It Was an Honor to be Nominated

Back in March, I shared my good news about Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense getting the 2025  Derringer nomination for Best Anthology.  Then, in April, I learned that two stories in the collection had also been nominated for Best Short Story. Since the initial short story submissions are blind-judged, it really is an honor just to be nominated. Let me tell you a bit about the stories:

Skeeter’s Bar & Grill by Julie Hastrup

The story of a jilted groom wandering into a desolate bar in the Florida Keys during an impending storm. Here are the first couple of paragraphs

Rounding the bend in the road, Jim—Sarah liked to call him James—caught sight of the enormous slate-gray shelf cloud barreling toward him like an alien ship going into battle. It blotted out the sun and the last remaining shreds of happiness in his soul. His fingers brushed the chilled leather of the passenger seat, searching for his phone and the directions it held. It couldn’t be that many more miles to Key West. The slim red line on the screen’s battery icon warned him his GPS instructions were about to end.

He’d made it 420 of the 470 miles from St. Augustine, only stopping twice. Once for gas and once to use the bushes along the side of the road. His hands cramped from gripping the steering wheel like a vice for most of the last eight hours. His eyes burned from squinting into the sun. And from crying. The gurgles in his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten since last night’s rehearsal dinner. Time to pull over. But where? All the places he’d passed since leaving the mainland had been boarded up. A road trip during the forecasted storm of the season probably wasn’t the best idea. Then again, he hadn’t chosen the timing.

The other was my own story in the anthology, the story of a woman scorned looking for revenge, not because she was jilted, as Jim, the groom in Julie’s story was, but because she was overlooked. Here’s the intro:

The Last Chance Coalition by Judy Penz Sheluk

I watch Jake McFadden strut into O’Leary’s Bar & Grill with the swagger of a man who’s dabbled with the big time and likes to flaunt it. His hair, now gunmetal gray shot with strands of silver, is still thick, wavy, and carefully tousled. He’s also grown a beard, presumably to hide the sagging jowls of a man in his mid-sixties, though that presumption may be somewhat unkind.

The authors seated at the long, banquet-style table rise, their greetings effusive, and he accepts their adoration as his due. McFadden’s last “critically acclaimed” novel may have been a decade ago (in the publishing world, critically acclaimed is invariably a euphemism for poor sales), but he’s made a serious name for himself as an editor. Anthologies mostly, multi-author collections of mystery and suspense. He’s even been nominated for a Cleopatra Award for his work on Border Crossing, which is what rankles the most.

More than rankles, if I’m being honest. I mean, what sort of narcissistic egomaniac writes about nothing but his own publishing career and caps it off by including his own short story in the introduction—and not even a very good story, at that? What sort of pompous ass forgets to acknowledge the volunteer who spent countless unpaid hours vetting, formatting, and logging submissions?

Jake McFadden, that’s who.

Now, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want Larceny to win at least one of the three awards, but it didn’t. Even so, I meant it when I said it was just an honor to be nominated. Besides, there’s always next year.  And if you’re interested in finding out what happened to Jim and Jake, you can purchase Larceny & Last Chances at www.books2read.com/larceny.