{"id":1240,"date":"2020-05-06T15:43:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T15:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2020-05-07T08:13:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T08:13:03","slug":"my-year-of-murder-and-mayhem-stalking-literary-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/my-year-of-murder-and-mayhem-stalking-literary-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"My Year of Murder and Mayhem \u2013 For Edgar&#8217;s Sake!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In late April, the Mystery Writers of America announced the 2019 winners of its prestigious Edgar Awards. (You can find the press release at <a href=\"http:\/\/theedgars.com\">http:\/\/theedgars.com<\/a>.) And I am now able to reveal that I played a part in the process this year: Yours Truly was a judge for the Best Fact Crime category.<\/p>\n<p>There were five of us on the panel. Starting in March, 2019, we read dozens of wildly disparate titles sent to us by hopeful publishers. By my count, 60 or so contenders arrived on my doorstep. (Several were 600-plus pages!)<\/p>\n<p>When you\u2019re tapped to be an Edgars judge, you sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement that prevents you from telling anyone about your involvement until after winners have been made public. (Previously, this has always happened at the MWA&#8217;s annual formal gala, but because of the health crisis, this year&#8217;s Big Reveal took place via Twitter.) Also, you can never, ever discuss the deliberations. By the by, there\u2019s no compensation \u2013 unless you consider the free books that piled up everywhere!<\/p>\n<p>12 months of non-stop true crime sometimes felt a bit overwhelming. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence that my dreams became very vivid, unsettling, and blood-spattered. Or that, as a result of spending so much time reading the works of others, my own writings languished! But I like to think I picked up a few ideas re: technique and delivery. And I\u2019m honored to have played a part in the mystery-crime writing world\u2019s equivalent of the Oscars! Congrats to the nominees and the winners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late April, the Mystery Writers of America announced the 2019 winners of its prestigious Edgar Awards. (You can find the press release at http:\/\/theedgars.com.) And I am now able to reveal that I played a part in the process this year: Yours Truly was a judge for the Best Fact Crime category. There were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathbroeske.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}