I know it’s been a long time since my last post, but there’s a good reason for that. I was at the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert for a month-long field exercise. That counts as a good excuse, right?
Anyway, I returned from exile to some exciting news: My latest short-story, The Omens of a Crow, won the 2018 Watty Award The Heroes!
For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Wattys is an annual contest hosted by the reading/writing website Wattpad, who selects the best stories on the site from the pool of tales posted for the entire year. This year, 60 stories were selected to receive Watty Awards from a pool of approximately 164,000. Omens was one of them! As I mentioned before, it received an award titled The Heroes.
Here’s how Wattpad describes the award:
The Heroes
This award celebrates the stories that introduced us to characters we related to, who made us feel for them, who showed us a new way of looking at the world.
A great character stays with the reader long after the story’s done – these stories did just that. They stand out in our mind, these characters you’ve invented. They’re flesh and blood and prose. Perhaps they’re demi-gods like Percy and anti-heroes like Achilles. They have the spirit of Katniss Everdeen, Bilbo Baggins, and the Pevensies as they take on adventure, and they instill fearlessness in us like Harry, Hermione, and Ron as they charge into the unknown. Their words mean something to us. They are our enemies, our friends, and our fantasies. They are our Heroes. They are flawed and complicated, but we can’t help but love them. We celebrate your imagination and the amazing characters that you have given us!
I consider it quite an honor to have a story of mine compared to such titans as Percy Jackson, The Iliad, The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter. Makes a man like me a little woozy. (Don’t catch me if I faint. Just let me sleep. I think I’ve earned the rest).
That’s the news. Color me surprised and flattered. If you’ve yet to read The Omens of a Crow, check it out on Amazon, Smashwords, or Wattpad! And, as ever, be sure to leave a review! (Disclaimer: Omens contains mature content and is intended for an adult audience.)
Dakota Kemp 