I have entered many writing contests over the past nine years.  I actually won a couple, have been a semi-finalist a couple of times and racked up my fair share of honourable mentions.  I even got to judge a short story competition (for the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick) earlier this year.  It was an interesting experience to be on the other side of the manuscript, although not too different from how I imagined it might be.

Writing contests can be good things for writers, in particular the cash prizes, which can range from $200 - $2,000. There's also the bragging rights, especially if it’s a prestigious contest like the CBC Literary Award, which also looks good on a resume. 

But contests have many drawbacks as well. First of all, there is the cost of entering.  I'd prefer not to think about all the money I've spent over the years.  The average entry fee can run anywhere from $10 - $30.  The best bang for your buck is with the contests put on by small literary magazines, such as the Malahat Review or Grain, because the entry fee also gets you a year's subscription to the magazine.

If you are entering a screenplay contest it can be more, although they usually have multiple deadlines: early bird, usually around $30; regular deadline - $40; late deadline - $50 and the very late - $60.  Since these are often annual contests, I would say it is probably worth your while to spend time revising your screenplay and waiting until the next early bird deadline comes around.

I think the real drawback of writing contests is the lack of feedback for the writer, especially for those starting out. I know that editors are not exactly forthcoming when it comes to commenting on the manuscripts that come across their desk (volume of submissions and lack of time being the main factors). All the same, if an editor likes something but cannot publish it for whatever reason, he/she is more likely to write a couple of encouraging sentences in their rejection. This can mean all the difference to a novice writer who is still trying to find a voice. The one exception of a contest that does offer feedback is the annual Atlantic Writing Competition sponsored by the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia.

On the whole, I believe a writer's time is better spent regularly submitting their work to magazines.  There may not be much money in it, but building up a healthy publishing history will be useful when you want to send out your first novel or story collection to book publishers.  That said, there are a few competitions designed to kick start a writing career. 

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which offers two categories, General Fiction and Young Adult, winners to be published by Penguin USA with a $15,000 advance.

Enfield & Wizenty, which offers publication and a $5,000 advance for a novel or story collection.  

The Metcalf Rooke Award, sponsored by Biblioasis, offering publication and a $1,500 advance, plus a regional tour, for a novel or story collection.

Scriptapalooza, a screenplay competition where semi-finalists and up have their scripts promoted for a full year.  

The best part is that, with the exception of Scriptapalooza, all these competitions have no entry fee.  Of course, there can be only one winner (runners-up notwithstanding).  Whichever way you decide to go: Good Luck!

Currently I am reading a book about Al-Anon called From Survival To Recovery: Growing Up In An Alcoholic Home as part of my research for a play I have been working on.  I had written two drafts of the play as a one-act and brought the last draft to a playwriting workshop with Daniel MacIvor at the Great Blue Heron Workshop in July.  Although my characters were recovering alcoholics, I hadn't done a lot of research into what recovery entailed, believing that my play was about something else entirely.  But discussions with Daniel opened my eyes to an aspect of my characters' experiences that I was overlooking.  That made me rethink what I was trying to say and brought me to the realization that I probably needed to write this as a full-length play.  It was obvious that I also needed to do some research.  

I have to admit that research does not come easily to me, although I tend to always recheck things on the Internet (facts, spelling, etc) even if I'm writing an email to a friend.  During the ten years that I was working (on-and-off) on my novel, research only occurred when I was stuck at some point.  If I was trying to describe a character's childhood in early 20th century Poland, I realized that I needed to do some surfing on the Internet to see what I could find.  Since I was writing fiction, my research was mostly to lend some kind of authenticity to my narrative.  Accuracy, on the other hand, was not necessarily guaranteed.  In my heart I always expect that if/when this novel is published, there will be a reader who takes me to task about some historical inaccuracy in my story.  Will it matter?  To some, yes, especially if they lived in Poland in the early 20th century or know someone who did.  To others, I expect (hope?) they will excuse a few factual errors if the story is compelling enough.

There are writers who do not do their own research, leaving that aspect of the work to paid assistants, unpaid spouses or (if they are famous enough) star-struck interns or students. My wife, Thelma, who also acts as my in-house tech support, webmistress and proofreader, can find her way around the world wide web much easier than I. She could probably take care of all my research needs if I asked nicely enough. Still, as inept as I am, I think it is important for me to do my own research.  Sometimes it comes as a nice respite from the uphill battle of trying to fill the blank screen.  More often than not, actively searching for something online has yielded an interesting bit of information that adds to my understanding of a character or takes their story arc in an unexpected direction. 

