For six weeks now, I’ve been a finalist. A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit will forever remain as a finalist in the 2012 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition. If The Girl in the Bathtub fails to advance, it too will remain a finalist. I can live with that. That’s still quite an achievement. Last year it was a short-list finalist, a big improvement already.
Sure
I would like for it to win. Being a
runner-up sounds pretty nice, too.
Everyone who enters a competition wants to win. Starting out everyone has an equal chance in
winning. But once they announced the
finalist, only those select few who had advanced have a chance to win. I’m still in the running with The Girl in the Bathtub and that feels
pretty good.
Yes,
I’ve been checking the Faulkner-Wisdom website for updates pretty much every
day. But I also like the fact that a
decision has not been made; therefore every day, I still have a chance to win,
just like all the others finalists. Win
or lose, no one can take that away from me.
Again, there’s no downside to being a finalist. At this level, you’re locked in as a
finalist, with the potential to go higher but never lower. It’s a sure thing—I’m a finalist!
As
I wrote in an earlier blog, this year's novel competition had a record 406 full manuscript entries, of
which 14 are finalist. A third novel of mine, The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady, a recent Quarterfinalist
in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, was a short list finalist a for the second year in a row. I’m pretty proud of that, too. It wasn’t a finalist, but it was
short-listed, which meant it looked pretty good. 14 novels, including A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit, just looked better.
The
fact that both of these novels are set in Penang, Malaysia, and both
feature the same expat character, Steve Boston, though set nine years
apart, means I got something here. It means that the success of one novel
will help sell the other, possibly in a two-book deal (and before Christmas
would be rather nice—Santa, I have been good this year.)
But in the meantime, until the announcement is finally announced, I’m more than content being a finalist—that’s what we are finalist. Not a bad place to be. We can only go higher and never lower in this year’s competition. Right now that decision rests in the hands of the judge, Deborah Grosvenor, and that decision will be based on both the quality of the manuscript and bias of the judge—what she likes and doesn’t like to see when she reads manuscripts. Hopefully, she’ll see a lot of what she does like in The Girl in the Bathtub.
Update: Here are the winners and runner-ups.
But in the meantime, until the announcement is finally announced, I’m more than content being a finalist—that’s what we are finalist. Not a bad place to be. We can only go higher and never lower in this year’s competition. Right now that decision rests in the hands of the judge, Deborah Grosvenor, and that decision will be based on both the quality of the manuscript and bias of the judge—what she likes and doesn’t like to see when she reads manuscripts. Hopefully, she’ll see a lot of what she does like in The Girl in the Bathtub.
Update: Here are the winners and runner-ups.
Here are links to some
of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:
Golda
Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.
Preeta
Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day.
Chuah
Guat Eng, author of Echoes of Silence and Days
of Change.
Plus:
Five part Maugham
and Me series
Beheaded on
Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part
I
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