This past Saturday I made my trip down to Boston to the New England Book Festival awards ceremony. Burnt Mountain Rhyllia, the 4th in the 5 book series, received an award for winner of the SciFi category of the festival.  I am beyond ecstatic!

I had a wonderful time at the festival and met several great authors from around the US. To see the list of all the winners in the 2016 New England festival, click here.

The most notable thing that I learned a few months ago about these awards, and also conveyed to the other winners there on Saturday during my wee acceptance speech, was that these awards, including honorable mentions, are a big deal. We wrote a work that we put into a contest for critique and to be compared to other works. To come out of that process with an award is exactly how an author obtains critical acclaim.

I had never previously considered myself a critically acclaimed author, but that’s exactly what these awards mean. I am thankful for the patient person that pointed this fact out to me and even took the time to explain it to me a second time, and more slowly, to make sure I understood. Once that sank in, I realized how much I’d underestimated my previous honorable mentions. Never said I was smart! 🙂

So during my wee speech, I relayed this reality to my fellow winners, most of them first time winners and also those underestimating the festival’s significance. A publisher in attendance thanked me after the ceremony for reiterating what she had been trying to get her client, another award winner that night, to understand. Cool stuff for sure!

Photo above by another winner, Jared C, with my phone, Jan 2017.

Hi Everyone, Cheryl here. Below is a guest post from my friend and fellow author, Joel D Canfield. I’m honored to be part of his blog tour for his latest novel’s release. Enjoy!

A Still, Small Voice (Is Better Than a Big Loud One)

Being the shy, sensitive type, I try to avoid shocks. Don’t like loud bangs. Bright lights are painful. Quick movements trigger my duck-and-dodge reflex. Gore and other explicit stuff in my entertainment turns me off.

As a result, the pool of introspective noir I can enjoy is limited. Elvis Cole and Harry Bosch are near the edge of my realm. Kinsey Millhone hasn’t scared me yet. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are fine. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin make the grade.

They say you should write the book you want to read.

I’ve done that at least five times now, written introspective noir that’s safe for the most delicate constitutions. My latest, A Still, Small Voice is my 15th book, but only my 5th mystery. It’s the second featuring Phil Brennan, who, yes, is named after Mr. Marlowe, the hero in all the books written by the greatest mystery writer ever, Raymond Chandler.

Phil Brennan is a loner. Was, I guess. He’s getting to know the folks in his neighborhood. Some of them are great.

Some are real stinkers.

Our man Brennan, of course, judges everything by his childhood and his failures, which means sometimes he misreads people and situations.

Just like the rest of us.

Truth be told, my books barely qualify as mysteries. There’s always something unknown and someone trying to uncover it, but that’s never the core of the story. These stories are about morally rigid people jammed into morally ambiguous situations, forced to make the best bad choice.

Readers tell me the books help them confront their own personal moral dilemmas. That’s good, because that’s why I write them: to remind myself what I believe. [Cheryl butting in… Quick fact. Joel’s first Phil Brennan book, I didn’t have a lot of time to read it at first when it came out. But once I got about half way into the story, I emailed Joel with some early feedback: “HOLYCRAPTHISISLIKECRACK!” and then devoured the rest of the book in short order.]

No, you won’t find any overt preaching about right and wrong. You’re a grown up. You already know.

What you will find is the vicarious experience of a good guy struggling through bad times and coming out okay in the end, even if he is a little ragged and rumpled by the process.

At the moment, anyone who signs up for my newsletter gets A Still, Small Voice free. Download it instantly. [!!!!!!!]

You’ll also get my 4 previous novels. All 5 of them. Free. You probably want to do that before I freak out and change my mind. [I’ve read all 5. You want to get them!]

Who are your favorite mystery writers? I love finding new authors to stalk. It’s how I discovered that there’s actually a mystery sub-sub-sub-genre for Wisconsin coffee shop cozies. And they’re good. (Though I live in southern Arizona now, Wisconsin is my home state, and no, we didn’t leave because of the weather. I miss the snow and I hate the heat. [See why I like Joel so much? I left the deep south for Maine to gain the snow and skedaddle out of the heat. Kindred spirits we are!] Watch for how that affects my next book.)

What was the question again? Oh, yes. Your favorite mystery author everyone should know about. Fire away.

The 5th and final book of the series is out on Amazon and I have print books on the way so I can do signed copies…unfortunately not in time for Dec 25 gifts.  But they’ll make great early 2017 gifts!

Stay tuned for a January event where I’ll be publishing a guest post on this website from friend and fellow author, Joel D Canfield.

Everyone have a safe and happy holiday season, whatever holidays you choose to celebrate.

I’ve been reading a series of posts by Steven Pressfield, and one from this week talked about the hero of his story and the hero’s muse being a cat. It’s a great read – here. With the muse (or the universe or your higher being or whatever you choose to call it) being the source of creativity, inspiration, etc, I’ve been thinking about the who or what in my life might be a representation of my muse.

Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have any earth-shattering epiphanies about that yet. Perhaps it’s the dog and his excruciatingly high-pitched squeaky tennis ball he is repeatedly crushing with his jaws as he runs around my desk while I write this.

One thing I know it is NOT… social media. This week I deep sixed my personal social media account. To do this meant sacrificing some visibitlity of these posts and info about the books because most of those friends and family on social media weren’t otherwise linked to the books’ website or fb page. Honestly that was the only reason I had the personal page in the first place.

I began noticing over the last few weeks odd things happening on my personal account that I did not appreaciate occuring by means of said social media tapping into my phone contacts and such, so I terminated the account. It’s been a rather freeing experience. I was never one to spend all my time perusing media feeds, but I certainly spent more time wasting on it than I should, especially when the time could be better spent writing.

With that distraction gone, I’m thrilled. I think by eliminating that distraction, I may have opened up another gateway of creativity. This morning a new story idea landed in my head, which is great timing since the final book of the Burnt Mountain series is written and close to being released (I know I keep saying that….sorry! Still waiting for the final book cover files to be sent to me. New cover artist = amazing work but not wicked fast).

So with a new potential story in play for a new hero, new setting, and new bad guys, I have a new project to work on in the additional free time I created by eliminating personal social media. 🙂

Image from sxc.hu

The much anticipated, at least by me, cover of the final book of the Burnt Mountain series. The new artists I worked with this round didn’t want to keep with the same font I’d been using before with my other artist, so I was open to suggestions.

I gave them an idea of what I wanted to see on the cover, so they created that and a version of their own interpretation. I ended up going with their interpretation with a few tweaks to bring over from my version. Let me know what you think of the new design. I’m liking it. A lot!