Most of my research takes place on the Internet, although the book I am reading came from a local library.  Even though I am going to do as much research as I can before starting the next draft of my play, I know at various points in the writing I will have to stop to check or recheck some bit of information so that I can at least restore my confidence that I know what I'm writing about.  What I once saw as continuous interruptions in the course of my writing, I now realize are lifelines cast into the murky waters of theme and subject.  The common dictum for writers is: write what you know.  But many writers (myself included) tend to write what they don't know.  We understand that if there is no journey for the writer there will be none for the reader. 

I have recently submitted two connected short stories to a magazine. The first story deals with a father-son relationship and is written in third person, past tense.  The second story deals with the son character at a crisis in his life 30 years later and is written in second person, present tense.  At the last Seawords writing workshop, Christy Ann Conlin gave us some interesting POV writing exercises, showing us how writing the same sentences with different points of view not only changes meaning, but also affects tone and style.

In the first story, third person allows me to present the POV of both father and son.  The tone is more expansive and takes in their relationship from a farther and more objective perspective.  From there I can move in a bit closer to show how one sees the other and the two characters' differences and similarities.  The story starts specifically from the father's POV, but ends with the son's, giving the story a generational arc. The ending also has a coming-of-age feel that segues well into the second story.

The second person POV of the second story makes it less obvious that we are reading about the same character.  Clues are eventually dropped that identify the character (his name doesn't come up until about halfway).  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the second person POV can be used as first person once removed, which is the case here. The effect is meant to be disturbing (confirmed to me by the reaction of some of my fellow workshoppers) and to emphasize the character's personal crisis: his feeling of disassociation from his own life. He has a bizarre experience with a ringing pay phone, where the person on the other line (a distressed woman speaking Yiddish) does not seem to hear him. This incident is used to play around with the idea of disassociation, almost turning the tables on him, and, ironically, connects with him on a deep emotional level.

I'm hoping that the magazine will accept either story, as they stand well enough on their own. But in a perfect world the editor would accept both stories and publish them back to back in the same issue.  The probability of that is very slim, but maybe I'll catch a break and the editor and I will share the same POV and be on the same page, so to speak.

Of the five members in my immediate family,  only my sister and I are alive.  She lives in England and I on PEI.  Those passed on also lived and are now buried in different areas. My mother in Montreal (before her death she and I lived for a short time in Scotland and were supposed to eventually settle in London), my father in North Carolina (where my step-sister lives, although he last lived in Florida) and my brother in New Jersey (although he spent the last years of his life in Las Vegas).  Recently I have come to feel that this geographically scattered family history, more than anything else, connects me to my Jewish identity -- something I never gave much thought to before I moved to PEI in May 2001.

I suppose it began when Thelma and I first moved to the Island.  We were in Charlottetown looking around inside a store (can't remember the name) that had various home items and quaint bric-a-brac.  There Thelma found a rather handsome menorah and purchased it.  I had not lit Hannukkah candles for many years, but we started a tradition of doing so that December.  Thelma, who is not Jewish, quickly added such Jewish fare as latkes, rugelah and kasha varnishkes to her already considerable culinary repertoire.  Later on, when we visited Royal Glass Design in Stratford, PEI, which creates a lovely collection of Judaica, we purchased a beautiful glass mezuzah to affix to our door post as a wedding present to ourselves. On a visit to Montreal I purchased the requisite parchment, which must be inserted in the mezuzah in order to give it the power to keep out evil spirits.

But what I think really forced me to think about my Jewish identity was the fact that PEI has no synagogue (the nearest temple of worship being in Moncton).  I hadn't set foot in a shul since my bar mitzvah, roughly 30 years earlier, and had never shown any inclination to during the whole time I lived in Montreal and Toronto.  Add to that the difficulty of purchasing Hannukkah candles and even a decent box of matzo on PEI, despite the diverse ethnic products to be found in the Atlantic Superstores.  Thankfully, one can purchase Montreal bagels at Brighton Clover Farm in Charlottetown.  

