Barry Award

award photo courtesy Stu Neville...

On Friday night my second Sean Duffy novel, I Hear The Sirens In The Street, won the 2014 Barry Award in the best mystery (paperback original) category. The awards were announced at this year's Bouchercon crime fiction convention which was held in Long Beach, California. Stuart Neville was gracious enough to pick up the award on my behalf as I couldn't get there this year. Many thanks to the judges, to Deadly Pleasures magazine and to everyone who voted for me. I really do appreciate it. You can find the full list of winners in all four categories, here. And thank you again Stuart for picking it up for me and to Seana Graham for cheering like a - nice - banshee. 

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This is going to sound a little bit like solo trumpetry but as this blogpost may become a google gravity well for people searching McKinty Awards or Sean Duffy Series Awards etc. I'd like to stress, for those people who have never heard of me, that each of the Sean Duffy books has won a different crime fiction award: 

Sean Duffy #1 The Cold Cold Ground won the 2013 Spinetingler Award

Sean Duffy #2 I Hear The Sirens In The Street won the 2014 Barry Award (best pbk original)

Sean Duffy #3 In The Morning I'll Be Gone won the 2014 Ned Kelly Award

The series has been shortlisted for numerous other awards & Duffy #1 has also been shortlisted for the 2015 Prix SNCF Du Polar and that can still be voted on, here, if you are so inclined. Merci.

Thank You!

Many thanks to all the regular readers of this blog because at least partially thanks to your votes, my book, The Cold Cold Ground, has won the 2013 Spinetingler Award for best crime novel!
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I'm really very touched. I put a lot of my heart and soul into that book. It was both harrowing and strangely fun journeying back to the 1981 of my imagination and reliving those childhood days in Victoria Estate in Carrickfergus. I don't find writing particularly easy and I'm not one of those 1000 words before breakfast types but occasionally during the writing process of this book I did feel that I was firing on all cylinders the way a top notch writer presumably feels all the time...
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Anyway many thanks to everyone who voted for me or reviewed me on Amazon, Audible, Good Reads or their blog. When you are published by a small press it's almost impossible for your book to get noticed which is why reader support and reader reviews mean so very much.
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Slainte. 

Vote For Me!

My novel Fifty Grand has been longlisted for the prestigious Theakston Best Crime Novel Award. There are 14 other books on the long list and to make the short list of five the general public is required to vote for their favourite.
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If you want to vote for Fifty Grand you can do so here.
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To be honest I think making the shortlist seems like a bit of a tall order. I'm up against several huge beasts of best sellers and I imagine those books will have a hard core fan base in the thousands. I suspect the five shortlisted books will also be the five books who sold the most copies. . .but you never know, do you? So I'd certainly appreciate your vote.
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Fifty Grand's always been a bit of an ugly duckling. I've gotten some barmy reviews from left wingers who say my portrayal of Cuba is fascist propaganda; I've also been attacked by right wing nuts who say that my description of immigrant life in New Mexico and Colorado is blatant commie propaganda. They can't both be right, can they? I then had to deal with some potential libel issues and a breach of copyright suit from the Church of Scientology (because I quoted from one of their rather eccentric questionnaires). Fifty Grand also seems to stir up strong passions among online reviewers (I got almost no print reviews in the US (thank you Henry Holt!)) who generally either love or hate the book. Some of the online reviews are pretty heavy but on the other hand I got a really nice review in The Guardian and Fifty Grand won the 2010 Spinetingler Award which is also voted on by the general public.
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Anyway if you hated Fifty Grand you can go to the Theakston Prize website and vote for somebody else. If you liked it you can go there and vote for me.
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The system they have in place to prevent double voting isn't the greatest one so if you want to vote Chicago style, feel free. (I voted only once and not for me.)
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And finally, for the Amazon reviewer who didn't believe Cuba could possibly be as bad as I've portrayed it and claimed that I hadn't been there at all...here's a link to an article I wrote for The Times about just one of my trips to Havana, and here's a link to the blog of Yoani Sanchez, a young Cuban woman, who despite being daily intimidated and on one occasion beaten up by Raul Castro's secret police, still bravely tells it like it is.
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Slainte and thank you for your vote!