ReadersFavorite.com announced the winners of their 2017 awards contest yesterday. Impala won the gold medal in the General Mystery category. Here’s a screenshot from the awards page, showing Impala with its alternate cover: Impala also won first place for genre fiction in the 24th Annual Writer’s Digest competition, and received honors from Amazon.com, IndieReader, and Kirkus. The writing life can be lonely and isolating, with discouragement at every turn. So it’s nice to get some recognition now and then.

Back in April of this year, I was heading to south Florida to present at a conference at the University of Miami. By coincidence, my wife was returning from Miami just as I was packing to go. She had been visiting her father, and she said, “My dad wants a copy of Impala . Will you bring him one?” I said, “Sure.” I signed a copy of the book and tossed it into my suitcase.

Impala won first place for genre fiction in the 24th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards . They announced it in the March/April issue of the magazine. That comes on top of Amazon naming the book one of the best mystery/thrillers of the month in September, 2016, and IndieReader naming it one of the best of the year . It’s nice to get a little recognition. You can read an excerpt and find links to bookstores here.

IndieReader just published their list of the best indie books of 2016, and Impala was one of their choices. The list first appeared on The Huffington Post on December 8th. As of December 14, it’s up on IndieReader.com as well.

I just got news that Impala won first place for genre fiction in the 24th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. The genre fiction category covers all genres (mystery, thriller, sci-fi, romance, historical, etc.). The announcement and the book will appear in the March/April 2017 issue of Writer’s Digest.

In addition to Amazon.com adding _Impala_ to its list of best of the month list for September, they also added it to this week's Kindle Select 25 list. I got word yesterday that Bibliolabs and Library Journal added Impala to their Self-E Select list as one of the notable indie titles of the month. They'll help make it available through local libraries around the country. Since Kirkus also featured it in their September issue, I'm interested to see if libraries pick up the paperback.

Amazon.com released its list of the best books of September, 2016, and Impala is up there in good company with Harlan Coben, James Patterson, and Carl Hiaasen. Take a look! . And Kirkus Reviews is running a very positive review of Impala in their September 1, 2016 issue. You can read the full review at Kirkus Reviews .

My new book, Impala, was finished in May–not just the writing, but the editing, proofreading, design, and layout. I decided to have it ready four months before release so I could do some of the promotional work that traditional publishers do: get the book into the hands of reviewers, talk to bookstores and news outlets. The ebook market is quite competitive, and like the app market for smart phones, it often seems like a race to the bottom.

My new novel, Impala , is a thriller in the vein of the classic crime novels of the thirties, forties, and fifties. The best of those novels follow a pattern that goes like this: An intelligent but flawed character gets in trouble after he gives into to some desire or compulsion, like lust, greed, or revenge. He finds himself surrounded by people and powers that will not let him go. His attempts to extricate himself from his troubles only lead to deeper trouble.

Last week, I asked readers to vote on a blurb for my next book, Impala. Two thirds of the respondents favored the “Summary” blurb, which described the main character and his predicament in straight expository prose. One third preferred the “Flavor” blurb that gave a good sense of the books' style and tone, and encouraged the reader to piece together what the book was about. The readers who preferred the Summary blurb said they liked knowing what the book was about, and they’d be likely to buy it because it gave them a good sense of what the book was about, and that’s what they want to know before they read.