The Dead End Follies Awards are coming soon. The ceremony will be held at an undisclosed date during the first week of December (it's gonna be a surprise) and throughout the month of November, I will scatter posts about the nominees. The winners will win absolutely nothing, but the bragging right to have won an award from an up-and-coming web site. Also, maybe a widget for your website. I'm working on it. But right now, let me introduce you to the new categories for this year. There are twelve of them. The books eligible are the books I have read in between two Awards ceremony. So far there's close to seventy of them and I will post the exact list on November 1st. Living or dead writer, famous or struggling, I don't really care. The Dead End Follies Awards are the best of my year in reading. There will be four nominees by category.
Best Novel - Self-explanatory and yet the hardest choice to make. The book that rocked me off my socks the most throughout the year. Best Novel nominees might not be eligible for lower prizes
Best Character (Male) - The characters nominated will be those I bonded the most with. The characters that made my suspension of disbelief go down in flames.
Best Character (Female) - Granted I have more of a distance with female characters, the nominees will be those characters that challenged that distance and made me forget what sex they were.
Best New Writer Discovered - I am discovering dozens of new writers every year. The nominees in this category have transformed me in a complete gung-ho fanboy.
Best Literary Novel - I'm a big fan of crime fiction, but this is a category solely reserved for the literary writers who don't like to necessarily kill people or write about meth fiends in their novels.
Best Crime Novel - The evil twin sister of the prior category. Which novel was the darkest, sickest and most twisted of them all?
Best New Book - This category is reserved to books that have been published in 2011. I have read a considerable number of them, compared to last year.
Best Series - Sometimes (more frequently in crime fiction), there are characters who survive many novels and live to tell about it. I have read a few this year and the best of them all will win this award.
Best Non-Fiction Book - I read very little non-fiction, but I do read some. Blame it on David Foster Wallace if I love to read essays so much.
Best Short Story - I have read about a gazillion of them in 2011. They are all over the web, the magazines and the anthologies. They are calling cards for young up-and-coming writers.
Funniest Book - Humor is a very tough concept in written fiction. You need a special set of skills to rock it and make people laugh at your book.
Best Book Cover - This one's a bit shallow, that's why it's going to be the first award given in the ceremony. But still what cover sold me its book best?