I eventually did discover that there is a good-sized Jewish community across the Island, whose members take turns celebrating the Jewish holidays at each other's houses.  Although I have received invitations to join these celebrations, I have never done so.  Interestingly, when I attended the Jewish Literary Festival in Hamilton, Ontario last year, I did go to a shabbos service in a shul, and felt a strong sense of community there.  That seemed to disappear soon after I left Hamilton, so my Jewishness seems to have a mind of its own and makes its presence felt whenever it pleases.  

The real paradox about living in PEI is that my status as being "from away" is what makes me feel at home here.  A sense of belonging and not belonging at the same time.  In the depths of my convoluted imagination I can imagine PEI as being my very own Promised Land.  Maybe I connect the Island's "redness" to the literary tradition of portraying Jews as having red hair (watch out Anne Shirley!).  I expect this concept will find its way into my fiction sooner or later.  As for my own private Diaspora, my sister's final resting place will no doubt be somewhere in England. And mine... well, I have my eye on a few places.  I like to think there's still plenty of time to make a decision.

Writing workshops, for the most part, are lovely week-long bubbles, basically summer camps for writers.  For me in particular they have been havens where I can get away from the soul-crushing realities of trying to carve out a career from something I do for love.  Paradoxically, they have also been places where I have made useful contacts as well as lasting friendships.

The Seawords workshop in Charlottetown, aside from having fine writing instructors, also boasts sessions with a bona fide literary agent all the way from Toronto.  Jackie Kaiser from Westwood Creative Artists was the resident agent at both Seawords workshops, counseling writers on the vagaries of getting published in the real world.  The irony that her sobering perspective of the business side of the writing game was available to us in PEI put a smile on my face.  You see, according to Jackie, admitting you live on the "gentle island" is enough to turn off any agent or publisher in Toronto.  I can confirm this with my own brief experience of being represented by an agent, who informed me that I lacked a Toronto presence (despite my considerable Internet presence, which seems to be de rigeur  for writers these days). 

The question that keeps popping up in my mind is to what degree should a workshop maintain its innocence and be only about the writing rather than the career?  Jackie worried that her honest and often bleak portrayal of the book industry, such as it is these days, was casting a pall on the overall good vibes of the workshop. On the other hand, her critiques of the query letters that some of us submitted addressed both writing skills and career aspirations. In general, I felt that having access to her brand of expertise proved to be invaluable.  Her presence, as far as I'm concerned, set the Seawords experience apart from other workshops.  

I assume that most of my fellow participants felt the same way, but it is also important to realize that not everyone who attends writing workshops is necessarily interested in a writing career.  Many already have other careers. I have met many doctors, teachers and, on one occasion, a minister.  Others are just there to satisfy their own curiosity about writing.  For those who want to network with professionals, there are many seminars and literary festivals specifically designed for that purpose.  At Word On The Street in Halifax I participated in an event called Pitch The Publisher, where writers can pitch their book ideas to a panel of publishers.  Opportunities abound for those who are seeking them.

The best one can do is to respect the overall spirit of whatever workshop one is attending.  There's usually something for everyone.

The writing life, for many of its practitioners, is a matter of either feast or famine.  Lately I've had a taste of the feast by being long-listed for a ReLit Award, making it to the semifinals in Scriptapalooza and becoming accepted in a mentorship program.  That, of course, doesn't stop the rejection emails from coming in to keep me grounded.  In my last post I mentioned the sound poetry group The Four Horsemen, which reminded me of the first rejection letter I ever received.  That's because it was from former Horseman, the late bp nichol. 

It was 1983 and I had just made my first attempt at prose.  It had started off as a memoir about a part of my childhood spent in Glasgow, Scotland. As I wrote, I realized there was much I couldn't remember and so I just made up stuff to fill in the blanks, thus my first piece of fiction was born.  I had recently read Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje and decided to adopt his prose style, which consisted of oddly broken sentences.  My version of that style didn't look or feel like any kind of short story I had ever seen. In fact I was too embarrassed to think of it as a story at all, so I sent it to magazines as a prose poem.  I didn't even know what a prose poem was. I thought it was something I just invented.  I sent it out with a few other more conventional poems to a few different magazines (knowing nothing about the protocol of submitting).  

