Category: Novel Marathon

Best Novel Award Win Number Six!

This past July, I entered into my 15th Muskoka Novel Marathon writing challenge.

The event is a 72 hour novel writing marathon that serves as a fundraiser for adult literacy initiatives (YMCA Literacy Services) in Muskoka, Ontario. Over the years that the marathon has been held, we have raised well over $200,000.00 for literacy.

Aside from the marathon being a wonderful way to raise funds for underfunded literacy programs, it’s also an amazing haven for writers. We come together every July in Huntsville, Ontario, and…we write. For 72 hours we live together in on great big room where we write, eat, sleep, and bond. It’s an amazing experience I look forward to every year.

Unfortunately, it’s been online through Zoom since the pandemic began. Fingers crossed it will be in person next year.

I recently found out that the partial novel I wrote during the 72 hour marathon was chosen for the BEST NOVEL AWARD in the Juvenile category! This is my 6th Best Novel Award (3 for adult category and 3 for juvenile, if memory serves correctly).

The winner for the Best Novel Award in the Adult Category this year was Christine Blenkhorn, who lives in Huntsville, Ontario. This was actually Christine’s rookie year as a participant! What an amazing accomplishment.

TYLER FREEMONT WRITES A PLAY, my MG novel, brought me my 6th win! Now it’s time to complete the manuscript and beat it into submission shape, because the winning novels get sent to a publisher for consideration.

Pride Must Be A Place is one of the novels I wrote at the Muskoka Novel Marathon.

Here’s the press release announcing both the judged awards and the peer chosen awards:

MUSKOKA 411 – Muskoka Novel Marathon Celebrates Its Winners And Its Fundraising

 

LGBTQIA2 Pride – Why I Still Love PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE

5 years ago today, I received the ORANGE BANNER treatment on Amazon for my brand new young adult novel PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE! For those who don’t know, the orange banner indicates BEST SELLER. You get it when your book hits #1!

Happy 5th Anniversary of being #1, book!

It was such a moment, writing Pride Must Be A Place! I remember where I was, who I was…everything about the experience! Such a pivotal moment. What a rush!

I wrote quite a lot of it at the 72hr Muskoka Novel Marathon during the summer of 2015. A week later, Michael and I spent a week at his sister’s cottage and I wrote the remainder of the novel. We would take long walks during the day and discuss the story-line. It was a magical time I still hold dear.

Whenever a writer thinks back on a book they wrote, it’s often that time in their life that they reflect on. It makes them either love or hate their book more…the book is like a litmus test to the time in which they wrote it. That’s the way it works for me, anyway. I LOVE this book! I still love the book because it immediately brings me back to that time when I wrote it!

Desk shot – Muskoka Novel Marathon.

Click THIS LINK to visit my post about how Pride Must Be A Place is tied in with Lorraine Segato of The Parachute Club.

PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE Synopsis:

Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.

I know it won’t get to the ORANGE BANNER status again, but if you haven’t read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE…consider picking it up today! It’s good!

AMAZON USA: Pride Must Be A Place

AMAZON CANADA: Pride Must Be A Place