Winners of Page Turner Awards for Best Genre Winner (Young Adult) and a Writing Award for Best Written Genre (Children’s Chapter Books), 2024

As a kid, I had a box crammed full of hoof-oil-stained red, blue, and yellow rosettes, a few shiny cups and an envelope stuffed with prize money from horse shows and gymkhanas. I also won twenty quid for the high-flying ‘Best Waitress’ prize in Pizzaland in Leicester when I was about 14 (before being sacked for being underage). More prestigious was the Georgette Donchin Memorial Prize for an essay on Dostoevsky when I was studying Russian at university. Other than that, I’ve not won much else. The fish from the fair always died.

Writing can be a thankless task. We write because we love it and often hate it. It is an expression of art, an expression of us. Like painting, it can reflect the world around us and/or the world within us. Unlike painting, it can take months. Even years. Even longer. Some people write because they want to make sense of the world we live in or have lived in; others do so to make sense of themselves and their lives, past, present, and future. Or others’ lives. Whichever, it is a lonely journey and one that is often not recognised. Are we wasting our time? Self-doubt is a constant companion to writers. There are more than enough books in the world. But we keep on writing because that is what we do. And so we should because each voice and each life is unique.

Every so often, but not often enough, I send work to writing competitions, and sometimes I get nice feedback, but I have never received an award, or won. Back in the last century, I had an agent, and she used to submit my manuscripts to the big publishers, but we never had any luck. The Trials of Tricia Blake was hummed and hawed upon but finally rejected. The same with A Divine War. The Strange Tale of Comrade Rublov was about to be published by Hollow Hills, but the company decided to close its doors on the day of publication. That was when I decided to set up my own publishing company. But publishing was harder than I thought, and after several years, Montanha Books and I suffered the same fate as Hollow Hills. But I keep writing because that is what I do.

I can’t remember how I came across the Page Turner Awards, but I entered last year and, as far as I know, didn’t win anything. This year, I tried again with different books. It is a hefty entry fee, and I was a little dubious, but last week, I received notification that I had won the Young Adult Genre Book Award for The Trials of Tricia Blake and the Genre Winner Writing Award for Children’s Chapter Books for my still unpublished The Entelodont’s Skull, Book 2, The Magic Campervan. I’m not sure how amazing it is—it is certainly not the Booker or the Bridport and the fact is l won more as the best waitress—but does it matter, I wonder? They are a business, so is publishing, and my work was read and enjoyed by judges and other writers. That is great. What is amazing is that The Trials of Tricia Blake was almost my first novel (‘almost’ because I started it soon after being sacked from Pizzaland and finished it some fifteen years later after completing my MA), and The Entelodont’s Skull is my latest. Tricia Blake is gritty realism, and The Magic Campervan Books are, well, magic, but there is realism in the magic—more realist magic than magic realism. Books written thirty years apart have, in however small a way, both been recognised. My self-doubting companion can shut up for a while.

As a friend said to me yesterday, an award is an award. In a world that can be thankless, I am today thankful.

Since writing this, The Magic Campervan, Book 1, The Forbidden Slide is also a Finalist in the Global Book Award 2024 for Children’s General Fiction. Roll on Book 3!