What I received was a hand-written (and signed) rejection letter from bp nichol (whom I had heard of).  He was guest-editing the next edition of Poetry Toronto. He didn't like any of the other poems I submitted, but was quite impressed with Glasgow and praised it highly.  Unfortunately, he felt he couldn't publish a piece of prose (poem or not) in the magazine and wished me good luck.  I still have the letter to this day and will always cherish it.  In retrospect, this was my initiation into being a real writer.  I have received quite a number of rejection letters and emails praising the quality of my submission and rejecting it for publication, often in the same sentence.  Like many writers, I have a file of rejection and acceptance letters (I have long since stopped saving them) that I look through now and then.  

They say you have to develop a thick skin to deal with the constant rejection.  Maybe so, but it still sometimes stings, even after all this time. Rejection always seemed to be part of some kind of test to see how serious I was about being a writer.  My remedy for rejection is to look at what I had submitted, make any changes that I deemed appropriate, then send it out again, preferably that same day. I have to confess that I'm a bit of a submission junkie. It's those rare acceptance emails that give me something I obviously crave (acceptance, I guess). The actual publication often feels like an anticlimax. It is also good to view submitting your work as merely a part of the ebb and flow of the creative process, with rejection being a necessary phase of the turning tide.  Look who's getting all philosophical now.

By the way, that prose poem, Glasgow, was eventually published in the Malahat Review. My very first professional publication. They paid me $25.  I later realized that if I had had the guts to submit it as a piece of fiction I would have been paid more. Live and learn. Of course they never accepted anything I have submitted to them since.

The other day we were in the car listening to Lady Gaga's excellent song Bad Romance and its nonsense intro "Rah rah, ah, ah, ah, Gaga, ooh la la" (my favorite part of the song) got me to thinking about the fine tradition of nonsense lyrics in popular songs.  Whether it's Sinatra crooning “scooby dooby doo” or Sting crowing “da do do do de da da da”, words without meaning seem to tell us more about our language than anything Noah Webster could have catalogued.

In the fifties nonsense lyrics were a language unto themselves. I remember seeing a clip of Steve Allen, when he hosted the Tonight Show, reciting the lyrics to Be Bop A Lula in an effort to show how low the craft of lyric writing had sunk.  A prolific composer himself, Allen obviously had a personal axe to grind.  And yet, to my young ears, it sounded like a new kind of hipster poetry (Allen also famously played piano behind Jack Kerouac's poetry recitations).

Literature has a great tradition of nonsense with Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, to name the most obvious.  I remember reading an interview with the poet W. S. Merwin where he talked about making up words in his poems, such as the verb "spartle", which I believe is similar to scurry. Personally I link my own fascination with nonsense words to my fascination with poetry, in particular the mystery of meaning. The problem that the general public seems to have with poetry is that they don't understand it.  In school it is taught to them like some kind of math problem that they have to figure out (or at least it was in my day). But my own love affair with poetry came about because I didn't necessarily understand what the poet was trying to say, yet the poems seemed to speak to me on a higher (or perhaps lower?) level than mere meaning.  Dylan Thomas (my favorite poet) was often criticized that his poems had more music than meaning.  I wonder if any composer (maybe Wagner?) was ever told that their compositions had more meaning than music?

Another good example is sound poetry. My only exposure to it was hearing a recording of the Four Horsemen (bp nichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton, Rafael Barreto-Rivera), but it opened up my ears to the possibilities of nonsense and how the language can be stretched into a different kind of meaning. When I attempt to write poetry, which I don't do often enough, I try to connect to a part of myself that needs to express something beyond words, similar to a musician, I suppose, but using words. Maybe I should start to develop a nonsensical vocabulary.  There is already such a rich tradition to draw from whether it be The Four Horsemen or Lady Gaga.

Apropos to a previous post about my decision to stop participating in workshops, I have been named as a mentor in the PEI Writers' Guild's 2010 Mentorship Program. I submitted my name to the program with the belief that seven years of taking writing workshops (and of course my writing and publishing history) has equipped me with enough understanding of the writing process and hard-won wisdom to pass on to a young writer.  

Naturally this has given me pause to reflect on all the writing instructors I've encountered over the years.  My first was Richard Cumyn, an excellent fiction writer with a new collection (The Young In Their Country published by Enfield & Wizenty) coming out soon.  It was Richard who once demonstrated to me the hard work of revision by cutting 1,200 words from one of my stories (I had already cut out 800).  It was a harsh lesson (which Richard recently told me he feels bad about), but it helped me to see the difficult choices I was expected to make if I wanted to be a serious writer.  By the way, I never felt Richard was being purposely hurtful, but rather an agent of integrity, and that he believed in me enough to not treat me with kid gloves.  

