37. Non-Fiction Bushel Basket

The Rubery International Book Awards early results were in my mailbox today. I didn’t make the shortlist. Disappointed of course, and looking at the books that did , I discovered that my literary memoir had been thrown into the only category available—non-fiction, alongside the chosen ones which were Political Histories and cookbooks. (I’m sorry, but this is just so wrong.)

Books like mine (and possibly yours) that read like novels, with vivid descriptions, complex narratives, mystifying sub-plots, and small gems of hard-learned personal wisdom, are not like histories and cookbooks. This is not “apples and oranges,” it’s more like apples and battleships.

Why don’t Indy-pub and self-pub book contests (and other powers-that-publish) have a creative nonfiction category? How did Annie Dillard’s unique breaktrhough book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Pulitzer Prize, listed as General Nonfiction) ever get discovered? Did she know somebody? It was 1974. There were no bogs, and no facebook.

The professional advice blogs all say we’ve got to build a Platform and be already well-known before we can expect to be discovered. But I’m not 20-something or even 40 -something. I don’t have enough time  to blog myself famous first. If you too believe that there is likely a lot of good (or very good, or brilliant) writing out here that doesn’t have a category of its own, and deserves one, say Amen.

---

Victory Is My Name, Book One: The Burning Barrel
$15.95  PAPERBACK 978-0-9841730-9-9
$4.95 E-BOOK 978-0-9841730-4-4
Available Oct.1, 2020 from all online or brick & mortar bookstores.
See More information:  Publisher’s Page & Sampler