Category Archives: Shamus Award

Hugging the Porcelain

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By P.J. Parrish

A friend of mine got some pretty good news this week. He won the Edgar for Best Novel.

William Kent Kreuger is his name. The book is Ordinary Grace and there’s nothing ordinary about it. Now I didn’t read all the best novel nominees this year, but I can vouch for this book and for Kent himself. He’s one of the good guys. He’s paid his dues, is generous to other writers, and has kept his Cork series going at a high level for fourteen books now. (Not an easy feat!)

So last Thursday night, I was delighted to see him hugging that ugly little porcelain statue.

I’ve had a front row seat to the Edgars for seven years now. My sister Kelly and I are the banquet chairs. That’s us in the pic above just before the night got started. We produce the “show” that is sometimes called the Oscars of the crime world. It’s a great gig because Kelly gets to make movies for the night, I get to make the Powerpoint and work with great writers to produce the annual. It’s even fun to help MWA’s Margery Flax set things up. Can I share some backstage snapshots?

Here’s how Eddie arrives at the Grand Hyatt, rather unceremoniously:

Here’s me doing grunt-work, unboxing the annuals.

And Kelly helping Margery set up the registration table.

I can hear you sighing. Ugh…awards. Who cares?

True, there are some great and successful writers in our genre who never won an Edgar. Or an ITW Thriller Award, or Shamus or Anthony or Dilys. Many really good books are overlooked every year. Some publishers neglect to even enter their authors’ books. And except for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Agatha Award, there is a bias against traditionals and cozies. But after working the Edgars for seven years now, come banquet time it is fun to see folks who slave over their Macs in sweatpants put on tux and gown, put aside their cynicism, and get their moment in the sun.

But can an award change your life?

My sister Kelly and I got an Edgar nomination for our second book Dead of Winter. We were pretty naive — hell, stupid — about the book biz in those days. We didn’t even understand what the Edgar was, to be honest.  I do remember exactly what I was doing when I got the news. The Bucs were beating up on the Raiders so everyone at our Super Bowl party was three sheets to the wind, including me. The phone rang and I took it outside so I could hear. When the person delivered the news, I screamed. My husband came running outside.

“What the hell is wrong?” he yelled.
“We’re an Edgar nominee!” I yelled back.
“I thought the cat drowned in the pool. What’s an Edgar?”

Things got better fast. First, the book jumped a couple notches on Amazon. It was probably from 1,4456,957 to 56,789, but hey, you take what you can get. We got some late reviews from folks who had ignored it the first time. (Paperback originals don’t register on most reviewer radar screens).

Then came the Edgar banquet. We bought new dresses and went to New York. At the hotel bar, we sat in a quiet circle: Kelly, her son Robert, my husband Daniel and our agent. We allowed ourselves one drink because if we did win, we didn’t want to make asses of ourselves up there.

Inside the cavernous dining room, we sat at our publisher’s table, ogling and pointing. There goes Harlan. Was that T. Jefferson Parker? Laura Lippman is taller than she looks in her pictures. Look at the red dress Mary Higgins Clark is wearing. Omigod, that’s Edie Falco over there!

Everything was a blur. Then they started announcing the winners. It is excruciating sitting through all the categories knowing your moment is coming. The sound starts rushing in your ears and your vision grows dim. You’re stone cold sober but you feel like you’re going to pass out.

I felt my husband grab my hand.

Then…

We lost.

I applauded the winner then grabbed the wine bottle and poured myself a tall one. The next day, we went home and I went back to chapter 12 of what was to become our fourth book, Thicker Than Water. 

I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you the truth: Losing bites. My good friend Reed Farrel Coleman has been nominated three times in three different categories. He was up this year for Best Short Story. He lost.  He says he is now chasing Jeffrey Deaver’s record who has lost seven times.

It is now ten books later for us. There have been dark days when I couldn’t put two decent sentences together and darker nights when I have fretted that the world was finally going to discover that I have no talent and am a complete fraud. Writing is a lonely affair. It’s a cliche but a true cliche. And the egos of most writers I know are swiss-cheesed with doubt. So yes, I think getting an award can change your life. Hell, a nomination can change your life.

Not because it’s some outer confirmation like a bump in sales, or a translation into a better contract or a bigger publisher. It is because it is an inner validation — that something you did, something you created out of the ether of your imagination and the sweat of your faith — is real. And your peers know and honor that.

Getting the Dead out of Deadline

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by Brad Parks

Today TKZ is thrilled to welcome Brad Parks, reformed sportswriter and award winning author, whose second book EYES OF THE INNOCENT was just released.

I have this weird thing for dates. They stick in my head for no good reason.

