My award arrived in the mail for the anniversary edition of Falling Uphill. Yay! You could call this my coming of age journey. The sequel is planned for 2037. I imagine I’ll have some interesting perspective as I do it all again. Well… maybe not the whole world via bicycle. Thank you Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Perhaps the biggest awards are the hundreds of emails I received about how my story has changed other people’s lives. Babies were born (not mine), careers were started, soulmates were found, people faced their fears and overcame a lifetime of doubts, dozens of people traveled the world with my book in their backpack, even to the top of Mt Fuji, an 88-year-old woman decided it wasn’t too late to take a solo journey, hiking through Bhutan… and a lotta, lotta people rode a bicycle!
A little more about the award. I’m honored to be a finalist at the 2018 Indie Book Awards. Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest not-for-profit awards program for independent publishers. What a big honor! I was a finalist in the Memoir Category, specifically for Personal Struggle/Health Issue. The personal struggle was, as stated in the subtitle of the book, One man’s quest for happiness around the world on a bicycle. The health issue was/is depression. At the time, I knew this was a problem, but I had no idea how pervasive it could be to change your whole world view. Nonetheless, it led me to really question the meaning of life and build a foundation on which to stand.
I think it is also important to talk about the nature of awards. I’ve researched this a lot and when most books say they are best-sellers, it means they gamed the system. I know, I worked in advertising. So, one way to do this is to flood the market, get your friends to buy the book and then take a snapshot of the one-day your book is on the best-seller list. Not so for Falling Uphill. It stood up for over a year. And, there is a similar story when it comes to winning awards. There are many awards that are basically given away to the highest bidder. But Indie Book Awards is the real thing — a truly genuine award! What a rare honor!
