in others they play an integral role. But it's been years since I was part of a big, loud, active family, and I need my work to be up to date. I don't want to show the oldest boy bragging about his razor scooter, only to find dirt bikes are the current thing. Do people still cook out on tripod Weber grills? Are bougie toddlers wearing spaceships this year, or jungle animals, or clowns, or dinosaurs? Google can tell you a lot, sure, but to see how people really live, go onto facebook or instagram and start scrolling. Like many parents and grandparents, I don't post pictures of children or teens online. There are too many freaks out there, manipulating photos with AI. But plenty of people do post pics of little Shiloh learning to ride a bike, of Jaden's birthday party and Olivia's sixth-grade graduation, and those photos will give you a wealth of detail to work with.

You'll find that razors are still popular (along with dirt bikes, offroad bikes, and skateboards). Yes, people still burn burgers on Weber grills, and while spaceships and jungle animals are perennially popular, dinosaurs are really back - and for girls, as well as boys. But you're not going to find much by way of clowns in your local Carter's shop. Cool Millennial and Gen Z couples are tearing out carpeting, throwing down hardwood, and painting the interiors of their homes muddy browns and greys and mauvish-pinks. For the outsides, "Millennial charcoal" is still a thing, but white, grey, and pale blue are coming back strong.

You can also get story ideas from those pictures of anonymous strangers - remember the photo of little Olivia's sixth-grade graduation noted above? Perfumes of Arabia, the first story in It's Not Even Past, was inspired by just such a photo. In a shot posted on Insta by a proud mom, Olivia is beaming, her dad's arm around her on one side, Mom beside her on the other. But who's that off to the side? Could it be Olivia's younger sister, looking up at her with narrowed eyes that seem more envious than admiring?

And to see where that went, you'll have to grab a copy of the book and read the story. I'll keep you posted about our upcoming pub date.

And yes, "I'll keep you posted" is absolutely a cliché.

Write What You Know...at Least a Bit

 

If you've been published by The Saturday Evening Post's "New Fiction Friday," you know those stories get a lot of attention. My own On Blackpoint Road made enough of a ripple that I was asked to try turning it into a screenplay. A friend and sometime client who has done well in the film biz generously offered to read my first draft, and I eagerly agreed.

I had in mind Josh Brolin and Robin Wright to play the couple on the big screen, or maybe Michael McGrady and Julia Roberts. The main characters in On Blackpoint Road, a middle-aged couple, are white because…well, because I'm white, I guess. As are, according to the latest UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, about 90 percent of working film and TV writers.

As it turned out, my colleague liked the script, more or less, but objected strongly to my having described various supporting characters as African-American or Black, when they might have been of any race with little impact on the plot.   

I had done this purposefully. It's my idea that film and television writers - whatever their ethnicity - can help ensure that actors of color get cast in their works by specifically writing into the script that this is "a Black cop," "a tall brown-skinned teacher," "An Asian ballet dancer," and so forth, even when race is not integral to the plot. This is necessary because white, in most cases, is the default. If the writer of a script is white, and the main characters are white, most of the cast is going to be white, too, unless someone makes an effort to deem otherwise. So why not me?

But my friend said that for me to specify the race of any character unnecessarily is a kind of cultural appropriation at best, and racist at worst. That doesn't make sense to me. Why should I trust that filmmakers will diversely cast the supporting roles or bit parts in my script? Can't I help that process along by describing some of the characters as I'd like to see them?  

But he's the film guy, not me. Maybe he's right.

The main character in my "librarian on the run" series is white, like me. She's thirty-something, as I once was, and she's similar to me in many regards - social class, educational level, general snarkiness, and so on. But the stories are populated by a diversity of characters - Lori's best friends, Marta and Tony, are Mexican-American. He is from a middle-class suburban background, and she is from the hard streets of East L.A. They are like me in that they are warm, funny, reasonably intelligent, and hard-working. They are parents, as am I. They pay taxes and drink beer. Sames. They're also unlike me in many regards. Tony is a man, and a police detective. I've never been either of those things. He's fully bilingual, whereas I speak English pretty well and am permanently stalled at "beginner" in Spanish and French. Tony and Marta own a home in an upscale section of Los Angeles, and I never will. Does that make me unqualified to give Tony a supporting role in many of my stories?

