Shoes That Can Never Be Filled

Yesterday Spinetingler Magazine announced its nominees for the 2011 Dave Thompson Community Leader Award. To say I was shocked to wake up to posts and tweets congratulating me on my nomination is an understatement of epic proportions. It honestly wouldn’t have crossed my mind in a hundred years that Musings of an All Purpose Monkey would be in the running for such a meaningful award. And that’s not “aw, shucks” false modesty. That’s a fact. I was floored.

Even though I mentioned my nomination yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, I wanted to do so formally here on the blog today in order to pay tribute to the man the award is named after. If you’ve even dipped a toe in the crime fiction pool you are well aware of David Thompson. But for those who aren’t, David Thompson was a bookseller (Murder by the Book) and publisher (Busted Flush Press) who was a force of nature in his advocating of crime fiction books and authors. His love of crime fiction and the community surrounding it was deep, genuine, and contagious.

Tragically, David passed away unexpectedly last year. He was only 38. Spinetingler renamed the Community Leader Award in David’s honor. To get a true sense of the footprint David left on the crime fiction community visit Sarah Weinman’s blog, where she compiled a deservedly lengthy list of the tributes that poured out from every corner of the crime fiction community in David’s honor.

That the people at Spinetingler Magazine found my blog worthy of being nominated for an award named for David is both an honor and truly humbling. And I’m rubbing elbows with some amazing people, all more than representative of the community spirit that exists amongst crime fiction readers and authors. I don’t care how clichéd it sounds, this truly is an honor just to be nominated. Thank you.

Spinetingler is also giving awards in several other categories, including: Best Short Story Collection, Best Anthology, Best Crime Comic/Graphic Novel, Best Cover, Best Novel: New Voice, Best Novel: Rising Star, Best Novel: Legend, and Best Mystery/Crime Fiction Press, Publisher or Imprint. Voting in all the award categories runs April 1st through April 30th.