Awards

Or, Icing on the Cake

I don’t know any writer who writes for awards.

Writers write for various reasons. One of the best reasons is for money. Writing a good short story ain’t easy. Writing a good novel can be torture. Weeks or months or years spent with your butt in the chair, grinding out paragraph after paragraph, page after page.

Yes, there’s a certain enjoyment to coming up with an original turn of phrase, landing on the perfect line to show a character’s personality, inventing clever dialogue. But in between those moments there’s a lot of hard work involved.

Me? I do it because I have to. Because I get stories and characters in my head and they won’t shut up until I put them down in words, and once I’ve done that I like to get them published. Also, I need the money, such as it is.

I won’t say I don’t like getting praise from readers, from fellow writers, from reviews on websites and magazines, and from anonymous online reviews. And I don’t object to awards, when they come. But I don’t write stuff hoping to get them. They’re a fringe benefit, like when you have a job and you get a paycheck and health insurance and sometimes, if you need it, you can get something like a discount on a rental car. Awards are the discount on the rental car of life. Nice, but you can’t eat it.

I’ve been lucky enough to collect a few, and they look nifty on the shelves. And they’re not just little doodads that look cool, they’re recognition by peers that I’ve done my job well. That’s what makes them meaningful.

I bring this up now because I just got the latest one in the mail. It’s a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, which is pretty much the most prestigious award in the Western writing business. But I didn’t get it for writing, I got it for publishing.

What I didn’t know before was that if a story or a book wins a Spur Award, the publisher of that work also gets a Spur Award. I edited and published an anthology of Western fiction for Silverado Press, a micropress run by myself and Howard Weinstein, called Silverado Press Presents: Western Stories by Today’s Top Writers, Volume 1. And one of the stories in that book, Vonn McKee’s “Point of Impact,” won the 2026 Spur Award for best short story. As the publisher, I also get a Spur, and it’s pretty spiffy. It’s a genuine spur mounted on a plaque. The rowel actually spins and there are nifty silver decorations on the side, and it’s just an impressive piece of work. I need to find a good spot on my walls for it. Below are two views of it:

Here are a couple of shelves of the bookcase that’s entirely filled with works by Marcy and/or me. It’s where I keep the trophy-type awards I’ve won (among other things, obviously).

And closer views of some of those. This one’s my first Scribe Award, presented by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. Thirty Days of Night: Rumors of the Undead was a collaboration with Steve Niles, based on a comic series he wrote. The basic outline was his, but I adapted the outline and wrote the entire first draft. He went over that and made a few tweaks, then I went over it and made some more. So maybe it counts as half of a Scribe Award, though I did about 90% of the actual work on the book.

I’ve won three other Scribes for books I wrote on my own. One of them looks just like the one above, but is for the novel Las Vegas: High Stakes Game. The other two, below, have very different designs. The first is for CSI: Brass in Pocket, and the second is for Narcos: The Jaguar’s Claw.

This is the Inkpot Award, kind of a lifetime achievement award presented by the San Diego Comic-Con to several people every year. This one says:

The Inkpot Award for Achievement in Fantasy/Science Fiction

Jeff Mariotte

Comic-Con International 2013

Recipients of the Inkpot also get a spotlight panel at Comic-Con (in mine, I was interviewed by author/actress Amber Benson), and a “Golden Ticket” admitting them and immediate family members to Comic-Con for life.

Finally, the Wild Bunch Film Festival Award was presented for “Best Action/Adventure Manuscript for my Western novel O’Meara’s Gold, book two in my Cody Cavanaugh traditional western trilogy.

An award not pictured here is 1/3 of a Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Mysterious Galaxy, the bookstore I co-owned, for “Outstanding Achievement in the Mystery Field Outside the Realm of Creative Writing.” I also earned 1/100th of an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, for an essay about Jeffery Deaver’s novel The Bone Collector, contained in the book Thrillers: 100 Must Reads.

I’ve been a finalist for several other awards, which counts in prestige but not in fancy trophies. My Western novella Byrd’s Luck was a finalist for both the Spur Award and the Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers organization. Blood and Gold: The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta, a novel I wrote with Peter Murrieta, was also a finalist for the Peacemaker Award. I’m a two-time finalist for the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association, for the novel Witch Season: Fall and the comic book series Desperadoes, Quiet of the Grave. That Desperadoes series was also a finalist for the International Horror Guild Award. My biographical graphic novel Presidential Material: Barack Obama was a finalist for the Glyph Award in the categories of Story of the Year and Best Writer. And the audiobook version of my novel Spider-Man: Requiem was a finalist for Best Audiobook in the Tripwire Awards.

Typically, finalists get a certificate, if that—nothing fancy like a trophy. I’ve misplaced some of mine, though I’m guessing they’re somewhere in the garage. I really should frame them someday.

I don’t write for awards, but they’re nice when they happen. Knowing that something I’ve written has touched somebody is a great feeling.