Lori solves murders. The corpses,  survivors, and villains have been male and female, young and old, Black, mixed-race, Latino, Asian, and white. I'm not a criminal, but many of my characters are. I'm not gay, or Christian, or (very) elderly, or disabled, or rich, or poor. But many of my characters are. I'm not a child, though I once was, and I write about children and teenagers often. 

So what about my friend's idea that race should not be specified unless it's integral to the plot? I think that's nonsense. Every story that includes a Black character does not have to have racism, or even race, as its primary focus, though if you're writing realistically, that evil may not be far beneath the surface. In my story The Longest Pleasure, Lori (here known as Cam Baker) is stunned when Matt Larkin explains his wife's feelings about their son's girlfriend:

"Look, she was a nice enough girl, just maybe not wife material. She

 frequently had dirt beneath her nails and her hair made Nancy crazy,

 bushy and wild and half the time clearly uncombed.” He met my eyes

 and lowered his voice. “Her race didn’t help.” 

Larkin thinks he's exposing his wife's inner thoughts, but his own are on clear display. Race is not the issue here - the fact that Nancy Larkin murdered the girl is. In fact both Nancy and Tom would probably be horrified to find themselves characterized as racists. So their prejudice, while not integral to the plot, fleshes out their characters and makes them believable. 

Similarly, in What the Morning Never Suspected, Cam is helping her client's daughter plan a wedding.  The "maid" of honor is the bride's best friend - a gay man. This detail is completely nonessential to the plot. Its purpose is to make the bride real and quirky and likable, before we learn that, oh, yeah, unfortunately she may be a killer. When the killers are exposed, Cam takes a minute to feel sorry, not just for the victim, but for Mikey, who will never get to strut down the aisle with his bouquet of tulips and baby's breath. I don't need to be gay, or male - or even to have been a bridesmaid - to include Mikey in my story. He's real to me, more than a caricature,  and I hope he comes across that way to the reader, too.

I wouldn't set a story in Paris because I don't know the city well enough to do so without making a gaffe. But I spent a decade teaching in an international community where most of my students and colleagues were French nationals. So yes, I write stories that include French people as important characters, though never as the main character. I know enough to eschew the berets, striped mime shirts, and baguettes, to get my French slang checked by a native, and to keep the accents to a bare minimum. Ditto when Tony Morales exclaims in Spanish, or when Elmont Crawford, an important character in an upcoming librarian story, says "aight," or "This Delilah," omitting the linking verb "is." A very light hand is best when writing accents and dialects.

When the horror of Sandy Hook was still fresh in the news, I wrote a story from the point of view of a middle-aged woman teaching a three-year-old how to handle a gun. The genesis for They Look Like Angels was a prompt I use in my writing classes: write from the point of view of a character very unlike yourself. I'm a strong gun control advocate. I've spent too many "instructional" hours teaching kids what to do if our school is invaded by a homicidal monster. Little Marty's pistol-packin' granny is about as unlike me as one could be, despite our similarity of age, gender, and occupation. But something must have worked; Aimee Liu chose They Look Like Angels for the Orlando Prize offered by A Room of Her Own. The story was subsequently published in The Los Angeles Review and was included in an eponymous collection, which was a finalist for The Claymore Prize two years ago and will be published later this year.

It's my belief that we can - and should, and must - populate our work with characters who are unlike ourselves in many ways: in gender, or sexual orientation, or nationality, or race, or religion or politics or culture or…you get the idea. If we don't reach beyond our immediate scope to find commonality and a shared humanity, our stories cannot possibly reflect the real world - and the screenplays made from them are going to be as flat as pancakes, and a lot less palatable.

Anna Scotti's first collection, It's Not Even Past, went out of print with the recent closure of Down&Out Books. It will be available from a new publisher soon – but if you can't wait, contact the author via her website; she has a few copies available. Meanwhile, find Anna's short fiction in current and recent issues of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Chautauqua, and Black Cat Weekly.

 On Blackpoint Road - Scotti

They Look Like Angels - Scotti

What the Morning Never Suspected - Podmatic