Another fine mentor was Anne Simpson, with whom I workshopped poetry and fiction (she being equally accomplished in both disciplines). Anne had a way of lighting a fire under me that gave my workshop experiences a real sense of urgency.  When I brought her a few poems, she immediately zeroed in on one that she felt was almost there and gave me some interesting suggestions to improve it.  Then she told me I had to work on it that evening so it would be ready for me to read publicly the next night.  When I brought her a short story written in third person, she talked about using second-person in poetry and how it could bring a new perspective to fiction.  Her explanation that second person was merely first person once removed gave me a whole new perspective on the story.  Anne always pushed me to push myself harder, for which I am grateful.

There are other mentors I could name: Anne Compton and Sue Sinclair for poetry, Alistair MacLeod for fiction (twice!), Daniel MacIvor for playwrighting. All my mentors gave me the benefit of their unique talents and experience, but their most important gift was the spirit of generosity. I always felt as if they were treating me like one of their own, a member of the tribe.  If I can pass that much on to whomever I mentor, I'll consider my work done.

The latest post in my friend Carin Makuz's fine blog Matilda Magtree deals with the subject of how and where we sit when we write.  It's an interesting question.  Some writers thrive while seated on something hard like a kitchen chair or a wooden stool. I suppose the austerity of such a seat helps them focus their thoughts.

Others, like myself, figure if they are going to spend so much time at their keyboards, they might as well be as comfortable as possible.  I have two chairs in my office: a comfortable office chair at my desk and an armchair that flips back with an extending foot support.  Any chiropractor would most likely be horrified to see how I settle into the armchair in an almost supine position, with my lap top balanced between my abdomen and thighs.  I know it's a bad habit, but I feel relaxed.

This is where I normally surf the web, write emails, do crossword puzzles, etc, while the office chair is where I do more focused writing (such as this blog post), fiction, poetry, revisions, etc.  But it isn't a hard and fast rule. Depending on my mood, I might feel that spreading out in the armchair is more conducive to typing the first draft of a story or revising the umpteenth draft of a poem that's been fermenting in my hard drive for months.

And even when I'm in my office chair, I'm not necessarily sitting erect. Like my friend Carin, I often sit with my legs crossed or with one leg tucked stork-like under mon derriere.  Which begs the question, how do these various positions affect the creative process?  I tried sitting on an exercise ball once and all I could concentrate on was the ache in the small of my back.  I expect if I gave it a week or so the pain would have gone away and I would be happily balancing on it, to the benefit of my posture, while deathless prose rippled effortlessly from my fingers (as if that ever happens).

Many writers, due to severe back problems, write while standing. I like that idea, except for the fact that I often pace around the house or go for a walk while I'm thinking of something. If I stood while typing, I assume I would fall into a natural rhythm of walking away and returning to the keyboard. Would this reduce or increase my output? I guess I'll have to try it some time.

So, what's your position on writing positions?

By far the greatest challenge for writers is to describe a larger work such as a novel or feature-length screenplay in a synopsis. As anyone in the publishing world or film industry will tell you, it is an art form unto itself and takes almost as much work as the thing it is describing.  I have just uploaded my screenplay for Fatted Calf Blues on the Inktip web site where, for $60 (USD), it will sit for six months in hopes of attracting a producer or agent or manager.

But before I could upload the script, I had to come up with a log line, one or two sentences that encapsulate the story in such a way as to make the prospective producer want to read the - Outline!  That has to be no more than a page and must tell the story in more detail, but not so much as to confuse them, because the outline will become the essence of their "pitch" to backers.

First off, I have to give props to my new pal, Patti Larsen, first for steering me toward Inktip and for giving me some valuable help on my log line. The cool thing about Inktip is that I can check in and see how many people have read my log line and outline.  Every six months I have the chance to rework my log line so as to attract more readers.

As for my outline, well, it looked good to me. My wife also thought it was good (and I value her opinion). Inktip (and other film insiders) suggest showing it to as many people as possible, just to see if it is a coherent story. Distilling a 100 page screenplay into a single page, as much of a pain in the ass as it is, can be quite beneficial to a writer, as you get to see the essence of what you have written. If you are lucky enough to get a meeting with a producer, you will have to "pitch" your story in no more than ten minutes. That's about one page worth of story with a minute or two to spare.  It's good practice.

