YA Edgar Award Winner Review - Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher

The Edgar Awards are given annually by the Mystery Writer's of America, which is a professional mystery/crime fiction writer's organization. Last year, I fell in love with an also nominated Emily Dickinson's Dress and Other Missing Stuff. That book lost to Verity. Okay, great book but I still loved the small press EDOMS more. :-) This year, Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher won the YA category.

From what I can see reading the other reviews, you either love this or you don't. I would have come down with a 4.5 rating.

Title: Love it.    

Interesting premise: young UK girl dealing with first love confusion and then guilt over a death begins writing to a death row inmate in Texas. That's cool. I like it a lot. it plays with the time line so you obtain memories from the letters as well as current action--that's cool and well done. Toss in the nice little subplots: a professional dad out of work and a guilt ridden stay at home mom over an incident involving their youngest deaf daughter, two brothers that fall for the same girl; the dead boy's mom trying to figure out how to cope and how her son died, another sister who is being bullied but isn't--those are nifty too. OK--maybe she over did the sub-threads.

Negatives: Although the young girl's voice is age appropriate, it rattles apart at various times. That was disappointing. She comes across as far too mature in some relationships (siblings) and far too immature in the romance triangle.

Mixed feelings: The inmate on death row is kinda important, but we miss his input since he's doesn't reply. As his death date arrives, I didn't feel it was tied into the story to bring about any resolution on the MC's part. That left me disappointed, and you don't want to disappoint your reader.

My ultimate guess? I'm probably going to fall in love with one of the other nominations like I did last year.

Professional Writing Associations

I've been a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) for several years. Their advice and mentoring has been invaluable. With the signing of the two book YA contemporary crime fiction, a new world has opened up.

I've joined the Mystery Writers of America, and I've now applied to International Thriller Writers. I'm amazed at the membership benefits. I can't wait to take a comprehensive class with the ITW, but it will have to wait until next year. Maybe one day, I can help teach one.

This year, I'm slated for a master's class with author Jim Butcher this May, a second weekend class with Brett Anthony Johnston from Harvard at the University of Iowa's Summer Writer's Festival in July, and then I lucked out with a late opening lottery attendance spot for my second visit to the Writer's Police Academy in September. An MFA would be nice, but this year continues my alternative route to becoming the best I can be.

In the future, my transportation funds will go to promotion, but this year feels like a grand jewel for raising my writing skills and building that every growing writer's toolbox.

There is one organization that I want to add, but I've not yet to qualify--the Science Fiction Writer's of America (SFWA). Maybe I'll find time this year to also shop one of my SciFi short stories...