Oh, me of little faith.
If you are a regular reader of this little blog (and if you’re not, what’s the problem? Aren’t I pretty enough? Don’t I make you laugh? Am I a clown?), you know that I have entered into Killer Nashville’s Claymore Award four years in a row. It’s an award for the first 50 pages of an unpublished novel. You know what happened in 2023, 2024, and 2025. As in, close but no cigar.
And yet I keep entering. This year I submitted a novel, “Cleopatra’s Tomb,” about a woman archeologist who thinks she’s found the elusive site where the Queen of the Nile hid her burial monument from those pesky Romans. Unlike other years, though, I had not completed this novel before submitting.
In fact, I ran into a roadblock in the writing. I had her stuck just as the local authorities came to the dig. I finally had a breakthrough just before leaving for Nashville for the festivities.
Indeed, I debated even going to Nashville this year. It costs me $2000, between the airline tickets, the rental car, the hotel, and the meals. Now that I am semi-retired, I’m not so quick to spend the cash. (I gotta save some to travel Christmas to see the grandkids and my son in Alabama).
Then I get an email from Killer Nashville. Hey, you’re nominated in the Action/Adventure category. Aren’t you coming to the awards dinner?
I thought this was a perfunctory email trying to get people to attend. Then I got a second email from Clay Stafford, the man who runs the event. Buddy, aren’t you coming to the Awards Dinner? YOu’re nominated, you know.
Years ago I acted with a small theatre group, The Ferndale Repertory. I had a substantial role in On Golden Pond as the mailman who is in love with the daughter of the main characters. I did real well–even adopted a Maine accent for the role. But I’d been working with them for five years. Nothing special.
They had an awards dinner every year when they handed out pseudo-oscars for things like Best Character Actor. Usually, I was working on the night of the dinner. But this one year I got no less than four telephone calls from the Rep, including one from the Artistic Director himself, asking why I wasn’t going to the Dinner. So I went, and I won the Character Actor award. Turns out, they wanted me to be there to accept.
So I had this Deja Vu when Clay emailed me asking why I hadn’t signed up yet for the Killer Nashville dinner. I went ahead and made arrangements to fly to Nashville, to attend the Saturday of the conference, to show for the dinner of questionable chicken.
But I convinced myself I wouldn’t win. Me? Really? No way. I’m already a three-time loser, whose humorous novel The Return of Edsel Eddie lost in 2024 to something called The Queen of Granny Lit. And no, neither of those novels have ever been published.
So when the Action/Adventure for the Claymore was to be announced, I took a deep breath and prepared myself to lose graciously. I had not worn a suit to the dinner. Since I knew I was going to lose, I wore a vintage hockey shirt for the Tallahassee Tiger Sharks. I think it’s a cool shirt.
This year they decided to torture us by naming the second and first runner up. Oh well, I thought, I might get one of those. But no, they announced the runners up and I was shut out. Sigh.
Then Clay named the winner of the 2026 Claymore for Action/Adventure: Cleopatra’s Tomb.
I was so stunned that it took me a few seconds to realize I needed to go up on stage and accept the award. Which I did, hockey shirt and all. You can see the video of this (at 6:08 of the video) where I walk up stunned but ready with a few corny jokes. And yes, Clay actually liked the hockey shirt.
Afterward no agent or publisher came up to talk to me, sadly. However, in getting a nice amber beer at the hotel bar when the dinner was done, I fell in with two writers who are going to start their own imprint as publishers. So they agreed to look at Cleopatra’s Tomb as well as the first Minerva James novel, The Trial of Mars. They even took the picture above of me holding the Claymore, which is transparent, but you can see it if you squing.
Will it turn into anything? My blog fans, You will be the first to know.
Mark Bruce, Writer 