Aug. 5, 1998. The day my pet rabbit, Snowflake, died.
Aug. 20, 1994. The day I first kissed the beautiful woman who is now my wife.
Nov. 5, 2004. The day I finished my first novel-length manuscript (a book that, incidentally, will likely never be published, unless I pull a Stieg Larsen and become unexpectedly famous after my untimely passing).
Feb. 3, 2011. The day I put the entire Kill Zone audience to sleep with the boring biographical details of my tedious life because I didn’t move on with the point of my guest blog post…

… So, right, the point of this post is actually to talk about some of the most significant dates in a writer’s life.

Deadline dates.

Now, that word, “deadline,” can inspire a lot of fear in writers. Its origin – and I swear, I’m not making this up – is actually penal in nature. Once upon a time, a deadline referred to a line in a prison that inmates couldn’t cross, or else they’d be shot dead.

But I’m here to say deadline is actually a wonderful thing for writers, something we should embrace rather than loathe. And I have come to discover there is power and freedom in a deadline, in knowing that you don’t have the luxury to get too picky, in understanding that what you’re aiming for is not “good” but “good enough.”

I first learned this as a journalist. I spent twelve years working for daily newspapers, much of it in the sports department, where the deadlines are unforgiving. I can remember covering Yankees playoff games in 1999, when my editor explained to me they were holding the entire paper for my story – and that each minute the story was late would cost $15,000 as presses and trucks sat idle, racking up gas and overtime.
I didn’t know if he was inventing the number, but I did know I was making about $60,000 a year, so my entire annual salary could slip away in four minutes. And I was guessing it would probably be easier to find another $60,000-a-year sportswriter than paying for the ten minutes it took for me to find that perfect word or phrase for my lede. It tended to have a marvelous, focusing effect on my work, one I carried throughout my journalism career.

But I have also learned to love deadlines as a novelist, and it was because of my latest book, EYES OF THE INNOCENT, which just hit the shelves.

Now, the aforementioned unpublished manuscript took me three years, writing during the off-season of whatever sport I was covering. The next one? I probably turned that around in a year and a half, writing in dribs and drabs when news was slow.

I knew from the start EYES OF THE INNOCENT needed to be a different animal, thanks to deadline. And here, I return to my thing with dates, and some of the ones my brain attached to this book, starting with:

July 8, 2008. The day I learned I would have to write it. I know because that was the wonderful afternoon my agent called to say my manuscript, the book that would later become FACES OF THE GONE, had sold to St. Martin’s Press. She also told me it was a two-book deal, so FACES better have a sequel.
That leads to:

Jan. 27, 2009. The day, according to my contract, that second book would be due.

Now, six months is not an unreasonable length of time in which to write a novel. Heck, there are romance writers out there who can turn one around in six weeks. Except, of course, there were complicating factors.

The first was that we were in the midst of moving three states away, from New Jersey to Virginia. When I got that call from my agent, we were less than two weeks away from the moving vans arriving (July 21, 2008).

The second was that I still had a full-time job as a daily newspaper reporter.

But those were far less important complications than the real deadline then looming in our house around that time:

Dec. 18, 2008. The day my wife was due with our second child.

I knew, from the experience of the first child, that absolutely no meaningful writing would get done for at least six months after the blessed arrival. I also knew, again from Baby No. 1, that my wife would probably go early.

So I had to get to work. I spent a few weeks going over FACES OF THE GONE (it had been roughly two years since I finished it and I needed to re-familiarize myself). Then came:

Aug. 13, 2008. The day I first opened up the file that would become EYES OF THE INNOCENT. Unlike those first two manuscripts, where there were so many stops and starts, I really had to hammer on this one. Deadline and the impending arrival of a baby had given me no choice. And I discovered, much like the days when dilly-dallying cost $15,000 a minute, the pressure had a way of making me concentrate on getting to The End without worrying quite so much about the little stuff along the way. So it was, three months and twenty days later, I got to:

Dec. 3, 2008. The day I turned in a draft to my agent. (And, it turned out, I was just in time – my wife was, once again, about two weeks early).

Is the book any different for having been turned around so quickly? Yeah, it is: It’s better. The pacing, the plotting, it’s all so much tidier. Everyone has their own speed. But I’ve since discovered three months per book is the right one for me. And I have that one tight deadline to thank for the revelation.
What about you guys? Any good deadline stories out there?

Brad Parks’s debut, FACES OF THE GONE, became the first book ever to win the Nero Award and Shamus Award, two of crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His second book, EYES OF THE INNOCENT, just released from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books. Library Journal gave it a starred review, calling it “as good if not better (than) his acclaimed debut.” For more Brad, sign up for his newsletter, follow him on Twitter, or became a fan of Brad Parks Books on Facebook.