Shamus & Buster Wins Ellery Queen Readers Award
“Shamus & Buster” has claimed the top prize in this year's Ellery Queen Readers Awards.
“Shamus & Buster” is the story of a beat-up alley cat who helps solve the murder of the private investigator he calls friend and partner. It's a personally-meaningful story to me, and I'm delighted the story connected with readers to the point where they honored me with this very welcome award.
I travelled to New York City to attend the reception given by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. It was my second trip to this affair, following the third-place finish claimed by my first published story, Teddy's Favorite Thing.
This second time around was even nicer than the first, given that I now already knew several of the people there. The best part of the afternoon was spending time with fellow Readers Choice honorees David Dean and Gabriella Stiteler. Every writer receiving votes in this contest should be proud of that accomplishment -- the always-gracious David Dean told me he feels this is the most satisfactory award in our field, in large part because it is voted on by readers. It's nice that we have an awards podium, but as far as I'm concerned there's room on the top step for all of us.
We all gave brief speeches and I got to thank my cats by name, which I think qualifies as winning at life.
Later that night I was a guest of Ellery Queen at the Edgars Awards banquet, where I saw all those so-ugly-they're-pretty Edgar Allan Poe statuettes given out, including the winner for Paperback Original, a category I judged this year. The highlight of the evening was sitting between Dave Zeltserman and Alfred Hitchcock editor Linda Landrigan when Dave won the Edgar for Best Short Story. My quip to both of them: "That's as close as I'm getting to an Edgar."
My enchanted half-week in New York concluded with a tête à tête with Mrs. Met, about which I have no comment.
My thanks to Ellery Queen for publishing “Shamus & Buster,” and to the readers who voted for my soulful old street cat on this year's ballot!