Awardz

For the past few months I’ve been getting pitch after pitch wanting me to read this story or that book. There have been so many I’ve lost count. I get these pitches because I’m a member of the HWA and the HWA hands out the Stoker Awards. The process is complicated, but there’s a nomination process and a voting process. The thing is, and I hate to say it, but most of these people pitching me to read their books are delusional. They have absolutely no chance in hell of winning a Stoker or any other literary award.

Now, I’d like to have a Stoker. Wouldn’t mind a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize, either. But, at least I have sense enough to know it’s not going to happen. However, all this thinking about awards has convinced me what is needed is a weird western award. The thing is, I have to figure out the details. But a weird western is never going to win a horror award or a science fiction award because they depart too far from the statistical mean, if that makes any sense. They’re too damn offbeat to win a mainstream award. There’s a lot of details of what to call it and what kind of prize to give out. I was thinking of calling it the Haakon, short for Haakon Jones, the primary character of the late Aaron B. Larson. We could give people a certificate run off on my home computer and a five dollar McDonald’s gift certificate. Then people could call themselves an award winning writer.