It's confusing when an awards competition has lots of categories. Previously we learned that Busara Road by David Hallock Sanders was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal from the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Now we hear that the novel was also a finalist in the category of General Fiction.

That's gold in the names of two great men, both of whom we respect even though they're old dead white guys. Congratulations, David!

For those too young to remember, Eric Hoffer was a sometime longshoreman and migrant worker who wrote The True Believer (1951) and other works of social/moral philosophy. Here's how Wikipedia explains a central tenet of The True Believer: "Hoffer argues that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious, social, or national, arise when large numbers of frustrated people, believing their own individual lives to be worthless or spoiled, join a movement demanding radical change. But the real attraction for this population is an escape from the self...." Um, does that sound kind of pertinent to the current era?

The powerful story of Busara Road is set in the aftermath of a bloody national conflict, the Kenyan struggle for independence. Extreme passions, left over from the war, lie hidden just beneath the society's surface, and the naive young protagonist blunders right onto them. It's a novel not for true believers, but for those with open minds.

An advance reviewer, the distinguished novelist Jacob M. Appel, compared BUSARA ROAD to the works of Barbara Kingsolver, but little did we know that the book would share an award with one of hers.

The screenshot here is from the full list of Gold Medal winners in the Nautilus Book Awards. Congrats to our author David Hallock Sanders!

As Louisa May Alcott is reputed to have said, "Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can." Definitely we read Barbara Kingsolver, and now we'll enjoy the company of her books even more.

#fiction #novels #Africa #ReadIndie

Apologies for making that image so big, but we're really excited (!!!!) that Busara Road by David Hallock Sanders has won a Gold Medal from the Nautilus Book Awards.

This is in the Fiction category for small presses. These were the criteria: "Imaginative storytelling that reflects the power and resilience of the human spirit, often involving ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances who respond to challenges with the highest aspects of human nature."

Yep, the novel is incredibly imaginative, and the protagonist responds to some big challenges with resilience.

The medal doesn't come with any actual gold, but you can add a tiny bit of remuneration to the author's account by purchasing a copy. See the book page for button links to order the paperback from various vendors.

So far the e-book is available only in Kindle format. In our past experience, there has been little interest in other e-book platforms. In the future, though, we hope to have our e-books available through Bookshop.org. And in the meantime, if you need an e-book in a different format, use the Contact page on this site to let us know; we'll be happy to accommodate you.

As part of Smashwords' "Authors Give Back" sale (an author-suggested response to the global pandemic), our two ebooks on the Smashwords platform are 60% off until April 20 [later note: offer extended through May 31]. That's Mr. Boardwalk and The Shame of What We Are, both now only $4.00.

To take advantage of this sale, go here and click on the book you want. You'll see a button "Buy with coupon," which should automatically get you the discount price.

By the way, the paperback of Busara Road, currently a finalist for two major awards, is being heavily discounted by Amazon, which thinks it has too many copies. Though we don't usually urge readers to buy from Amazon, in this case we'd love to prove them wrong.

Stay safe and read a lot!

For those disturbed by the cancellation of literary events as a result of coronavirus, here's one bit of cheer. David Sanders writes,

"I just heard again from the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Contest, and Busara Road has cleared another hurdle and been named a finalist!"

​So good things can happen to those of us who only stand and wait (and who have written great novels).

Writers will appreciate this kind of note. David Sanders has been submitting his novel Busara Road, and a screenplay based on it, to a variety of contests. Here's today's update:

"It's nice to have a day when a couple of things finally move forward. I've now just gotten word that Busara Road, as a novel, has advanced to the semifinalist round of the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Contest (was named a quarter-finalist in January)."

In the writing/publishing biz, a day when "a couple of things" move forward sounds to us like an almost miraculous event!

Those who have followed David Sanders's novel Busara Road from its earliest stages know that the road has taken many twists and turns. In one of its incarnations, the story became a screenplay, and in that form it was recently named a semifinalist in the Cinequest Screenwriting Competition.

Said the judges, "We truly enjoyed immersing ourselves in your story and getting to know the characters in your script. Our readers are so thankful for the opportunity to have read your work."

Who knows when a film will be made? Filmmakers are hard to predict. But instead of waiting for Netflix, you can read the book that Foreword Reviews called "a beautifully written, slow-burning drama that touches on devastation and collective memory, culminating in the piercing discovery that knowing the truth comes at a personal cost."
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The website Snowflakes in a Blizzard, dedicated to books that might otherwise be overlooked, features a couple of our authors this week. One is David Sanders, author of Busara Road, which we published in 2019. Click here or on the image for a link.

Another author featured is Nathaniel Popkin, whose novel Everything Is Borrowed we published in 2018. In this case the site discusses his new fiction from Open Books, The Year of the Return.

Congrats to both authors and props to Darrell Laurant, who curates the snowflakes.

In a new column, Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron comments on often-ignored aspects of the city's long construction boom. Journalists write about the grand (and not so grand) new buildings, but they have neither the space nor the time to keep track of what's been lost. "As you walk down the street," Saffron notes, "the absence of a familiar signpost will hit you out of the blue. When did that little repair shop close? What happened to all the Toynbee tiles that used to be embedded in Center City streets? Where did the guy who was always smoking on his front stoop go?" And she goes on to say that the job of tracking such subtractions has fallen to writers and poets. One of them is our author Nathaniel Popkin:

The past doesn't simply disappear, however; as Moscowitz learns, you can't just bulldoze it away. That's one theme emerging from all of Popkin's novels, as well as from his work in film and with Hidden City Philadelphia.

It took a while, but Kirkus Reviews has finally published its assessments of our two most recent books:

On HOMING: "Vividly detailed, present-tense prose … filled with adolescent angst, sadness, fears for his future, and anger at his parents.… The author has found peace, but pain and a sense of great loss permeate these pages. A thoughtful, moving account."

On BUSARA ROAD: "Sanders presents an engagingly written story with a dramatic historical underpinning.... A sensitive and vivid coming-of-age account in a compelling setting."