And I get to do it all again with my novel.  At this past Seawords workshop, Toronto literary agent Jackie Kaiser critiqued query letters that we submitted before the workshop.  A query letter, either to a publisher or agent, must have an introduction, a synopsis of a few paragraphs and a bio.  The letter can be no more than one page, although two is acceptable.  The introduction and bio are easy (for me anyway). It's the synopsis that is killer.  My novel is 370 pages long and I get a measly three or four paragraphs to wow the prospective publisher.  During my personal writing time I revised (and revised and revised) my query letter, and was very lucky to have Jackie look at it. She sent me a marked-up copy and now I will be working on that.

A 370 page novel in a few paragraphs. Distill my beating heart?  Maybe I should have titled this post "Abridged Too Far."

As anyone who has read my blog (you are out there aren't you?) knows, I do a lot of workshops.  I have been averaging two a year since 2004. That's a lot of workshops. I believe they are worth doing for many reasons: you get a chance to improve a piece of writing; you meet writers and make many useful contacts; you get to spend the week in a lovely literary bubble, etc.

If you’ve attended a workshop then you’ll know that they are basically summer camp for writers, but I have come to think of them as being my education.  In July I attended my sixth consecutive Great Blue Heron Workshop, where I received the Ultimate Participant Extreme Writer Award.  I was greatly touched. It is the closest I will ever come to receiving some kind of diploma.

And so I have come to the decision that I am graduating from the world of writing workshops. It's not a particularly easy decision. I know that when I receive the brochure for the 2011 GBH and it says that Michael Ondaatje (or whoever) will be giving a workshop, I will be quivering inside and ready to send my application in. But I won't.

Instead, I have been looking for opportunities to impart some of my hard-won wisdom to beginning writers. I have submitted my name to an upcoming mentorship program here on PEI and applied for a writer-in-residence opening that will be coming up in Newfoundland. I have no idea whether I'm actually qualified for either of these positions or if I will get them, but it feels as if I have turned a corner in my life as a writer and this is a new path I should at least try to follow. We'll see where it leads me.

Because of my status in the Scriptapalooza competition, I’m also exploring other avenues of getting my Fatted Calf Blues screenplay read. One of these is Inktip, a website where you can upload a screenplay to be read by producers. I am still investigating how to make this website work for me, so I’ll post more as I learn about it.

It's been a while since I last posted.  In fact, since last year I have been quite derelict in my blogging duties, which I plan to rectify.  But I also promised myself that I will keep things short and sweet (or acerbic, as the mood strikes me).

Did two workshops this year.  In July it was the Great Blue Heron in Antigonish, where I did a playwriting workshop with Daniel MacIvor.  I took a one-act play called Hair Of The Dog, which is about a fifty-something recovering alcoholic who decides to have a bar mitzvah as a way of connecting to a higher power.  By the end of the week I realized that I needed to expand it into a full-length play, so that is what I will be doing for the rest of the year.  

In July I attended the Seawords workshop here on PEI.  My instructor was Christy Ann Conlin, with whom I got on like the proverbial house on fire (apt because her partner, James, is a volunteer firefighter).  We had a great group and I made some friendships that I think will last well beyond the workshop.  The other instructor was Erika Ritter, who I also got to know a bit. A funny and engaging woman, I look forward to staying in touch with her.

I will have more to say about both these workshops in future posts.

There has been some eventful writing news as well.  My screenplay adaptation of my novella Fatted Calf Blues is a Top 100 Semifinalist in the Scriptapalooza competition.  Although it did not advance further, the good news is that all the screenplays, from semifinalists up, will be promoted for the next year by Scriptapalooza.  I assume they will get sent around to film industry insiders in LA, which makes this competition unique.

The other huge news is that my book Fatted Calf Blues has been long-listed for the ReLit Awards, which are specifically for books published by small presses. It was a shock to see my book on the list because it came out in April 2009 and I assumed it would have been eligible for the 2009 awards.  When it wasn't on that list I just assumed it had been passed over and that was that. So, even if it doesn't go further than this I'm pretty happy that the book got some recognition a year and half after being released.