Servant of a Dark God

I’m totally blown away. No way. NO FREAKING WAY. No way.

Servant of a Dark God just won the Whitney award for speculative fiction. Look who the others were in the category–three New York Times best sellers and a book that had something like 11 or 12 printings in Europe before coming to the US. Holy crap. I’m thrilled the academy voters liked it so much.  

Servant of a Dark God by John Brown	The Maze Runner by James Dashner	Wings by Aprilynne Pike	Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson	I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

When I informed the academy president, Robinson Wells, I couldn’t come, he asked if I had a speech should I win. There was no way I was winning. So I was like, yeah, whatever. So I wrote him this:

Yeah, like that’s going to happen (grin). But should something go wrong with the chads, you can simply say that “John told me if he won, that would mean the events in Revelations were probably upon us, and he’d be headed to his father-in-law’s underground bunker with his wife who was the brains behind the whole operation. He’s thrilled so many of you liked his story enough to vote for it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But he’s also sad that you’ll all be toast before Fox News airs at 9 PM.”

Holy, heck. I’d better get to that bunker.

Here are the other categories and winners:

• Best Romance: Counting the Cost by Liz Adair 
• Best Mystery/Suspense: Methods of Madness by Stephanie Black (absolutely love the cover)
• Best Youth Fiction:  The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
• Best Speculative Fiction: Servant of a Dark God by John Brown
• Best Historical: The Last Waltz by G.G. Vandagriff
• Best General Fiction: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
• Best Novel by a New Author: I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells and Gravity vs. The Girl by Riley Noehren (it was a tie, obviously)
• Best Novel of the Year: In The Company of Angels by David Farland

Of course, you had to have read all the books in a category to vote on them. You can see the finalists in each category here. So while Farland’s book didn’t win in his category (I”m assuming with the hard core historical fans), it did win with those who read every finalist.  Same with Dan Wells. So what this tells me is that depending on the cross-section of voters a lot of us could have been winners. I’m just happy I got the cross-section I did–ye speculative nut jobs 🙂 Hooray for the Whitneys!!

Yea! Thanks to those of you who nominated. The judges have chosen Servant of a Dark God as a Whitney Award finalist. Of course, the four other books in the category are great. Here’s the list of finalists in my category:

Check out all finalists in all categories here. If you click on the Whitney Academy link on the top of that site, you’ll see all the folks who will be voting on the finalists.